Chris Cleave - Little Bee

For Joseph

Britain is proud of its tradition of providinga safe haven for people fleeting [ sic ] persecution andconflict.

from Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey toCitizenship (UK Home Office, 2005)

MOST DAYS I WISH I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl. Everyone wouldbe pleased to see me coming. Maybe I would visit with you for the weekend andthen suddenly, because I am fickle like that, I would visit with the man fromthe corner shop insteadbut you would not be sad because you would be eating acinnamon bun, or drinking a cold Coca-Cola from the can, and you would neverthink of me again. We would be happy, like lovers who met on holiday and forgoteach others names.

Apound coin can go wherever it thinks it will be safest. It can cross desertsand oceans and leave the sound of gunfire and the bitter smell of burningthatch behind. When it feels warm and secure it will turn around and smile atyou, the way my big sister Nkiruka used to smile at the men in our village inthe short summer after she was a girl but before she was really a woman, andcertainly before the evening my mother took her to a quiet place for a serioustalk.

Ofcourse a pound coin can be serious too. It can disguise itself as power, orproperty, and there is nothing more serious when you are a girl who hasneither. You must try to catch the pound, and trap it in your pocket, so thatit cannot reach a safe country unless it takes you with it. But a pound has allthe tricks of a sorcerer. When pursued I have seen it shed its tail like alizard so that you are left holding only pence. And when you finally go toseize it, the British pound can perform the greatest magic of all, and this isto transform itself into not one, but two, identical green American dollarbills. Your fingers will close on empty air, I am telling you.

HowI would love to be a British pound. A pound is free to travel to safety, and weare free to watch it go. This is the human triumph. This is called, globalization. A girl like me gets stopped at immigration,but a pound can leap the turnstiles, and dodge the tackles of those big menwith their uniform caps, and jump straight into a waiting airport taxi. Where to, sir? Western Civilization, my good man, and makeit snappy.

Seehow nicely a British pound coin talks? It speaks with the voice of QueenElizabeth the Second of England. Her face is stamped upon it, and sometimeswhen I look very closely I can see her lips moving. I hold her up to my ear.What is she saying? Put me down this minute, young lady, orI shall call my guards.

Ifthe Queen spoke to you in such a voice, do you suppose it would be possible todisobey? I have read that the people around hereven kings and primeministersthey find their bodies responding to her orders before their brainscan even think why not. Let me tell you, it is not the crown and the scepterthat have this effect. Me, I could pin a tiara on my short fuzzy hair, and Icould hold up a scepter in one hand, like this, and police officers would stillwalk up to me in their big shoes and say, Love theensemble, madam, now lets have a quick look at your ID, shall we? No,it is not the Queens crown and scepter that rule in your land. It is hergrammar and her voice. That is why it is desirable to speak the way she does. Thatway you can say to police officers, in a voice as clear as the Cullinandiamond, My goodness, how dare you?

Iam only alive at all because I learned the Queens English. Maybeyou are thinking, that isnt so hard. After all, English is the officiallanguage of my country, Nigeria. Yes, but the trouble is that back home wespeak it so much better than you. To talk the Queens English, I had to forgetall the best tricks of my mother tongue. For example, the Queen could neversay, There was plenty wahala, that girl done use her bottompower to engage my number one son and anyone could see she would end in the badbush. Instead the Queen must say, My late daughter-in-law used her feminine charms to become engagedto my heir, and one might have foreseen that it wouldnt end well. It isall a little sad, dont you think? Learning the Queens English is likescrubbing off the bright red varnish from your toenails, the morning after adance. It takes a long time and there is always a little bit left at the end, astain of red along the growing edges to remind you of the good time you had. So,you can see that learning came slowly to me. On the other hand, I had plenty oftime. I learned your language in an immigration detention center, in Essex, inthe southeastern part of the United Kingdom. Two years, they locked me inthere. Time was all I had.

Butwhy did I go to all the trouble? It is because of what some of the older girlsexplained to me: to survive, you must look good or talk even better. The plainones and the silent ones, it seems their paperwork is never in order. You say, they get repatriated. We say, senthome early. Like your country is a childrens partysomething toowonderful to last forever. But the pretty ones and the talkative ones, we areallowed to stay. In this way your country becomes lively and more beautiful.

Iwill tell you what happened when they let me out of the immigration detentioncenter. The detention officer put a voucher in my hand, a transport voucher,and he said I could telephone for a cab. I said, Thank yousir, may God move with grace in your life and bring joy into your heart andprosperity upon your loved ones. The officer pointed his eyes at theceiling, like there was something very interesting up there, and he said, Jesus. Then he pointed his finger down the corridor and hesaid, There is the telephone.

So,I stood in the queue for the telephone. I was thinking , I went over the top with thanking that detentionofficer. The Queen would merely have said, Thank you, and left it like that. Actually, the Queen would have told the detentionofficer to call for the damn taxi himself, or she would have him shot and hishead separated from his body and displayed on the railings in front of the Towerof London. I was realizing, right there, that it was one thing to learn theQueens English from books and newspapers in my detention cell, and quiteanother thing to actually speak the language with the English. I was angry withmyself. I was thinking, You cannot afford to go around making mistakes like that, girl. Ifyou talk like a savage who learned her English on the boat, the men are goingto find you out and send you straight back home. Thats what I wasthinking.