Little Bee

now I understood that at last I could disappear into the human race, like Yevette chose to do, as simply as a bee vanishes into the hive. I did not even tell my feet to do it: they were full of joy and they took the first step all on their own.

And then they stopped. I thought, Little Bee, you have tried this before. You ran away, but your troubles traveled with you. How will you stop them from finding you this time? How will you stop them from shrieking in the night?

So I took a step back and I leaned against the railings again, to think. The sun was pleasant on the back of my neck. Lawrence was pointing out something to Charlie. Those columns on the bridge, he was saying. See how the water swirls around them?

On the walkway in front of me, the crowd kept coming. The adults were all walking but many of the children were gliding. There were children with scooters, children with bicycles, children with wheels hidden in their shoes. I smiled at a beautiful woman with brightly colored clothes. Mothers were calling out their children’s names-strong names like Sophie and Joshua and Jack-names with protecting magic.

And I thought to myself: that is it. My troubles will find me very easily in this town of stone and iron if I keep my foolish name that I chose at the edge of the jungle. So I will take a name that suits this city instead. I will blend in and I will wear a bright smile and colorful clothes and I will forget all about Charlie and Sarah and Lawrence and Andrew. With my new name, I will not even belong in Little Bee’s story anymore. Her story will end like this: One hot day in early summer Little Bee awoke weary from her troubles and she traveled to the banks of a great river in the company of three sorcerers-a boy with the powers of a bat, a good sorceress who once saved her life on purpose, and a bad sorcerer. And as the three enchanters gazed upon the mighty river, Little Bee turned away and spoke some magic words to herself, and when the others turned around Little Bee had flown away, and when they searched for her she had gone, and there was nothing to tell that the young girl had ever existed in this world except for a man’s large Hawaiian shirt that the good sorceress would wash and iron and fold at the back of a drawer because she would never be able to bear to throw it away.

I smiled as I looked into the great crowd of people passing by, and my feet started again to take the first steps to join them. I smiled even brighter when I felt the strength of those steps. All the power of the city was flowing up through the warm stones beneath my feet and entering my body. Yes, I thought. This is the moment. Even for a girl like me, then, there comes a day when she can stop surviving and start living.

To survive, you have to look good or talk good. But to end your story well-here is the truth-you have to talk yourself out of it.

After six steps I was inside the crowd, getting pushed this way and that way. I did not mind and I did not look back. I let myself be taken along by this river of human souls that flowed beside the water. I was happy. I smelled the mud on the banks of the river and the dust of the gray pigeons’ wings and the flat dry smell of the ancient stone buildings and the hot breath of cigarettes and chewing gum that floated through the crowd. Everyone was talking and shouting in all the languages they had carried with them to release in that place, and the words mingled in the London air which understood them all. I listened very carefully to the sound of the city and I wondered what name it would whisper me to call myself.

The crowd took me up onto a bridge and I started to cross it. It was good to watch the passenger boats pass out of sight underneath my feet, with the people relaxing in their chairs, and the bald tops of the old men’s heads turning pink in the sun, and the children shouting under the bridge to hear the echoes of their voices, and the tourist guide on the boat’s loudspeakers booming out, WELCOME WILLKOMMEN BIENVENUE BENVENUTO BIENVENIDO A LONDRES.

Near the middle of the bridge there was a boy selling magazines. He had a shaved head and a sliver ring in his nose, like a bull, and a green coat with a fur hood even though it was so hot, and he had light brown skin and he smiled when he saw me staring at him.

“What?” he said.

I smiled back. “Nothing.”

“Big Issue?” he said.

“No,” I said, “I am going to be fine now, I think.”

The boy laughed. “No! I mean, do you want to buy one of these?” He spoke slowly and he held up a magazine. “See? It’s called, the Big Issue.”

I giggled and I bit the side of my hand because I was embarrassed.

“Sorry,” I said. “I am new in this town.”

The boy nodded. “Me too,” he said. “What’s your name?”

I looked behind him at the huge city rising out of the river, mighty and illuminated. Then I looked back in the boy’s eyes.

“My name is London Sunshine.”

The boy grinned. “What kind of a name is that?”

“It is the kind of name that starts off heavy but ends up light.”

The boy blinked at me, and the next moment we were both laughing together. This was a good trick. In this moment I very nearly named myself back to life.

But while I was laughing I looked back across the river, and my eyes fell on something they could not look away from. Sarah and Charlie and Lawrence were still there, standing at the railings, talking and looking out over the river. They had not seen me, but I could not stop looking at them. The smile disappeared from my face.

“What’s wrong?” said the magazine-seller boy.

Sarah and Lawrence had their arms around each other’s shoulders, but Charlie was looking very small and sad. He was staring down at the mud on the banks of the river. He was firing some kind of a weapon at the mud, but the weapon was having no effect. I put my hand up to my mouth.

“You all right?” said the magazine-seller boy. “Looks like someone walked on your grave.”

I could not answer. How should I start to explain to him that I did not trust Lawrence? How was I supposed to tell him how all of the bad stories begin: The men came and they…?

It would be a long story to explain why I did not like to leave Charlie like that.

“I have to go,” I said.

I turned away from the magazine seller and I walked back across the bridge with heavy steps.

When I got back to the place where the three of them were standing, Sarah turned and smiled at me.

“Where did you disappear to?” she said.

I shrugged. “Nowhere.”

I looked down at the river. Something swam close to the bank but it did not break the surface. All you could see were the swirls in the water where it passed beneath. I looked at Sarah and she looked back at me and we found that we could not smile anymore.

“What’s wrong?” She lowered her voice. “I’m sorry. Is all this water reminding you of the beach?”

I said, “It is only water.”

Charlie was pulling my hand. He wanted to play, so we went down some stone steps that were slimy with some green river plant, down to a thin strip of yellow sand at the edge of the river. There were other children down there too, wearing just their underwear in the hot sun, building sand castles with their mothers and their fathers. We built sand castles too. We built towers and bridges. We built roads, railway lines, and schools. Then we built a hospital for injured superheroes and a hospital for sick bats, because Charlie said his city needed these things. Charlie was concentrating very hard. I said to him, Do you want to take off your Batman costume? But he shook his head.

“I am worried about you. You will be exhausted by this heat. Come on, aren’t you too hot in your costume?”

“Yes but if I is not in mine costume then I is not Batman.”

“Do you need to be Batman all the time?”

Charlie nodded. “Yes, because if I is not Batman all the time then mine Daddy dies.”

Charlie looked down at the sand. He squeezed his fists so tight that I could see the small white bones of his knuckles through the skin.

“Charlie,” I said. “You think your daddy died because you were not Batman?”

Charlie looked up. Through the dark eye holes of his bat mask, I could see the tears in his eyes.

“I was at mine nursery,” he said. “That’s when the baddies got mine Daddy.”

His lip trembled. I pulled him toward me and I held him while he cried. I stared over his shoulder at the cold black drainage tunnels that disappeared into the tall stone wall of the river embankment. I stared into the black mouth of one of them, as wide as my shoulders across, but all I could see was Andrew spinning slowly round on the electrical cord with his eyes watching me each time he revolved. The look in his eyes was the look of those black tunnels: there was no end to them.

“Listen Charlie,” I said. “Your daddy did not die because you were not there. It is not your fault. Do you understand? You are a good boy, Charlie. It is not your fault at all.”

Charlie pulled himself out of my arms and looked at me.

“Why did mine Daddy die?”

I thought about it.

“The baddies got him, Charlie. But they are not the sort of baddies Batman can fight. They are the sort of baddies that your daddy had to fight in his heart and I have to fight in my heart. They are baddies from inside.”

Charlie nodded. “Is there lots?”

“Of what?”

“Of baddies from inside?”

I looked at the dark tunnels, and I shivered.

“Everyone has them,” I said.

“Will we beat them?”

I nodded. “Of course we will.”

“And they won’t get me, will they?”

I smiled. “No, Charlie, I don’t think those baddies will ever get you.”

“And they won’t get you either, will they?”

I sighed.

“Charlie, there are no baddies here by the river. We are on an adventure, okay? Maybe you can take one day off from being Batman.”

Charlie frowned, as if this was another trick of his enemies.

“Batman is always Batman,” he said.

I laughed, and we went back to building the city out of sand. I put a big handful on top of a pile that Charlie said was a multistory Batmobile park.

“Sometimes I wish I could take one day off from being Little Bee,” I said.

Charlie looked up at me. A drop of sweat fell from inside his bat mask. “Why?”

“Well, you see, it was hard to become Little Bee. I had to go through a lot of things. They kept me in prison and I had to train myself to think in a certain way, and to be strong, and to speak your language the way you people speak it. It is even an effort now just to keep it going. Because inside, you know, I am only a village girl. I would like to be a village girl again and do the things that village