The Secret Life of Bees (19 page)

I took a breath. “Well, see, my aunt Bernie had to have an operation. It was female trouble. So Rosaleen over there said, ‘Why don't me and you stay with my friend August Boatwright in Tiburon till Aunt Bernie gets on her feet again?' It was no sense in us going up there while she was in the hospital.”

He was actually writing this down.
Why?
I wanted to yell at him,
This is not about me and Rosaleen and Aunt Bernie's operation. This is about May. She is dead, or haven't you noticed?

I should've been in my room right then crying my eyeballs out, and here I was having the stupidest conversation of my life.

“Didn't you have any white people back in Spartanburg you could stay with?”

Translation:
Anything would be better than you staying in a colored house.

“No, sir, not really. I didn't have that many friends. For some reason I didn't fit in that well with the crowd. I think it was because I made such good grades. One lady at church said I could stay there till Aunt Bernie got well, but then she got shingles, and there went that.”

Lord God, somebody stop me.

He looked at Rosaleen. “So how did you know August?”

I held my breath, aware that my rocking chair had come to a standstill.

“She's my husband's first cousin,” Rosaleen said. “Me and her kept up after my husband left me. August was the only one of his family who knew what a sorry jackass he was.” She cut her eyes at me as if to say,
See? You aren't the only one who can concoct lies at the drop of a hat.

He flipped his notebook shut and, crooking his finger at me, motioned me to follow him to the door. After he stepped outside, he said, “Take my advice and call your aunt and tell her to come on and get you, even if she isn't a hundred percent well. These are colored people here. You understand what I'm saying?”

I wrinkled up my forehead. “No, sir, I'm afraid I don't.”

“I'm just saying it's not natural, that you shouldn't be…well, lowering yourself.”

“Oh.”

“I'm gonna come back soon, and I better not find you still here. Okay?” He smiled and put his gigantic hand on my head like we were two white people with a secret understanding.

“Okay.”

I closed the door behind him. Whatever glue had kept me together throughout all that cracked then. I walked back into the parlor, already starting to sob. Rosaleen put her arm around me, and I saw tears coming down her face, too.

We walked up the stairs to the room she'd shared with May. Rosaleen pulled down the sheets on her bed. “Go on, get in,” she told me.

“But where will you sleep?”

“Right over here,” she answered, pulling back the covers on May's bed, the pink-and-brown afghan May had crocheted with popcorn stitches. Rosaleen climbed in and pushed her face into the creases of the pillow. I knew she was smelling for May's scent.

You'd think I would have dreamed about May, but when I fell asleep, it was Zach who came. I can't even tell you what was happening in the dream. I woke up, my breath panting a little, and I knew it had been about him. He seemed close and real, like I could sit up and touch my fingertips to his cheek. Then I remembered where he was, and an unbearable heaviness came over me. I pictured his cot with his shoes sitting under it, how he was probably lying awake this very moment watching the ceiling, listening to the other boys breathe.

Across the room a rustling noise startled me, and I had one of those strange moments where you don't know quite where you are. Only half awake, I'd thought I was in the honey house, but it came to me now that the sound was Rosaleen turning over in bed. And then, then I remembered May. I remembered her in the river.

I had to get up, slip into the bathroom, and throw water on my face. I was standing there with the night-light casting its small brightness when I looked down and saw the claw-footed tub wearing the red socks May had put on its porcelain feet. I smiled then; I couldn't help it. It was the side of May I never wanted to forget.

I closed my eyes, and all the best pictures of her came to me. I saw her corkscrew braids glistening in the sprinkler, her fingers arranging the graham-cracker crumbs, working so hard on behalf of a single roach's life. And that hat she wore the day she danced the conga line with the Daughters of Mary. Mostly, though, I saw the blaze of love and anguish that had come so often into her face.

In the end it had burned her up.

 

After the autopsy, after the police made her suicide official, after the funeral home had fixed May up as pretty as they could, she came home to the pink house. First thing Wednesday morning, August 5, a black hearse pulled up in the driveway, and four men in dark suits lifted out May's casket and brought it right into the parlor. When I asked August why May was coming through the front door in her coffin, she said, “We're going to sit with her till she's buried.”

I hadn't expected this, as all the people I knew in Sylvan had their dead loved ones go straight from the funeral home to the graveyard.

August said, “We sit with her so we can tell her good-bye. It's called a vigil. Sometimes people have a hard time letting death sink in, they can't say good-bye. A vigil helps us do that.”

If the dead person is right there
in
your living room, it would certainly make things sink in better. It was strange to think about a dead person in the house, but if it helped us say good-bye better, then okay, I could see the point of it.

“It helps May, too,” August said.

“Helps May?”

“You know we all have a spirit, Lily, and when we die, it goes back to God, but nobody really knows how long that takes. Maybe it takes a split second, and maybe it takes a week or two. Anyway, when we sit with May, we're saying, ‘It's okay, May, we know this is your home, but you can go now. It'll be all right.'”

August had them roll the coffin, which sat on its own table with wheels, in front of Our Lady of Chains and then open it up. After the funeral home men drove away, August and Rosaleen walked up to the coffin and stared down at May, but I hung back. I was walking around, inspecting myself in the various mirrors, when June came down with her cello and began to play. She played “Oh! Susanna,” which made all of us smile. There is nothing like a small joke at a vigil to help you relax. I walked up to the coffin and stood between August and Rosaleen.

It was the same old May, except her skin was pulled tight across her face bones. The lamplight spilling into the coffin gave her a kind of glow. They had her wearing a royal blue dress I had never seen, with pearl buttons and a boat-neck collar, and her blue hat. She looked like any second she would pop open her eyes and grin at us.

This was the woman who'd taught my mother everything there was to know about getting rid of roaches in a nice way. I counted on my fingers the days since May had told me about my mother staying here. Six. It seemed like six months. I still wanted so badly to tell August what I knew. I guess I could've told Rosaleen, but it was really August I wanted to tell. She was the only one who knew what any of it meant.

Standing at the coffin, looking up at August, I had a powerful urge to tell her right then. Just blurt it out.
I'm not Lily Williams, I'm Lily Owens, and it was
my mother
who stayed here. May told me.
And then it would all come out. Whatever terrible things might happen, would. When I peered up at her, though, she was brushing tears off her face, looking for a handkerchief in her pocket, and I knew it would be selfish to pour this into her cup when it was already to the brim with grief for May.

June played with her eyes closed, as if May's spirit getting into heaven depended solely on her. You have never heard such music, how it made us believe death was nothing but a doorway.

August and Rosaleen finally sat down, but once I was up at the coffin, I found I couldn't leave. May's arms were crossed over her chest, wings folded in on themselves, a pose I did not find flattering. I reached in and held her hand. It was waxy-cool, but I didn't care.
I hope you will be happier in heaven,
I told her.
I hope you will not need any kind of wall up there. And if you see Mary, Our Lady, tell her we know Jesus is the main one down here, but we're doing our best to keep her memory going.
For some reason I felt exactly like May's spirit was hovering in a corner of the ceiling hearing every word, even though I wasn't speaking out loud.

And I wish you would look up my mother,
I said.
Tell her you saw me, that I'm at least away from T. Ray for the time being. Say this to her: “Lily would appreciate a sign letting her know that you love her. It doesn't have to be anything big, but please send something.”

I let out a long breath, still holding her dead hand, thinking how big her fingers felt in mine.
So I guess this is good-bye,
I told her. A shudder went through me, a burning along my eyelashes. Tears fell off my cheeks and spotted her dress.

Before I left her, though, I rearranged her a little. I folded her hands together and tucked them under her chin like she was thinking seriously about the future.

 

At ten o'clock that morning, while June was playing more songs for May, and Rosaleen was poking around in the kitchen, I sat on the back-porch steps with my notebook, trying to write everything down, but really I was watching for August. She had gone out to the wailing wall. I pictured her out there working her pain into the spaces around the stones.

By the time I spotted her coming back, I'd stopped writing and was doodling in the margins. She paused halfway across the yard and stared toward the driveway, shielding her eyes from the sun. “Look who's here!” she yelled, breaking into a run.

I had never seen August run before, and I could not believe how quickly she crossed the grass with her loping strides, her long legs stretched out under her skirt. “It's Zach!” she shouted at me, and I dropped my notebook and flew down the steps.

I heard Rosaleen behind me in the kitchen shouting to June that Zach was here, heard June's music stop in the middle of a note. When I got to the driveway, he was climbing out of Clayton's car. August wrapped him up in her arms. Clayton stared at the ground and smiled.

When August turned Zach loose, I saw how much skinnier he looked. He stood there watching me. I couldn't read the expression on his face. I walked up to him, wishing I knew the right thing to say. A breeze tossed a piece of my hair across my face, and he reached out and brushed it away. Then he pulled me hard against his chest and held me for a few moments.

“Are you all right?” June said, rushing up and cupping his jaw in her hand. “We've been worried sick.”

“I'm fine
now
,” Zach said. But something I couldn't put my finger on had evaporated from his face.

Clayton said, “The girl who sells tickets at the theater—well, apparently she saw the whole thing. It took her long enough, but she finally told the police which one of the boys threw the bottle. So they dropped the charges against Zach.”

“Oh,
thank God
,” said August, and every one of us seemed to breathe out all at once.

“We just wanted to come by and say how sorry we are about May,” Clayton said. He embraced August, then June. When he turned to me, he placed his hands on my shoulders, not an embrace, but close. “Lily, how nice to see you again,” he said, then looked at Rosaleen, who was hanging back by the car. “You, too, Rosaleen.”

August took Rosaleen's hand and pulled her over, then went on holding it, the way she used to hold May's sometimes, and it struck me that she loved Rosaleen. That she would like to change Rosaleen's name to July and bring her into their sisterhood.

“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.