Little Bee

And I did begin to relax. In each village I found people with stories, and Sarah wrote them down. It was easy. We started to be happy. We thought we had done enough to save ourselves. We thought, this is a good trick.

One night when we had been in my country for two weeks, I dreamed of my sister Nkiruka. She walked up out of the sea. First the surface of the water swirled from the movement of something unseen and then, in the hollow between two waves, I saw the top of her head with white foam dancing around it. Then my sister’s face rose above the water and slowly she walked up the beach toward me and she stood there smiling and wearing the Hawaiian shirt that I was wearing when they released me from detention. It was soaked with salt water. My sister spoke my name once, and then she waited.

When Sarah woke up, I went to her. Please, I said, we have to go to the sea. I must say good-bye to my sister. Sarah looked at me for a long time, and then she nodded. We did not say anything. That morning Sarah gave the policemen much more money than before. We drove south to Benin City and we got there in the late afternoon. We stayed overnight in another hotel that was just the same, and the next morning we drove south again, to the coast. We left early, when the sun was still low in the sky and the light shining into the car windows was warm and golden. Charlie sighed and banged his heels on the backseat.

“Is we nearly there yet?” he said.

Sarah smiled at him in the rearview mirror.

“Nearly, darling,” she said.

The road ran out at one of the fishing villages they have in that place, and we stepped down onto the sand. Charlie laughed and ran down the beach to make sand castles. I sat on the beach next to Sarah and we looked out over the ocean. There was no sound except for the waves breaking on the beach. After a long time, Sarah turned to me.

She said, “I’m proud we’ve come this far.”

I took her hand. “You know, Sarah, since I left my country, often I think to myself, how would I explain these things to the girls back home?”

Sarah laughed and stretched her hands along the beach in both directions.

“Well?” said Sarah. “How would you explain this to the girls back home? I mean, this would take some explaining, wouldn’t you say?”

I shook my head. “I would not explain this to the girls back home.”

“No?”

“No, Sarah. Because today I am saying good-bye to all that. We are the girls back home now. You and me. There is nothing else for me to go back to. I do not need to tell this story to anyone else. Thank you for saving me, Sarah.”

When I said this I saw that Sarah was crying, and then I was crying too.

When the day became hotter, the beach filled up with people. There were fishermen who walked out into the waves and sent wide bright nets spinning out before them, and there were old men who came to sit and look at the sea, and mothers who brought their children to splash in the water.

“We should go and ask these people if anyone has a story,” I said.

Sarah smiled and pointed at Charlie. “Yes, but it can wait,” she said. “Look, he’s having such fun.”

Charlie was running and laughing and I can tell you that a dozen of the local children were running with him, and laughing and shouting because if there is one thing you do not see very often on the beach in my country, it is a white superhero less than one meter in height, with sand and salt water on his cape. Charlie was laughing with the other children, running and playing and chasing.

It was hot, and I dug my toes down into the cooler sand.

“Sarah,” I said. “How long do you think you will stay?”

“I don’t know. Do you want to try coming with me to England? We could try to get you papers this time.”

I shrugged. “They do not want people like me.”

Sarah smiled. “I’m English and I want people like you. Surely I’m not the only one.”

“People will say you are naive.”

Sarah smiled.

“Let them,” she said. “Let them say whatever gives them comfort.”

We sat for a long time and watched the sea.