Little Bee

Chapter 8 begins from Sarah’s perspective. She retells the experience of riding her bicycle in Surrey, as a child, on the day “when England became [her]” (198). From this memory, she shifts into retelling the day after Lawrence’s stay from her own perspective.

That morning is the first that she takes “only one cup down from the cupboard instead of [her] instinctual two” (199). She decides that she feels strong enough to visit the magazine office. On the train, she musters the courage to “step off this carriage and back into [her] grown-up job” (200). Only upon arrival at the office does she realize that she is still in jeans, not the fashionable workwear expected of her.

Clarissa, who has taken her role, is taken aback by Sarah’s desire “to get straight back to work” (201). As she listens to Clarissa tell her about plans for the July issue of the magazine, Sarah closes her eyes: “It all seem[s] suddenly insane” (201). She shares that feeling with Clarissa, who is taken aback by it, along with Sarah’s confession that Lawrence stayed at her house the night before.

Sarah pitches a story about refugees. She insists that it can be done in the magazine’s familiar tone, but that “it’s an issue that isn’t going to go away” (203). Clarissa pushes back gently, explaining that Sarah is “bereaved” and is “not thinking straight” (204). But when Sarah confronts her for wanting her job, Clarissa does not deny it. Sarah confesses that she doesn’t “see the point” (204) in her work there anymore. She was once so inspired to bring readers in “with sex and then immerse them in the issues” (204). Clarissa reassures her, before she leaves the office, that “no one dies when we write about fashion” (205).

When she returns back home, Sarah asks Lawrence about the “tension” (205) she feels between him and Little Bee. He tries to turn the conversation back to Sarah, who also seems tense. She shares her concerns about the magazine with him, but he counters with the thought that readers “might not want to be reminded that everyone else’s lives are shit too” (207). Although Lawrence explains that they “see the world’s problems every day on television,” Sarah “can’t look at [Little Bee] without thinking how shallow [her] life is” (207).

Lawrence urges her to not “throw [her] own life away” (208) to care for Little Bee. Sarah sees the series of compromises and considerations she has to make as the sad business of growing up: “[Y]ou start off thinking you can kill all the baddies and save the world,” but then your grow up and realize “the world’s badness is inside you,” and then when you’re older “you start wondering whether that badness” is “really bad at all” (209). Lawrence says that this transition is “just developing as a person,” but Sarah wonders if “maybe this is a developing world” (209). 

The next day, Little Bee explains, her “story changed” (210). Sarah decides to take Charlie and Little Bee on “an adventure” (210) into the city with herself and Lawrence. The term adventure is different depending “on where you are starting from” (210). As children, she and her sister dreamed of machines and refrigerators, while little girls in Britain dreamed of the jungle.

Before they leave the house for London, Little Bee falls into an internal memory of when she was a little girl, sneaking out of her compound under the moonlight with her sister. They became lost in the woods, and they “did not feel like pretending [they] had a refrigerator or a washing machine” (212). They fell asleep and did not wake until dawn.

In the dawn light, Little Bee saw an abandoned jeep. Little Bee remembers how “the jungle and the jeep had grown together” (213). Inside of it, they found “the skeleton of a man” (213). Nkiruka was not yet awake, and Little Bee “did not understand why the jeep was there” (214). She “did not want her sister to see” (214) what was probably the remnants of the war 30 years before.

Sarah pulls her out of the memory and back into the house. Little Bee seemed, she said, “miles off” (215). They disregard the memory and take the train into London, Little Bee’s first time. The station is “very crowded with the ghosts [she] saw the first time” (215) in the city. Sarah and Charlie walk ahead, and Lawrence tries to make small talk. Little Bee, though, rebukes him, asking how he can “pretend everything is normal” (216) between them.

By the river, people are “not like the ghosts from the train station”—they are “enjoying themselves” (217). Little Bee is overcome when she sees a dark-skinned man and a white woman with their child, a boy, “whose skin was light brown […] the color of the man and the woman joined in happiness” (218). It was a story that she “would not even try to explain” (218) to the girls at home.

Little Bee starts to feel like part of the crowd, like “at last [she] could disappear into the human race” (219) like Yevette wanted to do. Her thoughts hold her back, reminding her that her “troubles traveled with” (219) her to England. Hearing mothers call out “strong names like Sophie and Joshua and Jack,” Little Bee decides to choose a new name again, so that she “will not even belong in Little Bee’s story anymore” (219). “To survive,” she knew, “you have to look good or talk good,” but if you want “to end your story well,” you must “talk yourself out of it” (220).

As she wanders through the crowded streets, Little Bee enjoys becoming part of the crowd. Eventually, she meets a boy who is also new to town. She introduces herself as London Sunshine, a name that makes him laugh. “In this moment,” she explains, she “very nearly named [herself] back to life” (222).

She looks back across the river and sees Sarah, Lawrence, and Charlie. Charlie looks “very small and sad” (222) as he shoots a weapon toward the mud. Little Bee leaves with the boy, because she does “not like to leave Charlie like that” (222) with Lawrence, whom she does not trust.

She rejoins the family and immediately attends to Charlie, urging him to take off his Batman costume in the heat. He is convinced that if he takes off the costume, his father will die. Little Bee must explain to the boy that his “daddy did not die because [he was] not there” (224). “Baddies” did “get” his father, but they were “baddies from the inside” (224).

Little Bee explains that she wishes she could take off her costume just as Charlie can. Charlie is fascinated by her admission that Little Bee is not her real name, and she tells him that she will share her real name if he will remove his costume.

Sarah, who was arguing with Lawrence at a distance, joins them. Lawrence did not want her to look through Andrew’s files any more. She had discovered, the night before, that Andrew had been researching the conflict in Nigeria: He “had a whole binder full of documents about asylum and detention” (226). In the binder, she had learned “how hellish” (226) the detention centers were. She suspects that “Andrew was planning a book” (227) and proposes taking on the project.

Lawrence did not like the idea, and Sarah thinks “he’s jealous of Andrew” (227). Little Bee begins to share her opinion of Lawrence, but Sarah stops her: she explains that she needs “to start sticking with [her] choices” (228).

When Sarah walks away for a phone call, Little Bee rejoins Lawrence and Charlie. She explains that she “did not talk [Sarah] out of the book but [she] did not talk her out of [Lawrence] either” (228). The two converse tensely until Sarah returns from a work call. Before she can share her news, she realizes that Charlie is missing.

Horror fills Little Bee so completely that she “could not even more” (230). As Sarah panics, Little Bee realizes “that the night horrors of all [their] worlds had found one another” (230). It was just like the jungle: she could not tell “whether the jungle grew out of the jeep or the jeep grew out of the jungle” (231).