Little Bee (10 page)

In
the afternoon the farmer’s wife came. She brought food. There was bread and
cheese in a basket, and a sharp knife to cut the bread with. I thought
,
I can cut open my veins with that knife,
if the men come.
The farmer’s wife was a kind woman. I asked her why
was she
doing this good thing for us. She said it was
because we were all human beings. I said,
Excuse me miss
but I do not think Yevette is a human being. I think she is another species
with a louder mouth.
Yevette and the farmer’s wife started laughing
then, and we talked for a little while about where we had all come from and
where we were going to. She told me the direction to go to
Kingston-upon-Thames, but she also told me that I shouldn’t.
You don’t want to go to the suburbs, dear,
she said.
Neither fish nor flesh, the suburbs.
Unnatural places, full of unnatural people.
I laughed. I told her,
Maybe I will fit right in.

The
farmer’s wife was surprised when we asked for five plates instead of four, but
she brought them anyway. We divided the food into five portions, and we gave
the biggest helping to the daughter of the woman with no name, because she was
still growing.

That
night I dreamed about my village before the men came. There was a swing that
the boys had made. It was the old tire of a car, and the boys had tied ropes
around it and suspended it from the high branch of a tree. This was a big old
limba tree and it grew a little way apart from our homes, near to the
schoolhouse. Even before I was big enough to go on the swing, my mother would
sit me down in the dark red dust by the trunk of the limba so I could watch the
big children swinging. I loved to listen to them laughing and singing.
Two, three, four children at once, all ways up, with legs and arms
and heads all tangled up and dragging in the red scrape of dust at the lowest
point of the swing.
Aie! Ouch! Get off me in the name of god! Do not
push! There was always a lot of chatter and joking around the swing, and up
above my head in the branches of the limba tree there were grumpy hornbills
that shouted back at us. Nkiruka would get down from the swing sometimes and
pick me up in her arms and give me little pieces of soft uncooked dough to
squeeze between my chubby fingers.

Everything
was happiness and singing when I was a little girl. There was plenty of time
for it. We did not have hurry. We did not have electricity or fresh water or
sadness either, because none of these had been connected to our village yet. I
sat in between the roots of my limba tree and I laughed while I watched Nkiruka
swinging back and fro, back and fro. The tether of the swing was very long, so
it took a long time for her to travel from one end of its swing to the other. It
never looked like it was in
a rush, that swing
. I used
to watch it all day long and I never realized I was watching a pendulum
counting down the last seasons of peace in my village.

In
my dream I watched that tire swinging back and fro, back and fro, in that
village we did not yet know was built on an oil field and would soon be fought
over by men in a crazy hurry to drill down into the oil. This is the trouble
with all happiness—all of it is built on top of something that men want.

I
dreamed of watching Nkiruka swinging back and fro, back and fro, and when I
woke up there were tears in my eyes and in the light of the moon I was watching
something else swinging back and fro, back and fro. I could not tell what it
was. I wiped the tears from my eyes and I opened them fully, and then I saw
what it was that was swinging through the air at the end of my bed.

It
was a single Dunlop Green Flash trainer. The other one had fallen off the foot
of the woman with no name. She had hanged herself from one of the long chains
that reached up to the roof. Her body was naked apart from that one shoe. She
was very thin. Her ribs and her hipbones were sharp. Her eyes bulged open and
pointed up into thin blue light. They glittered. The chain had crushed her neck
as thin as her ankle. I watched the Dunlop Green Flash trainer and the bare
dark brown foot with its gray sole, swinging back and fro past the end of my
bed. The Green Flash trainer glowed in the moonlight, like a slow and shining
silver fish, and the bare foot chased it like a shark.
They swum
circles around one another. The chain squeaked quietly.

I
went and touched the bare leg of the girl with no name. It was cold. I looked
over at Yevette and the sari girl. They were sleeping. Yevette was muttering in
her sleep. I started to walk over to Yevette’s bed to wake her, but my foot
slipped on something wet. I knelt down and touched it. It was urine. It was as
cold as the painted concrete floor. A puddle of it had collected underneath the
girl with no name. I looked up and I saw a single drop of urine hang from the
big toe of her bare foot, then sparkle as it fell to the floor. I stood up
quickly. I felt so depressed about the urine. I did not want to wake up the
other girls because then they would see it too, and then we would all be seeing
it, and then none of us could deny it. I do not know why the small puddle of
urine made me start to cry. I do not know why the mind chooses these small
things to break
itself
on.

I
went over to the bed that the girl with no name had been sleeping on, and I picked
up her T-shirt. I was going to go back and use the T-shirt to wipe up the
urine, but then I saw the see-through plastic bag of documents on the end of
the bed. I opened it and I started to read the story of the girl with no name.

The men came and they…
That was how all of our stories
started. I was still crying, and it was difficult to read in the dim light from
the moon. I put the girl’s documents back down on the bed and I closed the bag
carefully. I held it tightly in my hands. I was thinking
,
I could take this girl’s story for my own. I could take
these documents and I could take this story with its official red stamp at the
end of it that tells everyone it is TRUE. Maybe I can win my asylum case with
these papers.
I thought about it for one minute, but while I held the
girl’s story in my hands the squeaking of her chain seemed to get louder, and I
had to drop her story back down on the bed because I knew how it ended. A story
is a powerful thing in my country, and God help the girl who takes one that is
not her own. So I left it on the girl’s bed, every word of it, including the
paper clips and all the photographs of the scar tissue and the names of the
missing daughters, and all of the red ink that said this was CONFIRMED.

Me,
I put one small kiss on the cheek of Yevette, who was still sleeping, and I
walked off quietly across the fields.

Leaving
Yevette, that
was the hardest thing I had to do since
I left my village. But if you are a refugee, when death comes you do not stay
for one minute in the place it has visited. Many things arrive after
death—sadness, questions, and policemen—and none of these can be answered when
your papers are not in order.

Truly,
there is no flag for us floating people. We are millions, but we are not a
nation. We cannot stay together. Maybe we get together in ones and twos, for a
day or a month or even a year, but then the wind changes and
carries
the hope away. Death came and I left in fear. Now all I have is my shame and
the memory of bright colors and the echo of Yevette’s laugh. Sometimes I feel
as lonely as the Queen of England.

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?

I
just fixed the motorway in my mind as a place I could run back to and kill
myself very easily if the men suddenly came, and then I stood up and carried on
going. I walked for another hour across fields. Then I came to some small
roads, and these roads had houses on them. I was amazed when I saw them. They
were two stories high and made out of strong red bricks. They had sloping roofs
with neat rows of tiles on them. They had white windows, and there was glass in
all of them. Nothing was broken. All the houses were very smart, and each one
looked like the next. In front of nearly every house there was a car. I walked
along the street and I stared at the shining rows of them. These were beautiful
cars, sleek and shining, not the kind of vehicles we saw where I came from. In
my village there were two cars, one Peugeot and one Mercedes. The Peugeot came
before I was born. I know this because the driver was my father, and my village
was the place where his Peugeot coughed twice and died in the red dust. He went
into the first house in the village to ask if they had a mechanic. They did not
have a mechanic but what they did have was my mother, and my father realized he
needed her more than he needed a mechanic in any case, and so he stayed. The
Mercedes arrived when I was five years old. The driver was drunk, and he
crashed into my father’s Peugeot, which was still standing exactly how my
father had left it except that the boys had taken one of its tires away to use
as the seat of the swing on the limba tree. The driver of the Mercedes got out
and he walked over to the first house and met my father there and he said,
Sorry.
And my father smiled at him and said,
We
should be
thanking you, sir, you have really put our village on the map, this is our very
first road traffic accident.
And the driver of that Mercedes, he
laughed, and he stayed too, and he became great friends with my father, so much
that I called him my uncle. And my father and my uncle lived very happily in
that place until the afternoon when the men came and shot them.