Little Bee

My story is not like the movie I told you about, The Man Who Was in a Great Hurry. I did not have a motorbike to escape on, or a plane that I could fly upside down. In my mind I saw how I would escape through the crowds, with the policeman chasing after me and shouting, Stop that girl! I would run across the road and the brakes of the cars would scream and their horns would hoot and a fat man would shout, Whaddayathinkyadoin?, and then I would be running, running, and of course there would be a seller of brightly colored fruits, and his apples and his oranges would spill all over the road, and there would be two men carrying a big sheet of glass, and I would roll under it and the policemen would crash through it and then I would get away and think to myself, Phew! That was a close one.

That is how the story went in my head. But in my life, the chase was not so good. My legs started to run and the policeman reached out his hand and grabbed hold of my arm, and that was it. If my life was a movie, it did not have a good chase scene. The audience would grumble, and throw popcorn, and say to one another, That foolish African girl did not even make it to the edge of the screen.

The policeman opened the back door of the police car and he made me sit down. He left the door open while he talked into his radio. He was thin, with pale slim wrists and a little potbelly, like the detention officer who was on duty on the morning they released us. The police car smelled of nylon and cigarettes.

“If we could just start with your name.”

I felt very sad. I knew it was all over for me now. I could not give the policeman my real name, because then they would find out what I was. But I did not have a false name to give him either. Jennifer Smith, Alison Jones-none of these names are real when you have no documents to go with them. Nothing is true unless there is a screen that says it is, somewhere in that building full of computers and coffee cups, right at the exact center of the United Kingdom. I sat up very straight in the backseat of the police car, and I took a breath and I looked the policeman straight in the eye.

“My name is Little Bee.”

“Spell that for me please?”

“L-I-T-T-L-E-B-E-E.”

“And is that a first name or a surname, madam?”

“It is my whole name. That is who I am.”

The policeman sighed, then he turned away and spoke into his radio.

“Sierra Four to control,” he said, “send out a unit, will you? I’ve got one to bring in for fingerprints. Probably a nutter.”

He turned back to me, and he was not smiling anymore.

“Wait here,” he said.

He closed the car door. I sat for a long time. Without the breeze it was very hot in the back of the police car. I waited there until another set of policemen came and took me away. They put me into a van. I watched Sarah and Lawrence and Charlie disappearing in the back window, through a metal grille. Lawrence had his arm around Sarah, and she was leaning against him.

Sarah and Lawrence came to visit me that night. I was in a holding cell at the police station in Vauxhall. The police guard, he banged open the door without knocking and Sarah walked in. Sarah was carrying Charlie. He was asleep in her arms with his head resting on her shoulder. I was so happy to see Charlie safe, I cried. I kissed Charlie on the cheek. He twitched in his sleep, and he sighed. Through the holes in his bat mask, I could see that he was smiling in his sleep. That made me smile too.

Outside the cell, Lawrence was arguing with a police officer.

“This is a bit excessive, isn’t it? They shouldn’t deport her. She has a home to go to. She has a sponsor.”

“They’re not my rules, sir. The immigration people are a law unto themselves.”

“But surely you can give us a bit of time to make a case. I work for the Home Office, I can get an appeal together.”

“If you don’t mind my saying so, sir, if I worked for the Home Office and I knew all along this lady was illegal, I’d keep my mouth shut.”

And this, exactly, is what Lawrence did. I did not hear his voice after that.

The guard looked into the cell. “You’ve got five minutes, that’s all,” he said.

Sarah was crying. “I won’t let them do it,” she whispered. “I’ll find a way. I won’t let them send you back.”

I tried very hard to smile.

“Maybe you should not make a fuss. It would not be good for Lawrence, I think.”

Sarah pressed her face down to the top of Charlie’s head, and she breathed in his smell.

“Maybe Lawrence is going to have to look after himself,” she whispered.

I shook my head. “Sarah,” I said. “I do not deserve your help. You do not know everything about me.”

“I think I know enough.”

“Please listen, Sarah. I was there when Andrew killed himself.”

“What?”

“Yes. And, if I tried harder, I think I could have saved him.”

There was a long silence between us. The only sound was Charlie breathing in and out in his sleep.

The guard came into the cell. “Time’s up,” he said. “Come on please madam, we need to lock up for the night.”