Little Bee

by Chris Cleave

Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.

are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive. The next thing you know, something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile.

I realized that I was carrying two cargoes. Yes,

one of them was horror, but the other one was hope. I realized I had killed myself back to life.

This is the trouble with all happiness—all of it is built on top of something that men want.

I understood that it isn’t the dead we cry for. We cry for ourselves, and I didn’t deserve my own pity.

I could not stop talking because now I had started my story, it wanted to be finished. We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us.

I am telling you, trouble is like the ocean. It covers two thirds of the world.”

If your face is swollen from the severe beatings of life, smile and pretend to be a fat man. —Nigerian proverb