Little Bee: Chapter Two Summary & Analysis

Sarah recounts that from the spring of 2007 to the end of the summer that Little Bee lived with them, her son Charlie only takes his Batman costume off when he bathes and answers only to “Batman.” Four-year-old Batman spends his days fighting criminals in the house or in the yard. Sarah never tries to explain to Batman that his father, Andrew, died, because she doesn’t think it would fit with his notions fighting bad guys. She reckons that everyone is wearing their own costumes that summer and do not want to take them off; they are running “from reality” and “from cruelty.”

Five days after Little Bee calls Andrew to let him know she is coming, Andrew hangs himself. Little Bee arrives at Sarah’s house on the day of the funeral, two hours before the undertaker. When the undertaker arrives to take the body, Batman sees his sharp suit and figures he must be Bruce Wayne. Sarah, Batman, and Little Bee follow the undertaker’s vehicle and walk the short distance to the church, looking like an odd assortment. Little Bee, wearing Sarah’s black raincoat over her brightly colored, ratty detention center clothing, holds Batman’s hand while Sarah walks beside them in a sophisticated skirt, jacket, and gloves. Sarah feels faint as they walk, so Little Bee holds her by the elbow. Sarah thinks it odd that Little Bee should be the one supporting her in this moment.

The three of them sit in the front row of the church. Sarah feels overwhelmed by the sudden change in her life. Last week, she was a career woman and working mother; “Now I was sitting at my husband’s funeral, flanked by a superhero and a Nigerian refugee.” Batman asks where his father is, but Sarah does not know how she could possibly explain the confusing circumstances that led to Andrew’s death.

Andrew’s depression began in 2005, after they met Little Bee in Nigeria. Until now, the only reminder that Sarah had of that day was the missing middle finger of her left hand, taken off by a machete. It’s a minor nuisance, though it occasionally causes typos when Sarah is making last-minute additions to her magazine on publishing deadlines. Beyond the thousand subtle markers of depression, the only warning sign Sarah might have had that Andrew was about to kill himself was that his column for The Times that day was written in passive voice and held a veiled but “measured goodbye.” Sarah wishes she’d paid him more attention.

Sarah finds Andrew after he hangs up the phone on Little Bee, tears in his eyes. When she asks who the call was from, he doesn’t answer. Since it is early morning and Charlie is sleeping, Sarah leads him to the bedroom and they make love. They do this only as “a maintenance thing,” a household chore. Andrew moves in her like a worn-down machine, and Sarah knows he is suffering. But then Charlie walks in on them, reporting that he has pooped in his Batman costume. Sarah looks at him in the doorway and sees poop on the carpet, the doorframe, the wall, even Charlie’s face. Resentfully, Sarah gets out of bed to clean him up.

Five days later, the last time that Sarah sees Andrew alive, he watches her as she dresses for work. He opens his mouth to say something, but she is in a rush and leaves before he can. She rides public transport for 90 minutes to her magazine office in London. As she emerges from the metro and steps into her building—which has their name Nixie erected in tall neon letters—she feels excited about wrapping up their issue for June. Sarah recalls that before they’d met Little Bee, Andrew always had plenty to say. She also recalls memories of their honeymoon together and how she’d once loved him more than anything on earth.

Sarah walks through the Nixie lobby, which is pointedly unkempt, and meets her features editor, Clarissa. As Sarah and Clarissa debate about whether to run a feature piece about a refugee from Baghdad or a new type of orgasm, Sarah sees news of the war playing silently on the TV on the wall. Charlie and the war entered her life in the same month, and both of them received less and less attention the older they got. Through her office window, Sarah sees two police officers getting out of their car on the sidewalk below. Sarah wants to run the story about the woman in Baghdad, but Clarissa thinks they should run the orgasm piece, since it’s tough to sell “morality tales while the other majors are selling sex.”

Sarah’s receptionist calls and tells her that the policemen are there to speak with her. Sarah returns to the lobby to meet with them. They are very serious, and ask if they can speak privately, so Sarah shows them to a conference room. She does not regard them seriously. Her phone signals a text message and she reaches for it. When one of them stares at her missing finger, Sarah assures them that it’s no big deal, though sometimes she dreams that she has her finger back. She misses it, in an odd way. The policemen tell her that Andrew was found dead at their home this morning. Sarah looks at the text message, which is from Andrew: “I’m sorry.”

Sarah does not know how to react to the information and falls into a long “silence” that lasts while she speaks to the police, when she picks up Charlie from nursery school, when she calls her parents, and all the way to the church and the funeral. She cannot comprehend that Andrew, who’d once taken up so much of her world, is dead. Charlie asks again where his father is, just like he has so many times a day every day since Andrew died. Sarah tells him he is in heaven, and describes a little bit of what heaven might be like for him.

The funeral proceeds outside to the gravesite, where undertakers lower the coffin into the ground. Charlie asks where heaven is, and whether his father will ever come back, and why that box is being put in the ground. When Charlie realizes that Andrew is in the box, he panics and jumps down into the grave, landing on the coffin, yelling frantically for his father and trying to pry the lid off. Charlie attacks the coffin lid with a fury and an initial belief that Batman cannot be bested. However, as the onlookers panic, Charlie’s faith begins to falter and his movements look defeated. Sarah regards that look of defeat as the moment when her “heart irreparably broke.”

Sarah tries to climb down into the grave with Charlie, but funeral-goers hold her back. The attendees crowd around the edge of the hole, looking as if they will do something but failing to. Little Bee climbs in herself and hoists Charlie up to waiting hands. After she climbs back out, she holds Charlie in a tight hug while he shrieks and protests as the funeral-goers take turns tossing a handful of earth down into the grave. Sarah cannot bring herself to throw any in. As the attendees file off, Sarah—holding an exhausted and limp Batman—and Little Bee remain by the grave site, staring at each other. Sarah thanks Little Bee for acting when nobody else did. They try to smile at each other.