Little Bee - Chris Cleave [46]
“My name is Little Bee,” she said.
When she heard this name, Kindness smiled. Little Bee told me that her big sister was a very pretty girl. She was the kind of girl the men said could make them forget their troubles. She was the kind of girl the women said was trouble. Little Bee wondered which it was going to be.
The two sisters lay still and quiet till sunset. Then they crept down the sand to wash their feet in the surf. The salt stung in their cuts but they did not cry out. It was sensible of them to keep quiet. The men chasing them might have given up, or they might not. The trouble was, the sisters had seen what had been done to their village. There weren’t supposed to be any survivors to tell the story. The men were hunting down the fleeing women and children and burying their bodies under branches and rocks.
Back undercover, the girls bound each other’s feet in fresh green leaves and they waited for the dawn. It was not cold, but they hadn’t eaten for two days. They shivered. Monkeys screamed under the moon.
I still think about the two sisters there, shivering through the night. While I watch them in my mind, again and again, small pink crabs follow the thin smell of blood to the place where their feet recently stood in the shore break, but they do not find anything dead there yet. The soft pink crabs make hard little clicking noises under the bright white stars. One by one, they dig themselves back into the sand to wait.
I wish my brain did not fill in the frightful details like this. I wish I was a woman who cared deeply about shoes and concealer. I wish I was not the sort of woman who ended up sitting at her kitchen table listening to a refugee girl talking about her awful fear of the dawn.
The way Little Bee told it, at sunrise there was a white mist hanging thick in the jungle and spilling out over the sand. The sisters watched a white couple walking up the beach. The language they spoke was the official language of Little Bee’s country, but these were the first whites she had seen. She and Kindness watched them from behind a stand of palms. They drew back when the couple came level with their hiding place. The whites stopped to look out at the sea.
“Listen to that surf, Andrew,” the white woman said. “It’s so unbelievably peaceful here.”
“I’m still a bit scared, frankly. We should go back inside the hotel compound.”
The white woman smiled. “Compounds are made for stepping outside. I was scared of you, the first time I met you.”
“Course you were. Big Irish hunk of love like me. We’re savages, don’t you know.”
“Barbarians.”
“Vagabonds.”
“Cunts.”
“Oh come on now, dear, that’s just your mother talking.”
The white woman laughed, and pulled herself close to the man’s body. She kissed him on the cheek.
“I love you, Andrew. I’m pleased we came away. I’m so sorry I let you down. It won’t happen again.”
“Really?”
“Really. I don’t love Lawrence. How could I? Let’s make a fresh start, hmm?”
On the beach, the white man smiled. In the shadows, Little Bee cupped her hand over Kindness’s ear. She whispered: What is a cunt? Kindness looked back at her, and rolled her eyes. Right down there, girl, right close to your vagabond. Little Bee bit her hand so she wouldn’t giggle.
But then the sisters heard dogs. They could hear everything, because there was a cool morning breeze, a land breeze that carried all sounds. The dogs were still a long way off, but the sisters heard them barking. Kindness grabbed Little Bee’s arm. Down on the beach, the white woman looked up at the jungle.
“Oh listen, Andrew,” she said. “Dogs!”
“Probably the local lads are hunting. Must be plenty to catch in this jungle.”
“Still, I wouldn’t have