The Secret Life of Bees (25 page)

Chapter Eleven

It takes honeybee workers ten million foraging trips to gather enough nectar to make one pound of honey.

—Bees of the World

F
or May’s burial August shut down honey making, honey selling, even bee patrol. She and June took the meals that Rosaleen cooked to their rooms. I barely saw August except in the mornings when she crossed the yard headed toward the woods. She would wave at me, and if I ran over and asked where she was going, could I come, too, she would smile and say not today, that she was still doing her mourning. Sometimes she would stay out in the woods past lunch. I had to fight an impulse to say, But I need to talk to you. Life was so funny. I’d spent over a month here dillydallying around, refusing to tell August about my mother when I could have done it so easy, and now that I really needed to tell her, I couldn’t. You just don’t interrupt somebody’s mourning with your own problems. I helped Rosaleen some in the kitchen, but mostly I was free to lie around and write in my notebook. I wrote so many things from my heart that I used up all the pages. It surprised me no end how much I missed our ordinary, routine life—the simple act of pouring wax into a candle mold or repairing a broken hive box. Kneeling between August and June for evening prayers to Our Lady. I walked in the woods in the afternoon when I was sure August wasn’t out there. I would pick out a tree and say, If a bird lands in that tree before I count to ten, that is my mother sending her sign of love. When I got to seven, I would start counting real slow, dragging it out. I would get to fifty sometimes, and no bird. I studied my map of South Carolina at night when everyone was asleep, trying to figure where me and Rosaleen might head next. I had always wanted to see the rainbow-colored houses of Charleston, how they had real horse and buggies on the street, but as appealing as all that was, it nearly crushed me to think of leaving. And even if another cantaloupe truck miraculously appeared and drove us down there, Rosaleen and I would have to get jobs somewhere, rent a place to stay, and hope nobody asked any questions. Sometimes I didn’t even feel like getting out of bed. I took to wearing my days-of-the-week panties out of order. It could be Monday and I’d have on underwear saying Thursday. I just didn’t care. The only time I saw June was when Neil came over, which was every single day. She would come out wearing hoop earrings, and off they’d go, taking long rides in his car, which, she said, did her a world of good. The wind rearranged her thoughts, and the countryside made her see all the life still left out there waiting to be lived. Neil would get behind the wheel, and June would slide over on the front seat so she was practically under the wheel with him. Honestly, I worried for their safety. Zach showed up a few times just to visit and found me in the lawn chair with my legs tucked under me, reading back over my notebook. Sometimes when I saw him my stomach went through a series of sudden drops and lurches.

‘You are one-third friend, one-third brother, one-third bee partner, and one-third boyfriend,’ I told him. He explained to me I had one too many thirds in the equation, which, of course, I knew, as I am bad in math but not that bad. We stared at each other as I tried to figure out which third would get deleted. I said, ‘If I was a Negro girl—‘ He placed his fingers across my lips so I tasted his saltiness.

‘We can’t think of changing our skin,’ he said.

‘Change the world—that’s how we gotta think.’

All he could talk about was going to law school and busting ass. He didn’t say white ass, and I was thankful for that, but I believe that’s what he meant. There was a place inside him now that hadn’t been there before. Heated, charged, angry. Coming into his presence was like stepping up to a gas heater, to a row of blue fire burning in the dark, wet curve of his eyes. His conversations were all about the race riots in New Jersey, policemen taking their nightsticks to Negro boys who threw rocks, about Molotov cocktails, sit-ins, righteous causes, Malcolm X, and the Afro-American Unity group giving the Ku Klux Klan a taste of their own medicine. I wanted to say to Zach, Remember when we ate May’s Kool-Aid ice under the pine trees? Remember when you sang ‘Blueberry Hill’? Remember? After nonstop mourning all week, just when I thought we would go on forever in our private, grieving worlds and never again eat another meal together or work side by side in the honey house, I found Rosaleen in the kitchen laying the table for four, using the Sunday-china plates with pink flowers and lacy scallops around the edge. I broke out with happiness because life seemed headed back to normal. Rosaleen put a beeswax candle on the table, and I believe that was the first candlelit meal of my entire life. Here was the menu: smothered chicken, rice and gravy, butter beans, sliced tomatoes, biscuits, and candlelight. We had barely started in when Rosaleen said to June, ‘So are you gonna marry Neil or not?’

August and I both stopped chewing and sat up.

‘That’s for me to know and you to find out,’ June answered.

‘And how are we supposed to find out, if you won’t tell us?’ said Rosaleen. When we’d finished the food, August produced four bottles of ice-cold Coca-Cola from the refrigerator, along with four little packages of salted peanuts. We watched her pop the tops off the Cokes.

‘What the heck is this?’ said June.

‘It’s Lily’s and my favorite dessert,’ August told her, smiling over at me.

‘We like to pour our peanuts straight into the bottle, but you can eat yours separately if you prefer.’

‘I think I prefer mine separate,’ said June, rolling her eyes.

‘I wanted to make a cobbler,’ Rosaleen told June, ‘but August said it was gonna be Cokes and peanuts.’

She said ‘Cokes and peanuts’ the way you might say ‘snot and boogers.’

August laughed.

‘They don’t know a delicacy when they see one, do they, Lily?’

‘No, ma’am,’ I said, shaking the peanuts into my bottle, where they caused a little reaction of foam, then floated on the brown liquid. I drank and munched with the glory of salt and sweet in my mouth at the same time, all the while looking toward the window, at birds flying home to their nests and moonlight just starting to pour down on the midlands of South Carolina, this place where I was tucked away with three women whose faces shone with candle glow. When we had drained the Cokes, we went to the parlor to say our Hail Marys together for the first time since May had died. I knelt on the rug by June, while Rosaleen, as usual, helped herself to the rocker. August stood beside Our Lady and folded May’s suicide letter so it resembled a tiny paper airplane. She wedged it into a deep crevice that ran down the side of Our Lady’s neck. Then she patted black Mary’s shoulder and let out a long sigh that made the airless room feel alive again. And said, ‘Well, that’s that.’

I’d been staying up in May’s room with Rosaleen ever since May died, but when Rosaleen and I started to climb the stairs that night, on impulse I said, ‘You know what? I think I’ll move back into the honey house.’

I found out I’d missed having a room to myself. Rosaleen put her hands on her waist.

‘Good Lord, all that fuss you made about me moving out and leaving you, now here you are wanting to leave me.’

Actually, she didn’t care one bit that I wanted to move out; she just couldn’t pass up a chance to give me a hard time.

‘Come on, I’ll help you carry your stuff over there,’ she said.

‘You mean, now?’

‘No time like the present,’ she told me. I guess she’d missed having a room to herself, too. After Rosaleen left, I looked around my old room in the honey house—it was so quiet. All I could think was how this time tomorrow the truth would be out, how everything would change. I got my mother’s photograph and the black Mary picture from my bag, ready to show August. I slid them under my pillow, but when I turned out the light, fear filled up my hard, narrow bed. It told me all the ways life could go wrong. It had me in a girls’ prison camp in the Florida Everglades. Why the Everglades, I don’t know, except I’ve always thought that would be the worst place to be in prison. Think of all the alligators and snakes, not to mention heat worse than we had here, and people had been known to fry not just eggs but bacon and sausage on South Carolina sidewalks. I could not imagine breathing in Florida. I would be down there suffocating and never see August again. It was fear all night long. I would’ve given anything to be back in May’s room, listening to Rosaleen snore. The next morning I slept late, considering the on-and-off night I’d had, plus I’d been falling into lazy habits without the honey house to keep me industrious. The smell of fresh-baked cake wafted all the way from the pink house to my cot, curled into my nostrils, and woke me up. When I got to the kitchen, there were August, June, and Rosa- leen, dusted with flour, baking these small one-layer cakes the size of honey buns. They were singing while they worked, singing like the Supremes, like the Marvelettes, like the Crystals wiggling their butts to ‘Da Doo Ron Ron.’

‘What are y’all doing?’ I said, grinning from the doorway. They stopped singing and giggled, giving each other litd shoves and nudges.

‘Well, look who’s up,’ said Rosaleen. June had on lavender pedal pushers with daisy buttons up the sides, the likes of which I’d never seen before. She said, ‘We’r baking cakes for Mary Day. It’s about time you got over here and helped us. Didn’t August tell you this was Mary Day?’

I glanced at August.

‘No, ma’am, she didn’t.’

August, who was wearing one of May’s aprons, the one with ruffles trailing over the shoulders, wiped her hands across the front and said, ‘I guess I forgot to mention it. We’ve been cele- brating Mary Day around here every August for fifteen years. Come on and get your breakfast, and then you can help us. We’ve got so much to do I don’t know whether we’re gonna make it.’

I filled a bowl with Rice Krispies and milk, trying to think over the snap-crackle conversation it was having with itself. How was I supposed to have a life-altering talk with August with all this going on? ‘A thousand years ago women were doing this exact same thing,’ said August.

‘Baking cakes for Mary on her feast day.’

June looked at my blank face.

‘Today is the Feast of the As- sumption. August fifteenth. Don’t tell me you never heard that.’

Oh, sure, the Feast of the Assumption—Brother Gerald preached on that every other Sunday. Of course I’d never heard of it. I shook my head.

‘We didn’t really allow Mary at our church except at Christmas.’

August smiled and dunked a wooden drizzle into the vat of honey, which sat on the counter by the toaster oven. While she spun honey across the tops of a fresh pan of cakes, she explained to me in detail how the Assumption was nothing less than Mary rising up to heaven. Mary died and woke up, and the angels carried her up there in swirling clouds.

‘May is the one who started calling it Mary Day,’ said June.

‘It’s not just about the Assumption, though,’ August said, shoveling the cakes onto the wire racks.

‘It’s a special remembrance for our own Lady of Chains. We reenact her story. Plus we give thanks for the honey crop. The Daughters of Mary come. It’s our favorite two days of the year.’

‘You do this for two days?’

‘We start this evening and finish tomorrow afternoon,’ said August.

‘Hurry up with your cereal, because you’ve got to make streamers and garlands, hang the Christmas lights, put out the candleholders, wash the wagon, and get out the chains.’

I was thinking, Whoa, back up. Wash the wagon? Hang Christmas lights? Get out the chains? The chains? The knock on the back door came as I was putting my bowl in the sink.

‘If this isn’t the best-smelling house in Tiburon, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,’ said Neil, stepping inside.

‘Well, I guess you’re saved from that special relationship then,’ June said. She offered him a honey cake, but he shook his head, which was a dead giveaway right there that he had something on his mind. Neil did not refuse food. Ever. He stood in the middle of the floor, shuffling from one foot to the other.

‘What are you doing here?’ June asked. He cleared his throat, rubbed his sideburns.

‘I—I came over here hoping for a word with you.’

This sounded so stiff coming out of his mouth that June narrowed her eyes and studied him a second.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine.’

He put his hands in his pockets. Took them out.

‘I just want a word with you.’

She stood there waiting.

‘Well, I’m listening,’ she said.

‘I thought we could take a drive.’

She looked around the kitchen.

‘If you haven’t noticed, I’m up to my ears in work, Neil.’

‘I can see that, but—’

‘Look, just tell me what it is,’ June said, starting to get into one of her huffs.

‘What is so all-fired important?’ I glanced at August, who had her lips screwed over to the side, trying to look busy. Rosaleen, on the other hand, had stopped all semblance of work and looked from June to Neil. Back to June.

‘Hell,’ he said, ‘I came over here planning to ask you, for the hundredth time, to marry me.’

I dropped my spoon in the sink. August laid down the honey drizzle. June opened her mouth and closed it without anything coming out. Everyone just stood there. Come on. Don’t mess up your time to live. The house creaked, like old houses do. Neil glanced at the door. I felt my shirt dampen all under my arms. I had the sensation I used to get in fifth grade when the teacher would write some nonsense word on the blackboard, like ‘pnteahel,’ and we had two minutes to unscramble it and find the word ‘elephant’ before she dinged her bell. I used to break out in a sweat trying to beat the clock. I had that feeling now, like Neil was going to walk out the door before June could unscramble the answer in her heart. Rosaleen said, ‘Well, don’t just stand there with your mouth open, June. Say something.’

June stared at Neil, and I could see the struggle in her face. The surrender she had to make inside. Not just to Neil but to life. Finally she let out a long, sighing breath.