Little Bee

I smiled sleepily. Yes yes, I was thinking. We always need to get away from here. Wherever here is, there is always a good reason to get away from it. That is the story of my life. Always running, running, running, without one single moment of peace. Sometimes, when I remember my mother and my father and my big sister Nkiruka, I think I will always be running until the day I am reunited with the dead.

Sarah grabbed my hand and tried to pull me up.

“Get up, Bee,” she said. “There are soldiers coming. Up the beach.”

I breathed in the hot, salty smell of the sand. I sighed. I looked in the direction Sarah was staring. There were six soldiers. They were still a long way away, along the beach. The air above the sand was so hot that it dissolved the men’s legs into a shimmer, a green confusion of colors, so that the soldiers seemed to be floating toward us on a cloud made of some enchanted substance, free as the thoughts of a girl waking up from dreams on a hot beach. I screwed up my eyes against the glare and I saw the light gleaming on the barrels of the soldiers’ rifles. These rifles were more distinct than the men who carried them. They held their firm, straight lines while the men beneath them shimmered. In this way the weapons rode their men like mules, proud and gleaming in the sun, knowing that when a beast beneath them died, they would simply ride another one. This is how the future rode out to meet me in my country. The sun shone on its rifles and it pounded on my bare head too. I could not think. It was too hot and too late in the afternoon.

“Why would they come for us here, Sarah?”

“I’m sorry, Bee. It’s those policemen in Abuja, isn’t it? I thought I’d paid them enough to close their eyes for a few days. But someone must have put the word out. I suppose they must have seen us in Sapele.”

I knew it was true, but I pretended that it was not. That is a good trick. That is called, saving one minute of the quietest part of the late afternoon while the whole of time is ending.

“Maybe the soldiers are just going for a walk by the sea, Sarah. Anyway, this is a long beach. They will not know who we are.”

Sarah put her hand on my cheek and she turned my head until I was looking in her eyes.

“Look at me,” she said. “Look how bloody white I am. Do you see any other women on the beach this color?”

“So?”

“They’ll be looking out for a girl with a white woman and a white boy. Just walk away from us, okay, Bee? Go down to the point down there, where those other women are, and don’t look around till the soldiers have gone. If they take me and Charlie, don’t worry. There’s no way they’ll do anything to us.”

Charlie held on to Sarah’s leg and looked up at her.

“Mummy,” he said, “why is Little Bee got to go?”

“It’s not for long, Batman. Just until the soldiers have gone.”

Charlie put his hands on his hips. “I don’t want Little Bee to go,” he said.

“She has to hide, darling,” said Sarah. “Just for a few minutes.”

“Why?” said Charlie.

Sarah stared out to sea, and the expression on her face was the saddest thing I ever saw. She answered Charlie, but she turned to me when she spoke.

“Because we still haven’t done enough to save her, Charlie. I thought we had, but we need to do more. And we will do more, darling. We will. We won’t ever give up on Little Bee. Because she is part of our family now. And until she is happy and safe, then I don’t think we will be either.”

Charlie held on to my leg.

“I want to go with her,” he said.

Sarah shook her head. “I need you to stay and look after me, Batman.”

Charlie shook his head. He was not happy. I looked away down the beach. The soldiers were half a mile away. They came slowly, looking left and right, checking the faces of the people on the beach. Sometimes they stopped and did not continue on their way until someone showed them papers. I nodded, slowly.

“Thank you, Sarah.”