Bee Season (15 page)

“I’m 82. Last year, I was 132. It’s interesting, because 8 minus 2 equals 6 and the digits comprising 132, multiplied, also equal 6.”

“We think it’s good luck,” says the mother. She is wearing a grinning bee lapel pin.

Eliza opens her welcome packet. “I’m 59,” she says.

“Oh, it’s very lucky to have a two-digit number,” says the mother. “The finalists are usually two digits.”

“Aren’t there only 151 contestants?” Saul asks. “There will be more two-digit numbers than anything else.”

“Exactly!” says the mother.

Elly is very impressed by the complimentary fruit basket containing oranges wrapped in red cellophane and a preprinted greeting with her name handwritten in the blank between
Welcome
and
!
The bathroom has a towel warmer and a shower head with adjustable settings. The fresh paper sash across the toilet seat, announcing sanitization, reminds Eliza of her mother.

Her bed is the size of her parents’ and is firmer than her bed at home. She resists the urge to jump on the mattress, instead sitting on its edge with her best grown-up posture. She looks at herself in the mirror over the bureau, behind the drawers of which she finds nothing. She decides she definitely looks older than fifth grade. Her face could maybe pass for eighth now that she’s a national spelling contestant with her own room in a hotel. If only she were a little taller.

Saul has come in from the adjoining bedroom. Though the rooms are identical, Eliza was pleased when Saul allowed her to choose the room with the bad print of a sailboat rather than the bad print of a girl in a long white dress.

“How does it feel to be in a grand hotel?”

Eliza raises her chin in what she thinks is a dignified manner, suppresses her giggle. “It feels very nice,” she says in her most grown-up voice, imagining a closet full of evening gowns and shoes with narrow straps that circle her ankles.

Saul sits on the bed and hands Eliza a map of D.C. “Look at this.”

Eliza unfolds the map until it covers her lap and drapes her legs. She’s not sure what she’s supposed to look for. Then she starts reading the street names.

“Pretty neat, huh?” Saul is wearing Eliza’s favorite grin, the one that makes him look like a kid instead of a grownup.

“Are they all here?” She traces her finger along the lines of the streets, trying to get a sense of them through her skin.

Saul places his arm around his daughter’s shoulders. “Most of them. You’ve got to admit it’s a pretty perfect place to have a spelling bee.”

Eliza looks at the city laid out before her. C Street. K Street. U Street. Practically every letter of the alphabet is represented. From the shape of each on the map, its straightness or curve, Eliza tries to see a little of what each letter has revealed to her — its consonantness or vowelness, its sturdiness or unpredictability. The city is a reflection of her own body and the words contained within it. She lets out a breath she had not known she was holding. She’s got the map on her lap, her father by her side, and her mother’s green-buttoned shirt. She’s not afraid of anything.

The first night of Saul’s absence, Miriam marches into their bedroom at 3 A.M. without avoiding the squeaky sections of floor, turns on the light, and closes the door behind her with an audible click. She is tipsy with the freedom of not having to tiptoe, the cause of such time-honored considerations hundreds of miles away. She hums as she brushes her teeth, leaving the door between the master bath and bedroom ajar. When she is done, she throws herself onto the bed so hard the headboard knocks against the wall. She cannot remember the last time she went to bed naked. She stretches her arms and legs until she is a giant X obliterating his side and hers, marking the spot as her own.

When Miriam awakens, she forgets at first the freedom of the night before, sits up carefully to avoid setting off the box springs. Looking to her left and seeing the smooth expanse of sheet where Saul isn’t, she remembers. She feels like her insides have been recalibrated. Her heart beats a little looser. Her lungs stretch to take in more air. Saul’s absence has served as a trigger for something growing inside her, waiting for the right moment to make itself known.

She almost doesn’t put on her work clothes, overcomes the urge to slip into pants instead of a skirt.
If I wore pants all the time, I wouldn’t have to shave.
She is surprised by the thought. Miriam has always resisted Saul’s attempts to persuade her to be “natural.” The hair on her legs and under her arms is particularly thick and dark and has, from its first appearance when she was twelve, made her feel unclean. She feels the same squeamishness toward the sparse dark hairs around her nipples. She is unsure whether they grew in during her first pregnancy or if she merely noticed them then. She did not even attempt to put Aaron to her breast until she had plucked them, her natural disinclination toward breast feeding magnified into revulsion by the image of a hairy breast giving suck to a child.

But this feeling born of a night’s solitude has made the need to shave less urgent.
Forget it,
says her looser heart.
You’ve got more important things to do.
Miriam strokes the very beginnings of black stubble along her shins, taking pride in her body’s persistence. By silently vowing to free herself from the bonds of Lady Bic, she feels she is proving her loyalty to a higher cause, her mission demanding the rejection of such petty bodily concerns in favor of a larger goal.
Tik-kun O-lam, Tik-kun O-lam,
beats her heart’s steady rhythm.

Still naked, Miriam opens the blinds, allowing the early morning sun to warm her skin. She wants to feel this day on her body, wants every part of her to feel this new phase of her lifelong mission. She remembers a girl who held a pink rubber ball in her hand. She remembers a perfectly thrown stone. She is ready to heed their new call.

The four days preceding the competition itself are packed with edifying tours of the Smithsonian, the White House, and the Library of Congress, followed by carefully engineered ice cream socials, barbecues, and beach parties at which getting-to-know-you games are played. Eliza, along with her fellow contestants, wears her name tag at all times and is paired with a different speller at each planned event, an accelerated summer camp experience in which she is encouraged to forget that in a few days’ time she will be pitted against her new friends until only one is left standing.

In the evenings she and Saul study. Saul has brought the three-volume dictionary, packing it in his carry-on to guard against lost luggage. Eliza doesn’t like the sense of urgency their sessions have gained. At home, Saul’s absorption in each phase of their studying erased all sense of an outside world or an end goal. Now Eliza feels her father is forever looking past her in anticipation of something bigger. Eliza cannot help but remember she is here to mount a stage with over one hundred other children, a roomful of strangers counting on her to make a mistake.

Saul is torn. Part of him thinks he should continue as if word lists and spelling bees are all that matter. There will be plenty of time after the nationals to reveal his true intent. At this point, new techniques and ideas might only distract, possibly causing more harm than good. He cannot risk deterring Elly from what he knows to be her true calling.

On the other hand, what better time than now to provide her with new tools? More than ever, Saul feels she is ready to receive what he has to give. The nationals present the perfect opportunity to demonstrate her incredible potential.

Eliza stands at one end of her hotel room, Saul at the other, the TV volume turned up. Both bedside lamps have been directed toward Eliza’s face to simulate the lights of television cameras.

“Number 59, your word is
GEGENSCHEIN
,” Saul says in the most officious voice he can muster.

The television is tuned to “That’s Incredible.” Cathy Lee Crosby is interviewing a man who has just eaten a chain saw.

“Would you pronounce it again?”

“Gay-gun-shine.”

“What’s its derivation?”

“It comes from the German.”

“Can I have a definition?”

“It’s a faint, glowing spot in the sky, exactly opposite the position of the sun.”

Eliza nods, begins to chew her lip.

“Elly?”

Eliza looks up. “I thought you said you weren’t going to say anything this time. You’re being the judge.”

“I know, I know, just this once. Tell me what you’re doing.”

“I’m trying to figure out the word.”

Elly isn’t happy with the TV, isn’t happy that she isn’t sure how to spell this one. She doesn’t know what her father wants, only that she isn’t giving it to him. There’s a movie she wanted to watch on
HBO
, they don’t have pay stations at home, but Saul wouldn’t let her, insisted there’d be plenty of time for movies after the bee.

“How are you trying to figure it out?”

“What do you mean, how? I’m thinking! Okay? I’m trying to think.”

Laughter and applause from the television. It’s been like this every night. A look comes into Saul’s eyes when they finish dinner and he stops paying attention to anything she says until she suggests they start studying. She’s the one who has to suggest it. There are other kids who don’t have to study at all. One girl’s father even took away her word sheets, told her it was more important that she enjoy herself.

Saul turns the volume on the set way down.

“Don’t,” he says.

Eliza has stopped looking at him. “Don’t what?”

Saul smiles his mysterious smile, the one Eliza is growing to hate. “Don’t think,” he says.

Eliza blinks back tears and bites the inside of her cheek. “I don’t know what you mean.” She wonders if Saul is ever like this with Aaron, if maybe her brother secretly treasures his newfound freedom.

Saul crosses the room, squatting so that he and Eliza are at eye level, and places his hands on his daughter’s shoulders.

“You
do
know,” he says. “You’re stuck on this one, aren’t you?”

Eliza nods, frustration written in the lines of her face.

Saul’s voice is calm. The time has come.

“Thinking is good to try at first, and it will work with a lot of words, but you’re going to get words like this one where thinking doesn’t cut it. This is a tough word, Elly. It makes sounds that could be spelled a lot of ways.”

Elly nods again, has no idea where Saul is trying to lead her.

“You might not know this particular word, Elly, but you know all the letters in it. You know them.”

“So?” Eliza can hear laughter in the hallway. She wishes herself to the source of the sound, to anywhere but this hotel room.

“So?” Saul replies, a huge grin on his face. “So let the letters do the work for you!”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Eliza says, voice shaky. For the first time, her father’s face looks ugly, like something she would like to wipe clean.

Saul sits Eliza on the bed. “Elly, honey, I know it’s getting late and you’re probably tired, but just listen to what I’m saying and then we’ll stop for the night, okay? I’m going to suggest something new, something we’ve never done before. You’ve done a super job studying the words and their derivations. I’m amazed by how much you’ve been able to learn. But time has been short, Elly, and it’s been impossible for us to study everything we would have liked. Because of that, you’re going to come across words for which all you’ve learned about suffixes and prefixes and etymologies will be useless. And when that happens, I want you to try something special. I want you to try opening yourself up to the letters. The letters can lead you to the word if you let them. They have a power all their own. Take
gegenschein.
What letter does it start with?”

“G.” She hates that the more frustrated she gets, the calmer he becomes, hates that when she wants to shake things up he talks like everything in the world is in its place.

“Right. Start with G. I’m going to turn the television back up, which we are going to pretend is the sound of the audience, and which you need to try to block out. I want you to go back to the other side of the room, and I’m going to be the judge again. I want you to open yourself up to G, Elly. Let G tell you what comes next. And then, when it tells you, let the next letter show you what comes after that.”

Elly knows that if she doesn’t at least pretend, her father is going to keep her at this no matter how late it gets. She walks back to her spot in the room and closes her eyes.

“Gegenschein,” Saul intones from the other end of the room.

In her head, Elly is standing alone on the Independence Ballroom stage, chewing three pieces of Bubble Yum at once. She keeps swallowing, but nothing happens.

“Gay – gun – shine,” Eliza says. “G …” She pictures a G with narrow eyes and an unfriendly mouth.
G for the gerbil in second grade that ate its babies.
“… E …”
I before E except after C or when pronounced “ay” as in neighbor and weigh.
“… I …”
This part is easy.
“…
G-E-N-S-H-I-N-E
. Gay-gun-shine.”

Saul gently taps a pencil against a hotel drinking glass. “That is incorrect. The correct spelling is
G-E-G-E-N-S-C-H-E-I-N
. Gegenschein.”

Eliza wants to jump at him, claw him like a cat whose tail has been pulled once too often. How can he keep smiling when his stupid idea didn’t even work?

“Can I get ready for bed now?”

“You’re pretty tired, huh?”

But Eliza is already in the bathroom, the door closed behind her. Saul talks over the sound of running water.

“It was a hard word, Elly-belly. You came close. It must have been tough to concentrate when you’re so tired. Remember what I said, though. If the word’s a stumper, don’t try to think it through. Let the letters show you where to go. If you really concentrate, if you turn yourself over to the letters, they won’t let you down.”

The water is turned off. Eliza’s voice is barely audible through the door. “But they just did let me down, Dad. The letters didn’t help at all.”

“Elly, the letters were there. It’s just that you weren’t. You weren’t
really
concentrating. And that’s okay. It’s very, very hard to concentrate fully. All I’m asking is that you try. You didn’t really try tonight. But I want you to really try tomorrow. Will you do that for me?”