Hour of the Bees (2 page)

“And Grandpa, too,” I whisper.

The name “Grandpa” tastes weird. It doesn’t fit. “Grandpa” is for someone who always keeps his cookie jar full, someone who gives bear hugs, someone who keeps a straight face while spinning a yarn at the dinner table.

I climb up the creaky porch stairs and bend over the railing to get a visual of Lu. He’s scooted his way over to the gravel driveway and is tossing pebbles at the dog. She’s being so patient with him, considering he’s disrupting her afternoon siesta.

I tighten my swinging black ponytail. I can already wring sweat from my hair, and we only just got here. I’m no stranger to the desert, but at home, in Albuquerque, I could hide from the heat in the pockets of shade, in frozen yogurt shops, on the cool, fresh-cut grass between houses.

Here, there’s nowhere to hide.

I peer around me. The ranch house is the tallest thing for miles, until the land rumples up into a ridge, a kind of mesa that never was — a wall of rock that makes the ranch seem like it’s in a bowl. No trees, though there’s a scabby black tree stump on the edge of the pasture, so there
was
a tree at some point. Whose bright idea was it to chop it down and get rid of the only shade for miles and miles? No sounds, except the
swish-swish
of Serge washing that blanket. Quiet and flat.

The desert seems alive and breathing, a huge, sandy monster that sucks moisture from bones and blows the dry, dry air up, where it rolls and churns and boils.

Another bee buzzes around my shoulder and lands on my earlobe.

“Go away!” I wiggle my body and swat at the bee. The dog lifts her head and sniffs in my direction. Finally the bee carries itself away, until its lace-thin wings are camouflaged against the beginnings of sunset.

“Are you dancing for rain,
chiquita
?” Serge is behind me, still washing that blanket.

“No, I don’t know any rain dances.” The dog rests her head back in the grass, and she dog-sighs. Lu throws another pebble at her and laughs.

“We need a rain dance,” Serge says. “My bones are so dry, they itch.”

“It’s almost the rainy season, isn’t it?” I say. We relearn about New Mexico’s desert water cycles every year in science. It’s mercilessly dry until July, then it rains in buckets through autumn — sometimes so much that the rivers flood. Monsoon season, we call it.

“No rainy season in this desert,” Serge says. “No rain for a hundred years.” He folds himself in half, spine curled, trying to pull the blanket out of the tub. But the striped maroon wool, heavy with water, is too much for him to lift with his shaking hands, which are frozen into claws. Useless hands. Old hands.

The Seville pamphlet warned that this can happen. Body parts shut down without notice.

“Here, let me help.” I unhook the blanket from his fingers and re-rinse it. To my relief, he lets me.

“Where are your boots,
chiquita
?” Serge says.

“It’s too hot for boots.” A bead of sweat rolls off my forehead, proving my point.

“Fiddle-faddle.” Serge clacks his own boots on the porch floorboards. They’re as antique and leathery as he is, real cowboy boots, embroidered with vines and fleurs-de-lis. They look like they were once black, under layers of dirt and sheep grime. “Everyone needs a pair of snake-stomping boots here.”

I dip the blanket in and out of the tub, relishing the chilly water. “Why?”

“Snakes are braver in the drought,” Serge says. “They didn’t use to be so bold.” He pantomimes crushing a snake beneath his heel. From the grass below, the dog softly growls.

“No rain for a hundred years,” Serge continues. “No rain makes the ground crackle, makes it harden. Makes it sharp. Like walking on a shattered stained-glass window.”

I glance down. Through my sandal straps, my feet are already coated in cinnamon-red dust.

“And no rain for a hundred years means no bees.”

“Bees?” I echo.

“
Sí
. No rain means no flowers. No flowers means no bees.”

“I saw a bee earlier,” I say. “Two of them, actually.”

“Here?” He frowns. “No, no bees in a drought.”

The heat and my grandpa’s circling words and sentences are making me dizzy. I dig my fingernails into the links of the wool, but the last flakes of soap refuse to wash away. “This wool is impossible!” I toss the blanket back into the water.

Below the porch, Lu laughs and babbles, “Impah! Impah!”

“Impossible, yes.” Serge plucks that word from the air like a fish from a river. “Bees, impossible. But it’s only impossible if you stop to think about it.”

He tries to stand, and his legs tremble like cold noodles. I rush to be his crutch but he barks, “I can do it.”

Your loved one with dementia may seem cross with you or snap at you when you’ve done nothing wrong
, the words from the Seville pamphlet recite in my mind. He yanks himself away and plops back down in his wicker chair. “If you see any more bees,
chiquita
, tell me. The bees will bring back the rain.”

“Don’t you mean the rain will bring back the bees?” I ask, hoping my correction won’t upset him.

But he shakes his head emphatically. “No. The bees will bring back the rain. But first we need the bees.”

This is one of the things that happens when you have dementia, the pamphlet warned — it’s called “word salad.” Serge will arrange words in a way that doesn’t make sense, like saying the
bees
will bring back the rain. I should stop pressing him, but I’m trying to understand.

“So it never rains here?” I say.

“No rain for a hundred years,” he responds.

“Then where does your water come from?” Please, please, tell me there’s still running water at the ranch. If this becomes a camping situation — brushing teeth with bottled water, sponge baths, no ice for drinks in this thick heat . . .

“The ranch has wells,” Serge says, “but we don’t waste water. Every drop counts. No rain for a hundred years.”

No wasting water. That explains the pasture. From the porch, I can see the creosote bush and yarrow that have crept through the grass, belly high to a horse at this point. Soon this will be all the sheep have to eat: scrubby, thorny, wild desert plants.

Well, since we’re not supposed to waste water . . . “The blanket needs to soak a little longer,” I say, and it sinks to the bottom of the tub. “Maybe overnight.”

“Yes, drought dries everything to bones,” Serge says, seeming not to hear me.

Dad says our brains are like a strand of Christmas lights, and Serge’s lights are shutting off, one by one. Dementia means Serge confuses names and faces. He forgets what day it is, what year it is, his memories a deck of cards that keeps shuffling and reshuffling. He loses things, he’ll put the milk back in the cupboard instead of the fridge, or he’ll forget to eat altogether.

When Serge fell last winter and almost broke a leg, a paramedic called Dad and said it was time. Time to move Serge off the ranch and into an assisted-living facility, before he really hurts himself.

I guzzle my Gatorade. One drop falls from the bottle and sizzles, evaporating as it hits the dirt. A few sheep wander into the yard from the pasture, bleating at me with bulging black eyes.

No rain for a hundred years . . . It sounds like something from a book, an evil curse from a grudge-holding fairy who wasn’t invited to a party. Except curses in fairy tales always come to an end, and here the sky is cloudless for miles. Forever. If this is drought, it’s miserable. Every inhale scratches my lungs.

Get used to it
, I tell myself.
There’s two long months of summer ahead
.

“Carolina,” Serge says.

“Carol,” I say.

“Carolina,” he says again, stretching out the
i
into a long
eee
sound. It’s exactly the kind of drama I remove from my name on purpose.

“I go by Carol,” I tell him.

“Raúl doesn’t call you Caro-leeen-a?”

“Not unless I’m in trouble.”

“Raúl.” He tut-tuts, like of all the stunts Dad’s pulled, this is unforgivable.

“Caro-leeen-a,” he says, “is a beautiful, strong, Spanish name. You should use it. Every day. For everything.”

As if Serge has any idea what it’s like to be a twelve-year-old girl. I roll my eyes. “I’ll go by Carolina the minute all my friends go by
their
Spanish names.”

My friends Gabby and Sofie are really Gabriela and Sofía, but we don’t call them that, not since Manuela Rodriguez,
the
Manuela Rodriguez, started going by Manny. And when Manny started straightening her hair with a flat iron, plucking her eyebrows, and sharpening her cheekbones with blush, the rest of us had to keep up.

This is how it is in sixth grade. Sink or swim, eat or be eaten. Keep up or be forgotten.

My gut lurches when I think of junior high, starting in just two months. It’s only going to get worse.

“Rosa’s sister was Carolina, you know.” Serge is so worked up, his oxygen tube squeaks with extra air. “Carolina was not ashamed of her heritage.”

“I never met Grandma’s sister,” I point out.
I never even met Grandma Rosa
, I want to add. I take a breath, but the air is so hot, it doesn’t even cool itself down inside my body. I feel like I’ve swallowed the sun.

“Carolina is your namesake.” Any smile in Serge’s eyes is gone. “Why do you spit on your roots,
chiquita
?”

His question rattles through me, but I don’t have a good answer.

I peek over the porch railing to check on Lu. The rocks he was playing with are abandoned, half buried in dirt. The dog is asleep.

Where’d he go?

“Lu?” I jump down the porch steps. “Lu, where are you?”

“Luis,” Serge corrects.
Why do you spit on your roots?
I think.

“Lu,” I say pointedly. “We call him Lu.”

“Luis,” Serge begins, “is a strong Spanish name . . .”

Conversational déjà vu. I run to the chicken coop, void of any chickens. Lu would think it’s funny to kick these old poo-smeared feathers into the air. But he’s not here.

My heart skips. If Lu wanders off the ranch, he’s buzzard food.

I run back to the house, sandals slapping the gravel driveway.

“Did you see where Lu went?” I call to Serge.

“Luis,” he corrects again, and so I ignore him.

“Lu!”
Don’t freak out
, I tell myself. I force my breaths to be metered and easy, and concentrate on filling my lungs to the brim. I scan the ranch for a sign, any sign, of my brother. There’s nothing.

“This would never happen back home,” I mumble. There are no cliffs at home, no dangerous ranch equipment, no troughs of water for him to drown in. No jackrabbits to give him rabies, no fire ants, no coyotes. No buzzards.

Tears sting my eyes. I didn’t even want to come here!

“No bees in the drought,” Serge says. He’s just background noise now. “The bees, the bees . . .” This chant drips out of his mouth like water from a leaky faucet.

I dart past Serge, nearly tripping over his oxygen tank, and cry “Mom!” through the front door until she and Dad come out.

“What is it? What happened?” Mom’s gaze lands on Serge, still safely parked in his wicker chair, and she sighs with relief. The dementia keeps my parents on edge: Serge will be like another toddler to babysit this summer.

“I can’t find Lu.” My spit tastes bitter in my mouth. “I promise, I was watching him. I just took my eyes off him for one second —”

Dad leaps from the porch steps like a mountain lion. “Lu!” His voice echoes off the ridge.

“Quiet,” Serge calls. “You’ll scare the bees.”

“We’ll find him.” Mom pats my back.

“He’s not in the coop, or the driveway, or the pasture,” I say. Mom checks those places anyway and searches each room in the house. When she walks through the pasture a third time, her panic level has risen from shaky to emergency.

“Did you check the barn?” she asks.

“What barn?”

Mom points to a weathered structure, leaning on the edge of the pasture — patchwork roof, crooked windows. Maybe it was a barn — about a million years ago. I jog to it and push the squeaky door open with my foot.

Goose bumps rise along my arms. It isn’t cold in the barn, of course, not when it’s a million blazing degrees outside, but my skin must know something I don’t.

“Lu?” I whisper. This barn makes me want to be quiet, like it’s a church. The boards are gray and splitting down the middle, and it smells as if a puddle of hundred-year-old rain has pooled in a corner, growing stale for a century. There are pyramids of dusty ranch equipment — garden tools, wheelbarrows, barrels for storing feed.

But no Lu.

When I turn to go, I spot something. Highlighted for a millisecond, in the stream of a sunray, is another bee. I blink, and the bee is gone.

Serge said there were no bees in a drought. Was that the dementia talking, or is he right? Are these miracle bees?

“Carol!” Mom’s shout pulls me out of my daze.

I back out of the barn slowly, almost reverently, then run to the house. “Did you find him?”

“The little stink’s under the porch.” Mom shrugs: crisis over. My heart stops twittering, and my hands calm their quaking.