Little Bee

He leaned toward his mother, and he spat. He said, GO AWAY I WANT MY DADDY!

They were making the other children sit cross-legged on the floor, in the far corner of the room. They were having story time. The other children were facing away from Charlie’s corner, but they kept wriggling around to look over their shoulders with pale, scared faces. A woman was reading them the story. She wore blue jeans and white trainers and a turquoise sweatshirt. She was saying, and Max tamed them by the trick of TURN AROUND AND FACE FRONT, CAITLIN by the trick of staring straight into their eyes and saying EMMA, PLEASE CONCENTRATE, JAMES, STOP WHISPERING of staring straight into their eyes and saying WILL YOU FACE FRONT, OLLIE, THERE’S NOTHING GOING ON BEHIND YOU.

Sarah knelt on the floor and she wiped Charlie’s spit off her cheek. She was crying. She was holding her arms out to Charlie. Charlie turned around and hid his face in the corner. The woman reading the story was saying, be still.

I went toward Sarah. The play leader gave me a look which meant, I told you to stay by the door. I gave her a look back which meant, How dare you? It was a very good look. I learned it from Queen Elizabeth the Second, on the back of the British five-pound note. The play leader took one step back and I went up to Sarah. I touched her on the shoulder.

Sarah looked up at me.

“Oh god,” she said. “Poor Charlie, I don’t know what to do.”

“What do you normally do when he is like this?”

“I cope. I always cope. Oh god, Bee, I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’ve forgotten how to cope.”

Sarah covered her face with her hands. The play leader took her away and sat her down.

I went into the corner with Charlie. I stood next to him and I turned my face into the corner too. I did not look at him, I looked at the bricks and I did not say anything. I am good at looking at bricks and not saying anything. In the immigration detention center I did it for two years, and that is my record.

I was thinking what I would do in that nursery room, if the men came suddenly. It was not an easy room, I am telling you. For example, there was nothing to cut yourself with. All the scissors were made of plastic and their ends were round and soft. If I suddenly needed to kill myself in that room, I did not know how I was going to do it.

After a long time Charlie looked up at me. “What is you doing?” he said.

I shrugged my shoulders. “I am thinking how to escape from this place.”

Silence. Charlie sighed. “They tooked mine Batman costume.”

“Why did they do that?”

“Because of why I done a wee in my Batman costume.”

I knelt down and looked into Charlie’s eyes. “We are the same, you and me. I spent two years in a place like this. They make us do the things we do not want. Does it make you cross?”

Charlie nodded.

I said, “It makes me cross too.”

From behind us I could hear that the rest of the nursery was going back to its own business. Children were talking and shouting again, and the women were helping and laughing and scolding. In our corner, Charlie looked at the ground.

“I want mine daddy,” he said.

“Your daddy is dead, Charlie. Do you know what this means?”

“Yes. In heaven.”

“Yes.”

“Where’s heaven?”

“It is a place like this. Like a nursery, or a detention center, or a strange country far away. He wants to come home to you, but he can’t. Your daddy is like my daddy.”

“Oh. Is yours daddy dead too?”

“Yes Charlie. My daddy is dead and my mummy is dead and my sister is dead too. All of them are dead.”

“Why?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “The baddies got them, Charlie.”

Charlie twisted his hands together and bent down to pick up a small scrap of red paper from the floor. He tore at it, and he put it on his tongue to see how it tasted, and then it got stuck on his fingers because of the dampness. He held his tongue between his teeth so he could concentrate on peeling the paper off his fingers. Then he looked up.

“Is you sad like me?”

I made my face go into a smile. “Do I look sad, Charlie?”

Charlie looked at me. I tickled him under his arms and he started to laugh.

“Do we look sad, Charlie? Hey? You and me? Are we sad now?”

Charlie was laughing and wriggling finally, so I pulled him close to me and I looked in his eyes. “We are not going to be sad, Charlie. Not you and me. Especially not you, Charlie, because you are the luckiest boy in the world. You know why this is?”

“Why?”

“Because you have a mama, Charlie, and she loves you, and that is something, no?”

I gave Charlie a little push toward his mother and he ran to her. He buried his face against her dress and they hugged each other. Sarah was crying and smiling at the same time. She was speaking into Charlie’s ear, saying Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. Then Charlie’s voice came, and it was muffled against his mother’s dress. He said, I’m NOT Charlie, Mummy, I’m Batman.

Sarah looked at me over Charlie’s shoulder and she just said, Thank you, not making any sound but just moving her lips.

We walked home from the nursery with Charlie swinging between us. The day was beautiful. The sun was hot and the air was buzzing with bees and the scent of flowers was everywhere. Beside the pavement there were the front gardens of the houses, full of soft colors. It was hard not to be full of hope.

“I think I shall teach you the names of all of the English flowers,” said Sarah. “This is fuchsia, and this is a rose, and this is honeysuckle. What? What are you smiling about?”

“There are no goats. That is why you have all these beautiful flowers.”

“There were goats, in your village?”

“Yes, and they ate all the flowers.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Do not be sorry. We ate all the goats.”

Sarah frowned. “Still,” she said. “I think I’d rather have honeysuckle.”

“One day I will take you where I come from and you will eat only cassava for a week and then you will tell me if you would rather have honeysuckle or goat.”

Sarah smiled and leaned over to smell the honeysuckle blossom. Now I saw that she was crying again.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Sarah. “I can’t seem to stop. Oh look at me, I’m all over the place.”

Charlie looked up at his mother and I rubbed the top of his head to show him everything was okay. We started to walk again. Sarah blew her nose on a tissue. She said, “How long am I going to be like this, do you suppose?”

“It was one year for me, after they killed my sister.”

“Before you could think straight again?”

“Before I could think at all. At first I was just running, running, running-getting away from where it happened, you know? Then there was the detention center. It was very bad. It is not possible to think clearly in there. You have not committed a crime, so all you can think of is, When will I be let out? But they tell you nothing. After a month, six months, you start to think, Maybe I will grow old in here. Maybe I will die here. Maybe I am already dead. For the first year all I could think about was killing myself. When everyone else is dead, sometimes you think it would be easier to join them, you know? But you have to move on. Move on, move on, they tell you. As if you are stubborn. As if you are chewing on their flowers like a goat. Move on, move on. At five P.M. they tell you to move on and at six P.M. they lock you back in your cell.”

“Didn’t they give you any help at all in that place?”

I sighed.

“They tried to help us, you know? There were some good people. Psychiatrists, volunteers. But there was only so much they could do for us in there. One of the psychiatrists, she said to me, Psychiatry in this place is like serving an in-flight meal in the middle of a plane crash. If I wanted to make you well, as a doctor, I should be giving you a parachute, not a cheese-and-pickle sandwich. To be well in your mind you have first to be free, you see?”

Sarah pressed the tissue into the corners of her eyes. “I’m not sure it’s easier out here, Bee.”

“But I will help you.”

Sarah smiled. “You’re sixteen years old, Bee. You’re a refugee. You’re an orphan, for god’s sake. I’m the one who ought to be helping you.”

I pulled on Sarah’s shoulder to stop her. I took her left hand and I held it up to her. Charlie stood and looked up at us with big eyes.

“Look, Sarah. You have helped me enough already. You cut off your own finger for me. You saved my life.”

“I should have done more. I should have saved your sister too.”

“How?”

“I should have thought of something.”

I shook my head. “You did everything you could, Sarah.”

“But we should never have been in that situation, Bee. Don’t you see? We went on holiday to a place we had no right to be.”

“And what if you had not been there, Sarah? If you and Andrew had not been there, then Nkiruka and me, we would both be dead.” I turned to Charlie. “Your mummy saved my life, did you know that? She saved me from the baddies.”

Charlie looked up at his mother. “Like Batman?” he said.

Sarah smiled, the way I was used to now, with the tears starting to come to her eyes again. “Like Batmum.”

“Is that why you isn’t got your one finger?”

“Why I haven’t got one finger. Yes, darling.”

“Did the baddies take it? The Penguin?”

“No, darling.”

“Was it the Puffin?”

Sarah laughed.

“Yes darling, it was that awful Puffin.”

Charlie grinned. Naughty naughty Puffin, he said, and he ran ahead of us down the pavement, shooting baddies with a gun that was not visible to my eyes. Sarah turned