Hour of the Bees (13 page)

It’s a Friday morning, more than halfway through my summer-vacation-turned-desert-hostage situation, and I’m alone in the kitchen. Mom and Dad have already stumbled outside to work. I search the cupboards for cold cereal, but all I find is bread and some lumpy gray hash.

Toast it is.

A month and a half has blurred past. Six weeks of packing boxes, detail-cleaning floorboards and heating vents, scrubbing walls.

Six weeks of keeping an eye on Serge and chasing after Lu. Mom and Dad don’t even ask me to babysit anymore. They toss my brother into my arms, the two of them already arguing about who forgot to get what at the hardware store or some other silly thing.

I don’t know if it’s the heat, the exhaustion from a month and a half of physical labor (for a house that isn’t even staying in our family), the constant threats of a Moody Alta storm or a Crazy Serge storm looming, or all of these things — but bickering seems to be my parents’ only form of communication lately. Not full-on fighting. It’s more like they’re buzzards pecking at each other in a squabble for some dead thing. And the dead thing is the ranch.

I guess it’s better that Lu is safely with me, out of their crossfire.

Two weeks left at the ranch.

We wake, we work, then we collapse one by one, like dominoes. Some nights the TV cooperates and we catch a movie that was actually made in this decade. Those nights almost feel like vacation.

Serge has Good Days, when he only forgets little things, like whether he already watered the sheep or not. He doesn’t yell. When he turns on the TV, he remembers which channels are his favorites. He eats Mom’s cooking without spilling a drop and says “thank you” in English. He tells us outlandish stories, like the time Inés swallowed Dad’s goldfish. On the Good Days, even Dad laughs at my grandpa’s stories.

On Good Days, Alta wears a smile to the dinner table, and she stays up late talking with me, like it’s a slumber party. Lu is a chubby little angel, going right to sleep without a fuss. Mom and Dad steal kisses when they pass, when they think no one’s watching. My friends text me the latest rumors about Manny Rodriguez, about seeing the new boy at the swimming pool, about how much fun it’s going to be in homeroom (we all have English together).

We have Bad Days, too.

On the Bad Days, Lu throws tantrums for dumb things, like if we’re out of orange juice. Dad sleeps on the futon in the living room, instead of in the bedroom with Mom. Alta slams doors, making the whole house shake. Serge gets so lost in his mind, I worry that he won’t make it out.

Luckily, he always reemerges. So far.

Even on Bad Days, I wonder what Dad sees about Serge that’s so awful. I do my own detective work, studying their threadbare conversations for a hint. But I’m missing something. I asked Alta; she didn’t know and didn’t care. I asked Mom again, and she told me to mind my own business. What happened to make Dad, Serge’s only child, refuse to speak to Serge for twelve years?

Bees follow me on all days, good and bad. They’re as reliable as the sunrise; if it’s been twenty-four hours since I’ve seen one, I know I’m due. But they only find me when I’m alone, which has made it impossible to convince anyone else that they’re real.

Dad: “You must be seeing some kind of striped fly; there are definitely no bees around here.”

Mom: “I don’t know what to say, honey — I don’t think Serge has any bug spray. Here, hold Lu while I get dressed, please?”

Alta: “Buzz off, Carol!”

The one person who might actually believe me is the one person I can’t tell. Rule number one this summer: don’t upset Serge. He made such a ruckus over bees that first day we were here, I don’t even dare mention the letter
B
to him.

I shoo a bee away from my toast and see Mom out the window, rebuilding a section of the fence. She smashes her thumb with the hammer, but just sucks on it and keeps working. In no time at all, she’s nailed half the fence together. I marvel at her power. Mom’s stronger than I ever knew. She’s a dragon in disguise.

I wonder if the ranch will bring out the dragon in me. Only two weeks left to find out.

I wash down my toast with milk and head to the porch. The temperature is ninety-seven degrees, according to the thermometer, and it’s still morning. We’ll be in triple digits by lunchtime. My tank top’s already plastered to my back with sweat.

I close my eyes, thinking of that cool green lake from Serge’s story. How delicious it would be to jump headfirst into chilly water and wash the sticky sweat away . . .

“Morning, sleepyhead.” Mom strolls to the sink and refills her water bottle.

“Want me to hold your nails for you?” I say.

“Actually, I’ve got something else I need you to do.” Mom sets the hammer down and calls down the hallway for Alta.

“Tell me if Grandpa starts walking in,” she says. “I don’t want him to hear.”

Outside, Dad and Serge are fifty feet apart, the pasture between them, but their silhouettes are similar — they both lean to their left sides, using their right wrists to wipe their foreheads. Serge’s back hunches over at a sharper angle than Dad’s and he’s thicker around the middle, but it’s like gazing into a crystal ball at Dad’s future old-man self.

Serge is cleaning sheep hooves, one leg at a time. Dad’s pulling dead, dry plants from the dirt. It’s obvious who’s working on projects for staying at the ranch and who is working to leave.

“Alta! Shake a leg, we’re waiting!” Mom rolls her eyes.

My sister finally comes into the kitchen, sparkling with baby oil, in her pink bikini.

Mom snorts. “Now that’s the perfect outfit for a sheep ranch.”

Alta shoots laser beams from her eyes. “I just need to lay out for ten minutes, before the rays get too hot.”

“Finish your chores first. And the laundry you were supposed to do yesterday,” Mom says, “then you can work on your tan. Come on, girls, I’ll show you what I need you to do today.” She waves for us to follow her down the hallway and barges into Serge’s room.

“Um, Dad said I’m not supposed to go in there,” I say from the hall. That room is haunted by Serge’s memories of Grandma Rosa. Maybe by Grandma Rosa herself. Alta rolls her eyes at my obnoxious display of respect and walks right in.

Mom sighs. “I hereby grant you permission to intrude. Now listen. I’m driving Serge to his doctor’s appointment. While we’re gone, I want both of you to pack up the closet.” She doesn’t waste any time with darkness; she rips the cardboard sheets from the windows. Bright white New Mexican sun fills the room, the first time it’s seen light in twelve years.

Alta sneers at the grimy room around her. “Ew.”

Mom ignores her and opens the dirty windows, and it’s like the room lets out a breath it’s been holding for more than a decade.

“Dad thinks it’ll upset your grandpa to see Grandma Rosa’s things,” she says. “So I’m going to take these things to the storage unit tomorrow before my shift. Get as much packed as you can while Serge is gone. Boxes are in the living room.” She wiggles the closet doors. “Open up,” she grunts, and tightens her grip.

A bee — of course a bee — finds me, buzzing in a halo around my head.
Bzzz . . .
I listen — that same collective droning, buzzing, humming I heard coming from the closet on my first night here . . . It’s muted, but impossible to miss.

Impossible.

Mom cocks her head. “Do you hear that?”

I freeze. The buzzing gets louder.

“Shoot,” she says. “Lu’s up early.” She bounds into the guest bedroom, and Alta seizes the chance to escape.

I grasp the closet doorknobs and pull, but they won’t open, as if a ghost is pulling from the other side.

Ghost bees.

The noise behind the door grows louder, and I have a sudden, irrational fear that maybe it isn’t an air force– worthy fleet of bees; maybe it’s just one giant bee with a stinger the size of a samurai sword. I blink the ridiculous image away.

I use all my weight to yank on the doors, and when they finally give, I stumble, nearly landing on my back with the force.

The great buzzing is now above me, and louder — much louder. It’s a swarm of bees, released from the closet into the bedroom, a gritty gold-and-black-striped cloud. I try to scream, but no sound comes out. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands — they bunch and spread out, bunch and spread out, swimming through the air like a school of fish.

And then they’re gone, out the open window and buzzing to freedom. I pant, steadying myself against the bedpost. I wait here, finding my breath, with no way to measure time. Has it been two minutes? Ten minutes? An hour?

Bees, trapped in Serge’s closet, after a century of drought . . . It’s weird enough to be one of Serge’s stories.

“Okay, okay!” comes my sister’s exasperated voice from the hallway. “I’m doing it now!”

Mom’s carping at her to get to work. Alta reenters the room, robe over her bikini, smelling like successfully burnt skin. Lu’s on her hip, munching a soggy waffle.

“Did you get boxes yet?” she asks, already bored.

“No,” I manage to get out, my heartbeat finally under control.

She huffs and trudges back down the hall, reappearing a minute later with some boxes. “Let’s get this over with,” she says.

I step hesitantly into the closet. There’s a strange scent: layers of wet earth and wood, clay baking in sunshine, new rain on green grass. Alta switches on a light, and even she can’t hide her amazement.

“Whoa,” we both whisper. Lu claps in approval.

The closet is a museum of color, a rainbow in the otherwise drab ranch house. Not only every color imaginable, but different fabrics, textures, feathers, jewels. Shelves and drawers, hangers and coat racks, all filled with clothing, hats, scarves, bags . . .

“What is Serge doing with all this stuff?” Alta says. She sets Lu on the carpet, and he finds an old pair of castanets to clatter together.

“It’s not his,” I realize. “These are — were — Rosa’s things.”

I shiver. Like the Rosa in Grandpa Serge’s story, Grandma Rosa must have traveled, too.

Alta nearly trips on a pair of red wooden Japanese sandals. “There’s something from everywhere in here.” She runs her fingers along a peacock-blue silk sari.

“Did she travel a lot? Do you remember?” I ask. Alta was four when Mom and Dad got married.

“I only met Grandma Rosa a few times, and she was sick. Always in bed.” My sister’s eyes stare far away. “Then . . . she died. I said good-bye before I ever really said hello.” I stay quiet. She never talks about this time of her life, when Mom married Dad and the families had to blend. But my sister shrugs back to normal and slips a flamenco dress over her head. The dress jingles; little bells are sewn into its layers of sherbet-colored ruffles.

“What do you think?” she says. “Prom worthy?”

I grin.

“Go on,” she says. “Try something on.”

For now, Alta isn’t a too-cool seventeen-year-old, and I’m not twelve. We’re both five, playing dress-up. I drape a shiny crimson matador cape around my shoulders.

Alta shrieks.

“What? What is it?”
More bees?

I track where she’s looking, my heart thumping at double time. An ostrich head peeks at us, stuffed and mounted on the closet wall, tangles of necklaces hanging from its skinny dead neck.

“Creepy!” Alta says.

“So, Grandma Rosa was a bird poacher?” I say.

Alta, miracle of miracles, is about to laugh at my joke, but her mouth opens into a glossy pink triangle. “Oh. Hi,” she says, looking over my shoulder.

Someone’s behind me. Serge?

It’s only Dad.

“What are you girls doing?” His eyes fly over Rosa’s things like he’s seeing fairies.

I pull off the matador cape and lift up Lu, using him as a shield for my guilt. “Mom told us to pack up the closet while Serge is gone.”

Dad gawps. “I haven’t seen this stuff in years.” He points at the bird’s head. “That’s an emu,” he says. “She got it in Australia. It used to scare me as a kid.”

“Australia?” Alta says. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”

“She and Serge sure got around,” I say.

Dad raises his eyebrows. “Not
Papá
. He always stayed here. His idea of traveling is walking to the ridge and back.”

The four of us stay in the closet for another hour, packing one item at a time. Well, we pack. Lu plays. Dad plays, too — he recounts where everything came from as simply as the alphabet. That mask is from South Africa. Those hats are from Morocco. This painting is from Colorado, when
Mamá
first saw snow. This seashell is from the Pacific Ocean —
Mamá
just loved the ocean.

Dad’s face is soft as he speaks, and Alta and I cling to every word. We set the things in the boxes as if we’re packing away vintage china: gingerly, carefully. These are as much Dad’s treasures as they were Rosa’s.

“You girls should pick something,” he says. “This is going into storage until — well, until further notice. So if something calls to you, take it.” He leaves the room, carrying boxes.

We glance back at the remaining clothes with new eyes. Permission to bring one of these exotic, exciting treasures home! What should I pick? A creamy robe from Korea with hand-stitched cherry blossoms on the sleeves? A ruby-encrusted lizard brooch? Red patent-leather dancing shoes from Madrid?