Little Bee

It was not difficult to know which way to go. London lit up the sky. The clouds glowed orange, as if the city that awaited me was burning. I walked uphill, through fields with some kind of grain and into a high wood of some kind of trees, and when I looked back down toward the farm for the last time, I saw a floodlight come on outside the barn they put us in. I think it was an automatic light, and standing in the middle of the beam there was the single bright lemon-yellow dot of the sari girl. It was too far away to see her face, but I imagined her blinking in surprise when the light came on. Like an actress who has walked onto the stage by mistake. Like a girl who does not have a speaking part, who is thinking, Why have they turned this great light upon me now?

I was very scared but I did not feel alone. All through that night it seemed to me as if my big sister Nkiruka walked beside me. I could almost see her face, glowing in the pale orange light. We walked all night, across fields and through woods. We steered around the lights of villages. Whenever we saw a farmhouse we went around that too. Once, the farm dogs heard us and barked, but there was no trouble. We kept on walking. My legs were tired. Two years I had been in that detention center, going nowhere, and I was weak. But although my ankles hurt and the backs of my legs ached, it felt very good to be moving, and to be free, and to feel the night air on my face and the grass on my legs, wet from the dew. I know my sister was happy too. She was whistling under her breath. Once when we stopped to rest, she dug her toes into the earth at the edge of a field and smiled. When I saw her smile, I felt strong enough to carry on.

The orange glow of the night faded, and I started to see the fields and the hedges around us. Everything was gray at first, but then the colors began to come into the land—blue and green, but very soft, as if the colors did not have any happiness in them. Then the sun rose, and the whole world turned to gold. The gold was all around me and I was walking through clouds of it. The sun was blazing on the white mist that hung over the fields, and the mist swirled around my legs. I looked over at my sister, but she had disappeared with the night. I smiled though, because I realized that she had left me with her strength. I looked around me at the beautiful sunrise and I was thinking, Yes, yes, everything will be beautiful like this now. I will never be afraid again. I will never spend another day trapped in the color gray.

There was a low roaring, rumbling sound ahead of me. The noise rose and fell in the mist. It is a waterfall, I thought. I must be careful not to fall into the river in this mist.

I walked on, more carefully now, and the noise got louder. Now it did not sound like a river anymore. There were individual sounds in the middle of the roaring. Each sound got louder, rumbling and shaking and then fading away. There was a dirty, sharp smell in the air. Now I could hear the sound of cars and trucks. I went closer. I came to the top of a green grass slope and there it was in front of me. The road was incredible. On my side of it there were three lines of traffic going from right to left. Then there was a low metal barrier, and another three lines of traffic going from left to right. The cars and the trucks were moving very fast. I walked down to the edge of the road and put out my hand to stop the traffic, so I could cross, but the traffic did not stop. A truck blew its horn at me, and I had to step back.

I waited for a gap in the traffic and then I ran across to the center of the road. I climbed over the metal barrier. This time a great many car horns were blown at me. I ran across, and up the green grass bank at the other side of the road. I sat down. I was out of breath. I watched the traffic racing past below me, three lines in one direction and three lines in the other. If I was telling this story to the girls from back home they would be saying, Okay, it was the morning, so the people were traveling to work in the fields. But why do the people who are driving from right to left not exchange their fields with the people who are driving from left to right? That way everyone could work in the fields near to their homes. And then I would just shrug because there are no answers that would not lead to more foolish questions, like What is an office and what crops can you grow in it?