The Secret Life of Bees (24 page)

‘I couldn’t believe it when Mr. Forrest told me about May,’ said Zach. Walking back to the house so Clayton and Zach could take their turns beside the casket, I was thinking, I wish I’d rolled my hair. I wish I’d done it in one of those new, beehive hairdos. We all gathered around May. Clayton bowed his head, but Zach stared into her face. We stood there and stood there. Rosaleen made a little humming sound, I think out of awkwardness, but eventually she stopped. I looked over at Zach, and the tears were pouring down his cheeks.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘It was all my fault. If I’d turned in the one who threw the bottle, I wouldn’t have gotten arrested and none of this would’ve happened.’

I had thought maybe he would never find out it was his arrest that sent May to the river. But that had been too much to hope for.

‘Who told you?’ I said. He waved his hand like it didn’t matter.

‘My mother heard it from Otis. She didn’t want to tell me, but she knew I’d hear it from somewhere, sooner or later.’

He wiped his face.

‘I just wish I’d—‘ August reached over and touched Zach’s arm. She said, ‘Well, now, I guess I could say if I’d told May from the beginning about you getting arrested, instead of keeping it from her, none of this would’ve happened. Or if I’d stopped May from going out to the wall that night, none of this would’ve happened. What if I hadn’t waited so long before going out there and getting her—‘ She looked down at May’s body.

‘It was May who did it, Zach.’

I was afraid, though, the blame would find a way to stick to them. That’s how blame was.

‘I could use your help right now to drape the hives,’ August said to Zach as they started to leave.

‘You remember like we did when Esther died?’

Looking over at me, she said, ‘Esther was a Daughter of Mary who died last year.’

‘Sure, I can stay and help,’ said Zach.

‘You wanna come, Lily?’ August asked.

‘Yes, ma’am.’

Draping the hives—I had no idea what that was, but you couldn’t have paid me fifty dollars to miss it. After Clayton said good-bye, we fastened on our hats and veils and went out to the hives, bearing armloads of black crepe mate- rial cut in giant squares. August showed us how to drape a square over each hive box, securing it with a brick and making sure we left the bees’ entrance door open. I watched how August stood a moment before each hive with her fingers knitted together under her chin. Exactly what are we doing this for? I wanted to know, but it seemed like a holy ritual I shouldn’t interrupt. When we had all the hives covered, we stood under the pines and gazed at them, this little town of black buildings. A city of mourning. Even the humming turned gloomy under the black drapes, low and long like foghorns must sound going across the sea at night. August pulled off her hat and walked to the lawn chairs in the backyard with me and Zach tagging behind her. We sat with the sun behind us, staring out toward the wailing wall.

‘A long time ago beekeepers always covered their hives when someone in their family died,’ said August.

‘How come?’ I asked.

‘Covering the hives was supposed to keep the bees from leav- ing. You see, the last thing they wanted was their bees swarming off when a death took place. Having bees around was supposed to ensure that the dead person would live again.’

My eyes grew wide.

‘Really?’

‘Tell her about Aristaeus,’ Zach said.

‘Oh, yes, Aristaeus. Every beekeeper should know that story.’

She smiled at me in a way that made me feel I was about to get Part Two of the beekeeper’s induction, Part One being the sting.

‘Aristaeus was the first keeper of bees. One day all his bees died, punishment by the gods for something bad that Aristaeus had done. The gods told him to sacrifice a bull to show he was sorry, and then return to the carcass in nine days and look inside it. Well, Aristaeus did just what they said, and when he came back, he saw a swarm of bees fly out of the dead bull. His own bees, reborn. He took them home to his hives, and after that people believed that bees had power over death. The kings in Greece made their tombs in the shape of beehives for that very reason.’

Zach sat with his elbows on his knees staring at the circle of grass, still fat and emerald green from our dance in the sprinkler.

‘When a bee flies, a soul will rise,’ he said. I gave him a blank look.

‘It’s an old saying,’ August said.

‘It means a person’s soul will be reborn into the next life if bees are around.’

‘Is that in the Bible?’ I said. August laughed.

‘No, but back when the Christians hid from the Romans down in the catacombs, they used to scratch pictures of bees on the walls. To remind each other that when they died they’d be resurrected.’

I shoved my hands under my thighs and sat up, trying to picture catacombs, whatever they were.

‘Do you think putting black cloths over the hives will help May get to heaven?’ I asked.

‘Goodness no,’ August said.

‘Putting black cloths on the hives is for us. I do it to remind us that life gives way into death, and then death turns around and gives way into life.’

I leaned back in my chair, gazing at the sky, how endless it was, the way it fit down over the world like the lid of a hive. I wished more than anything we could bury May in a beehive tomb. That I could, myself, lie down in one and be reborn. When the Daughters of Mary showed up, they were loaded down with food. The last time I’d seen them, Queenie and her daughter, Violet, had on the smallest hats in the group, and this time they’d left them off completely. I think it was because Queenie hated to cover the whiteness of her hair, which she was proud to have, and Violet, who had to be forty at least, couldn’t bring herself to wear a hat if her mother wasn’t wearing one. If Queenie went into the kitchen and stuck her head in the oven, Violet would go stick hers in, too. Lunelle, Mabelee, Cressie, and Sugar-Girl each wore a black hat, not as spectacular as the previous ones, except for Lunelle’s, which had both a red veil and a red feather. They took off the hats and lined them up on the piano as soon as they came in, so that you wanted to say, What’s the use? They got under way slicing ham, laying out fried chicken, shaking paprika on the deviled eggs. We had green beans, turnips, macaroni and cheese, caramel cake—all kinds of funeral foods. We ate standing in the kitchen holding paper plates, saying how much May would have liked everything. When we were so full that what we needed was a nap, we went to the parlor and sat with May. The Daughters passed around a wooden bowl full of something they called manna.

A salted mixture of sunflower, sesame, pumpkin, and pomegranate seeds drizzled with honey and baked to perfection. They ate it by the handfuls, saying they wouldn’t dream of sitting with the dead without eating seeds. Seeds kept the living from despair, they explained. Mabelee said, ‘She looks so good—doesn’t she look good?’

Queenie snorted.

‘If she looks that good, maybe we ought to put her on display in the drive-by window at the funeral home.’

‘Oh, Queenie!’ cried Mabelee. Cressie noticed Rosaleen and me sitting there in the dark and said, ‘The funeral home in town has a drive-by window. It used to be a bank.’

‘Nowadays they put the open casket right up in the window where we used to drive through and get our checks cashed,’ said Queenie.

‘People can drive through and pay their respects without having to get out. They even send the guest book out in the drawer for you to sign.’

‘You ain’t serious,’ said Rosaleen.

‘Oh, yeah,’ Queenie said.

‘We’re serious.’

They might’ve been speaking the truth, but they didn’t look serious. They were falling on each other laughing, and there was May, dead. Lunelle said, ‘I drove in there one time to see Mrs. Lamar after she passed, since I used to work for her way back when. The woman who sat in the window beside her casket used to be the bank teller there, and when I drove off, she said, ‘You have a nice day now.’

‘I turned to August, who was wiping her eyes from tears of hilarity. I said, ‘You won’t let them put May in the bank window, will you?’

‘Honey, don’t worry about it,’ said Sugar-Girl.

‘The drive-by window is at the white people’s funeral home. They’re the only ones with enough money to fix up something that ridiculous.’

They all broke down again with hysterics, and I could not help laughing, too, partly with relief that people would not be joyriding through the funeral home to see May and partly because you could not help laughing at the sight of all the Daughters laughing. But I will tell you this secret thing, which not one of them saw, not even August, the thing that brought me the most cause for gladness. It was how Sugar-Girl said what she did, like I was truly one of them. Not one person in the room said, Sugar-Girl, really, talking about white people like that and we have a white person present. They didn’t even think of me being different. Up until then I’d thought that white people and colored people getting along was the big aim, but after that I decided everybody being colorless together was a better plan. I thought of that po- liceman, Eddie Hazelwurst, saying I’d lowered myself to be in this house of colored women, and for the very life of me I couldn’t understand how it had turned out this way, how colored women had become the lowest ones on the totem pole. You only had to look at them to see how special they were, like hidden royalty among us. Eddie Hazelwurst. What a shitbucket. I felt so warm inside toward them I thought to myself that if I should die, I would be glad to go on display in the bank window and give the Daughters of Mary a good laugh. On the second morning of the vigil, long before the Daughters arrived, even before June came downstairs, August found May’s suicide note caught beneath the roots of a live oak, not ten yards from the spot she’d died. The woods had buried it under fresh sprouted leaves, the kind that shoot up overnight. Rosaleen was making banana cream pie in honor of May, and I was sitting at the table working on my cereal and trying to find something decent on the transistor radio when August burst into the kitchen holding the note with two hands, like the words might fall off if she wasn’t real careful. She yelled up the stairs, ‘June, come down here. I found a note from May.’

August spread it out on the table and stood over it with her hands pressed together. I turned off the plastic radio and stared at the crinkle-stiff paper, how the words were faded from being out- side. June’s bare feet slapped the stairs, and she broke into the room.

‘Oh, God, August. What does it say?’

‘It’s so…May,’ August said, and she lifted up the note and read it to us.

Dear August and June,

I’m sorry to leave you like this. I hate you being sad, but think how happy I’ll be with April, Mama, Papa, and Big Mama. Picture us up there together, and that will help some. I’m tired of carrying around the weight of the world. I’m just going to lay it down now. It’s my time to die, and it’s your time to live. Don’t mess it up.

Love, May

August laid the note down and turned to June. She opened her arms wide, and June walked into them. They clung to each other—big sister to little sister, bosom to bosom, their chins wrapped around each other’s necks. They stayed that way long enough for me to wonder—should Rosaleen and I leave the room?—but finally they unwound themselves, and we all sat with the smell of banana cream pie. June said, ‘Do you think it was really her time to die?’

‘I don’t know,’ said August.

‘Maybe it was. But one thing May was right about is that it’s our time to live. It’s her dying wish that we do that, June, so we need to see to it. All right?’

‘What do you mean?’ said June. We watched August walk over to the window, put her hands on the countertop, and gaze out at the sky. It was aquamarine and shiny as taffeta. You had the feeling she was making a big decision. June pulled out a chair, sat down.

‘August, what?’

When August turned back, her jaw was set.

‘I’m going to say something to you, June.’

She walked over and stood in front of her.

‘You’ve been halfway living your life for too long. May was saying that when it’s time to die, go ahead and die, and when it’s time to live, live. Don’t sort-of-maybe live, but live like you’re going all out, like you’re not afraid.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ June said.

‘I’m saying marry Neil.’

‘What?’

‘Ever since Melvin Edwards backed out of your wedding all those years back, you’ve been afraid of love, refusing to take a chance. Like May said, it’s your time to live. Don’t mess it up.’

June’s mouth sat open in a wide circle, and not a word crossed her lips. Suddenly the air was coated with the smell of burning. Rosa- leen flung open the oven and yanked out the pie to find every last meringue tip scorched.

‘We’ll eat it like that,’ said August.

‘A little burn taste never hurt anybody.’

Every day for four days straight we kept the vigil. August had May’s note with her at all times, tucked in her pocket or slipped under her belt if she had on a no-pocket dress. I watched June, how she seemed quieter since August had lowered the boom on her about Neil. Not exactly sulking. Contemplating is more like it. I would catch her sitting beside the coffin leaning her forehead against it, and you could tell she was doing more than saying good-bye to May. She was trying to find her own answers to things. One afternoon August and Zach and I went out to the hives and took off the black cloths. August said we couldn’t leave them on too long, since the bees had memorized everything about their hive and a change like that could make them disoriented. They might not find their way home again, she said. Tell me about it, I thought. The Daughters of Mary showed up each day just before lunch and sat in the parlor with May through the afternoon, telling stories about her. We cried a good bit also, but I could tell we were starting to feel better about saying good-bye. I only hoped May was feeling all right about it, too. Neil stayed at the house nearly as much as the Daughters, and seemed downright confused by the way June stared into his face. She could barely play the cello, because it meant turning loose of his hand. To tell the truth, the rest of us spent nearly as much time watching June and Neil as we did seeing May into the next life. On the afternoon that the funeral home came to pick up May for the burial, bees buzzed around the front-window screens. As the coffin was loaded into the hearse, bee hum swelled and blended into the late-afternoon colors. Yellow-gold. Red. Tinges of brown. I could still hear them humming at the graveside, even though we were miles away in a colored cemetery with crumbled markers and weeds. The sound carried on the breezes while we huddled together and watched them lower May’s coffin into the ground. August passed around a paper bag full of manna, and we scooped up handfuls and threw the seeds into the hole with the coffin, and my ears were filled with nothing but bee hum. That night, in my bed in the honey house, when I closed my eyes, bee hum ran through my body. Ran through the whole earth. It was the oldest sound there was. Souls flying away.