Little Bee (34 page)

“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.”

I
walked down the slope of the beach to the hard sand where the waves were
breaking. I looked out at the hazy horizon and I followed the deep
blue-and-indigo of the ocean from that distant line all the way to the beach
where it crashed into waves of white spray and sent its last thin sheets of
water foaming and hissing up the sand to sink away to nothing in the place
where my feet were standing. I saw how it ended there. The wet sand under my
feet made me think of how it was when the men took me and Nkiruka away, and for
the first time I began to be fearful. I was fully awake now. I knelt down in
the shore break and I splashed the cold salt water over my head and my face
until I could think clearly. Then I walked quickly along the beach to the point
that Sarah had shown me. The point was two or three minutes away. A tall ridge
of dark gray rock came out of the jungle there at the height of the treetops,
and it ran across the sand and then out into the sea, getting shorter as it
went but still as high as two men at the point of the rock, where it stuck out
into the surf. The waves crashed against it and sent explosions of white foam
into the silver-blue sky. In the shade of the rock it was suddenly cold, and my
skin shivered when it touched the dark stone. There were some local women
resting in the shade there, sitting on the hard sand with their backs against
the rock while their children played all around them, jumping over their
mothers’ legs and running into the shore break, laughing and daring one another
to go out into the white roaring foam where the great waves crashed against the
point of the rock.

I
sat down with the other women and smiled at them. They smiled back and talked
in their language, but I did not understand it. The women smelled of sweat and
wood smoke. I looked back along the beach. The soldiers were close now. The
women around me, they were watching the soldiers too. When the soldiers were
close enough to notice the color of Sarah’s skin, I saw them start to walk
faster. They stopped in front of Sarah and Charlie. Sarah stood very straight
and she stared at the soldiers with her hands on her hips. The leader of the
soldiers stepped forward. He was tall and relaxed, with his rifle riding high
on his shoulder and his hand scratching the top of his head. I could see he was
smiling. He said something and I watched Sarah shaking her head. The head
soldier stopped smiling then. He shouted at Sarah. I heard the shout but I
could not hear what he said. Sarah shook her head again, and she pushed Charlie
behind her legs. Around me the local women were staring and saying,
Weh,
but the children were still playing in the shore
break and they had not noticed what was occurring farther down the beach.

The
leader of the soldiers, he took the gun down from his shoulder and he pointed
it at Sarah. The other soldiers gathered in close and they unslung their
weapons too. The leader shouted again. Sarah just shook her head. The leader
pulled back the barrel of his gun then and I thought he was going to push it
into Sarah’s face, but just then Charlie broke away and he started to run down
the beach toward the rocky point where we were sitting. He ran with his head
down and his Batman cape fluttering behind
him,
and at
first the soldiers just laughed and watched him go. But the leader of the
soldiers, he was not laughing. He shouted something at his men, and one of them
raised his rifle and swung it round to point at Charlie. The women around me,
they gasped. One of them screamed. It was a crazy, shocking sound. At first I
thought it was a seabird right beside me and my head snapped around to look,
and when I turned back toward where Charlie was running, I saw a jet of sand
flying up from the hard beach beside him. At first I did not know what it was,
but then I heard the rifle shot that had made it. Then I screamed too. The
soldier was swinging the barrel of his rifle, taking aim again. That was when I
stood up and I started to run toward Charlie. I ran so hard my breath was
burning and I screamed at the soldiers,
Don’t shoot, don’t
shoot, I AM THE ONE THAT YOU WANT,
and I ran with my eyes half closed
and one hand spread out in front of my face as if that would protect me from
the bullet that would come for me. I ran, cringing like a dog from the whip,
but the bullet did not come. The leader of the soldiers, he shouted out an
order and his man put down his rifle. All of the soldiers stood there then,
with their hands at their sides, watching.

Charlie
and me, we came together halfway between the rocky point and the soldiers. I
knelt and I held out my arms to him. His face was twisted with terror and I
held him while he cried against my chest. I waited for the soldiers to come and
get me, but they did not. The leader stood there and he watched, and I saw the
way he slung his rifle back on his shoulder and lifted his hand to scratch his
head again. I saw Sarah, with her hands behind her head, pulling at her hair
and screaming to be let go while one of the soldiers restrained her.

After
a long time Charlie stopped sobbing and he turned his face up toward mine. I
peeled back his Batman mask a little, so I could see his face, and he smiled at
me. I smiled back at him, in that moment that the soldiers’ leader gave me,
that one minute of dignity he offered me as one human being to another before
he sent his men across the hard sand to fetch me. Here it was then, finally:
the quietest part of the late afternoon. I smiled down at Charlie, and I
understood that he would be free now even if I would not. In this way the life
that was in me would find its home in him now. It was not a sad feeling. I felt
my heart take off lightly like a butterfly and I thought,
yes,
this is
it,
something has survived in me, something
that does not need to run anymore, because it is worth more than all the money
in the world and its currency, its true home, is the living.
And
not just the living in this particular country or in that particular country,
but the secret, irresistible heart of the living.
I smiled back at
Charlie and I knew that the hopes of this whole human world could fit inside
one soul. This is a good trick. This is called,
globalization.

“Everything
will be alright for you, Charlie,” I said.

But
Charlie was not listening—already he was giggling and kicking and struggling to
be put down. He stared over my shoulder at the local children, still playing in
the shore break around the rocky point.

“Let
me go! Let me go!”

I
shook my head. “No Charlie. It is a very hot day. You cannot run around in your
costume like that or you will boil, I am telling you, and then you will be no
good to us at all to fight the baddies. Take off your Batman costume, right
now, and then you will just be yourself and you can go to cool off in the sea.”

“No!”

“Please
Charlie, you must. It is for your health.”

Charlie
shook his head. I stood him in the sand and I knelt down beside him and I whispered
in his ear.

“Charlie,”
I said, “do you remember when I promised you, if you took off your costume,
that I would tell you my real name?”

Charlie
nodded.

“So
do you still want to know my real name?”

Charlie
tilted his head to one side so that both of the ears of his mask flopped over. Then
he tilted it to the other side. Then finally he looked straight at me.

“What
is yours real
name
?” he whispered.

I
smiled. “My name is Udo.”

“Ooh-doh?”

“That
is it. Udo means,
peace.
Do you
know what peace is, Charlie?”

Charlie
shook his head.

“Peace
is a time when people can tell each other their real names.”

Charlie
grinned. I looked over his shoulder. The soldiers were walking across the sand
toward us now. They were walking slowly, with their rifles in their hands
pointing down at the sand, and while the soldiers walked, the waves rolled in
to the beach and crashed upon the sand one by one at this final end of their
journey. The waves rolled and rolled and there was no end to the power of them,
cold enough to wake a young girl from dreams, loud enough to tell and retell
the future. I bent my head and I kissed Charlie on the forehead. He stared at
me.

“Udo?”
he said.

“Yes
Charlie?”

“I
is
going to take off mine Batman costume now.”

The
soldiers were almost on us now.

“Hurry
then, Charlie,” I whispered.

Charlie
pulled off the mask first, and the local children gasped when they saw his
blond hair. Their curiosity was greater than their fear of the soldiers and
they ran with their skinny legs straining toward the place where we were, and
then when Charlie took off the rest of his costume and they saw his skinny
white body they said,
Weh!
because
such a child had never before been seen in that place. And then Charlie
laughed, and he slipped out from my arms and I stood up and stayed very still. Behind
me I felt the soft shocks of the soldiers’ boots in the sand and in front of me
all of the local children ran with Charlie down to the crashing water by the
rocky point. I felt the hard hand of a soldier on my arm but I did not turn
around. I smiled and I watched Charlie running away with the children, with his
head down and his happy arms spinning like propellers, and I cried with joy
when the children all began to play together in the sparkling foam of the waves
that broke between worlds at the point. It was beautiful, and that is a word I
would not need to explain to the girls from back home, and I do not need to
explain to you, because now we are all speaking the same language. The waves
still smashed against the beach, furious and irresistible. But me, I watched
all of those children smiling and dancing and splashing one another in salt
water and bright sunlight, and I laughed and laughed and laughed until the
sound of the sea was drowned.