The Secret Life of Bees (6 page)

Ninety miles after we'd climbed in his truck, the farmer pulled off the road beside a sign that read
TIBURON 3 MILES
. It pointed left, toward a road curving away into silvery darkness. Climbing out of the truck, Rosaleen asked if we could have one of his cantaloupes for our supper.

“Take yourself two,” he said.

We waited till his taillights turned to specks no bigger than lightning bugs before we spoke or even moved. I was trying not to think how sad and lost we really were. I was not so sure it was an improvement over living with T. Ray, or even life in prison. There wasn't a soul anywhere to help us. But still, I felt painfully alive, like every cell in my body had a little flame inside it, burning so brightly it hurt.

“At least we got a full moon,” I told Rosaleen.

We started walking. If you think the country is quiet, you've never lived in it. Tree frogs alone make you wish for earplugs.

We walked along, pretending it was a regular day. Rosaleen said it looked like that farmer who'd driven us here had had a good crop of cantaloupes. I said it was amazing the mosquitoes weren't out.

When we came to a bridge with water running beneath, we decided we would pick our way down to the creek bed and rest for the night. It was a different universe down there, the water shining with flecks of moving light and kudzu vines draped between the pine trees like giant hammocks. It reminded me of a Grimm Brothers forest, drawing up the nervous feelings I used to get when I stepped into the pages of fairy tales where unthinkable things were likely—you just never knew.

Rosaleen broke open the cantaloupes, pounding them against a creek stone. We ate them down to their skins, then scooped water into our hands and drank, not caring about algae or tadpoles or whether the cows used the creek for their toilet. Then we sat on the bank and looked at each other.

“I just wanna know, of all the places on this earth, why you picked Tiburon,” Rosaleen said. “I've never even heard of it.”

Even though it was dark, I pulled the black Mary picture out of my bag and handed it to her. “It belonged to my mother. On the back it says Tiburon, South Carolina.”

“Let me get this straight. You picked Tiburon 'cause your mother had a picture with that town written on the back—
that's it?
”

“Well, think about it,” I said. “She must have been there sometime in her life to have owned this picture. And if she was, a person might remember her, you never know.”

Rosaleen held it up to the moonlight to see it better. “Who's this supposed to be?”

“The Virgin Mary,” I said.

“Well, if you ain't noticed, she's colored,” said Rosaleen, and I could tell it was having an effect on her by the way she kept gazing at it with her mouth parted. I could read her thought:
If Jesus' mother is black, how come we only know about the white Mary?
This would be like women finding out Jesus had had a twin sister who'd gotten half God's genes but none of the glory.

She handed it back. “I guess I can go to my grave now, because I've seen it all.”

I pushed the picture down in my pocket. “You know what T. Ray said about my mother?” I asked, wanting finally to tell her what had happened. “He said she left me and him way before she died. That she'd just come back for her things the day the accident happened.”

I waited for Rosaleen to say how ridiculous that was, but she squinted straight ahead as if weighing the possibility.

“Well, it's not true,” I said, my voice rising like something had seized it from below and was shoving it up into my throat. “And if he thinks I'm going to believe that story, he has a hole in his so-called brain. He only made it up to punish me. I know he did.”

I could have added that mothers have instincts and hormones that prevent them leaving their babies, that even pigs and opossums didn't leave their offspring, but Rosaleen, having finally pondered the matter, said, “You're probably right. Knowing your daddy, he could do a thing like that.”

“And my mother could never do what he said she did,” I added.

“I didn't know your mama,” Rosaleen said. “But I used to see her from a distance sometimes when I came out of the orchard from picking. She'd be hanging clothes on the line or watering her plants, and you'd be right there beside her, playing. I only saw her one time when you weren't under her feet.”

I had no idea Rosaleen had ever seen my mother. I felt suddenly light-headed, not knowing if it was from hunger or tiredness or this surprising piece of news. “What was she doing that time you saw her alone?” I asked.

“She was out behind the tractor shed, sitting on the ground, staring off at nothing. When we walked by, she didn't even notice us. I remember thinking she looked a little sad.”

“Well, who wouldn't be sad living with T. Ray?” I said.

I saw the lightbulb snap on in Rosaleen's face then, the flash of recognition.

“Oh,” she said. “I get it. You ran off 'cause of what your daddy said about your mother. It didn't have nothing to do with me in jail. And here you got me worrying myself sick about you running away and getting in trouble over me, and you would've run off anyway. Well, ain't it nice of you to fill me in.”

She poked out her lip and looked up toward the road, making me wonder if she was about to walk back the way we came. “So what are you planning to do?” she said. “Go from town to town asking people about your mother? Is that your bright idea?”

“If I needed somebody to criticize me around the clock, I could've brought T. Ray along!” I shouted. “And for your information, I don't exactly have a plan.”

“Well, you sure had one back at the hospital, coming in there saying we're gonna do this and we're gonna do that, and I'm supposed to follow you like a pet dog. You act like you're my keeper. Like I'm some dumb nigger you gonna save.” Her eyes were hard and narrow.

I rose to my feet. “That's not fair!” Anger sucked the air from my lungs.

“You meant well enough, and I'm glad to be away from there, but did you think once to ask me?” she said.

“Well, you
are
dumb!” I yelled. “You have to be dumb to pour your snuff juice on those men's shoes like that. And then dumber not to say you're sorry, if saying it will save your life. They were gonna come back and kill you, or worse. I got you out of there, and this is how you thank me. Well, fine.”

I stripped off my Keds, grabbed my bag, and waded into the creek. The coldness cut sharp circles around my calves. I didn't want to be on the same planet with her, much less the same side of the creek.

“You find your own way from now on!” I yelled over my shoulder.

On the opposite side I plopped onto the mossy dirt. We stared across the water at each other. In the dark she looked like a boulder shaped by five hundred years of storms. I lay back and closed my eyes.

In my dream I was back on the peach farm, sitting out behind the tractor shed, and even though it was broad daylight, I could see a huge, round moon in the sky. It looked so perfect up there. I gazed at it awhile, then leaned against the shed and closed my eyes. Next I heard a sound like ice breaking, and, looking up, I saw the moon crack apart and start to fall. I had to run for my life.

I woke with my chest hurting. I searched for the moon and found it all in one piece, still spilling light over the creek. I looked across the water for Rosaleen. She was gone.

My heart did flip-flops.

Please, God. I didn't mean to treat her like a pet dog. I was trying to save her. That's all.

Fumbling to get my shoes on, I felt the same old grief I'd known in church every single Mother's Day.
Mother, forgive.

Rosaleen, where are you?
I gathered up my bag and ran along the creek toward the bridge, hardly aware I was crying. Tripping over a dead limb, I sprawled through the darkness and didn't bother to get up. I could picture Rosaleen miles from here, tearing down the highway, mumbling,
Shitbucket, damn fool girl.

Looking up, I noticed that the tree I'd fallen beneath was practically bald. Only little bits of green here and there, and lots of gray moss dangling to the ground. Even in the dark I could see that it was dying, and doing it alone in the middle of all these unconcerned pines. That was the absolute way of things. Loss takes up inside of everything sooner or later and eats right through it.

Humming drifted out of the night. It wasn't a gospel tune exactly, but it carried all the personality of one. I followed the sound and found Rosaleen in the middle of the creek, not a stitch of clothes on her body. Water beaded across her shoulders, shining like drops of milk, and her breasts swayed in the currents. It was the kind of vision you never really get over. I couldn't help it, I wanted to go and lick the milk beads from her shoulders.

I opened my mouth. I wanted something. Something, I didn't know what.
Mother, forgive.
That's all I could feel. That old longing spread under me like a great lap, holding me tight.

Off came my shoes, my shorts, my top. I hesitated with my underpants, then worked them off, too.

The water felt like a glacier melting against my legs. I must have gasped at the iciness, because Rosaleen looked up and seeing me come naked through the water, started to laugh. “Look at you strutting out here. Jiggle-tit and all.”

I eased down beside her, suspending my breath at the water's sting. “I'm sorry,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “Me, too.” She reached over and patted the roundness of my knee like it was biscuit dough.

Thanks to the moon, I could see clear down to the creek bottom, all the way to a carpet of pebbles. I picked one up—reddish, round, a smooth water heart. I popped it into my mouth, sucking for whatever marrow was inside it.

Leaning back on my elbows, I slid down till the water sealed over my head. I held my breath and listened to the scratch of river against my ears, sinking as far as I could into that shimmering, dark world. But I was thinking about a suitcase on the floor, about a face I could never quite see, about the sweet smell of cold cream.

N
ext to Shakespeare I love Thoreau best. Mrs. Henry made us read portions of
Walden Pond,
and afterward I'd had fantasies of going to a private garden where T. Ray would never find me. I started appreciating Mother Nature, what she'd done with the world. In my mind she looked like Eleanor Roosevelt.

I thought about her the next morning when I woke beside the creek in a bed of kudzu vines. A barge of mist floated along the water, and dragonflies, iridescent blue ones, darted back and forth like they were stitching up the air. It was such a pretty sight for a second I forgot the heavy feeling I'd carried since T. Ray had told me about my mother. Instead I was at Walden Pond.
Day one of my new life,
I said to myself.
That's what this is.

Rosaleen slept with her mouth open and a long piece of drool hanging from her bottom lip. I could tell by the way her eyes rolled under her lids she was watching the silver screen where dreams come and go. Her swollen face looked better, but in the bright of day I noticed purple bruises on her arms and legs as well. Neither one of us had a watch on, but going by the sun we had slept more than half the morning away.

I hated to wake Rosaleen, so I pulled the wooden picture of Mary out of my bag and propped it against a tree trunk in order to study it properly. A ladybug had crawled up and sat on the Holy Mother's cheek, making the most perfect beauty mark on her. I wondered if Mary had been an outdoor type who preferred trees and insects over the churchy halo she had on.

I lay back and tried to invent a story about why my mother had owned a black Mary picture. I drew a big blank, probably due to my ignorance about Mary, who never got much attention at our church. According to Brother Gerald, hell was nothing but a bonfire for Catholics. We didn't have any in Sylvan—only Baptists and Methodists—but we got instructions in case we met them in our travels. We were to offer them the five-part plan of salvation, which they could accept or not. The church gave us a plastic glove with each step written on a different finger. You started with the pinkie and worked over to the thumb. Some ladies carried their salvation gloves in their purse in case they ran into a Catholic unexpectedly.

The only Mary story we talked about was the wedding story—the time she persuaded her son, practically against his will, to manufacture wine in the kitchen out of plain water. This had been a shock to me, since our church didn't believe in wine or, for that matter, in women having a lot of say about things. All I could really figure was my mother had been mixed up with the Catholics somehow, and—I have to say—this secretly thrilled me.

I stuffed the picture into my pocket while Rosaleen slept on, blowing puffs of air that vibrated her lips. I decided she might sleep into tomorrow, so I shook her arm till her eyes slit open.

“Lord, I'm stiff,” she said. “I feel like I've been beaten with a stick.”

“You have been beaten, remember?”

“But not with a stick,” she said.

I waited till she got to her feet, a long, unbelievable process of grunts and moans and limbs coming to life.

“What did you dream?” I asked when she was upright.

She gazed at the treetops, rubbing her elbows. “Well, let's see. I dreamed the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., knelt down and painted my toenails with the spit from his mouth, and every nail was red like he'd been sucking on red hots.”

I considered this as we set off for Tiburon, Rosaleen walking like she was on anointed feet, like her ruby toes owned the whole countryside.

We drifted by gray barns, cornfields in need of irrigation, and clumps of Hereford cows, chewing in slow motion, looking very content with their lives. Squinting into the distance, I could see farmhouses with wide porches and tractor-tire swings suspended from ropes on nearby tree branches; windmills sprouted up beside them, their giant silver petals creaking a little when the breezes rose. The sun had baked everything to perfection; even the gooseberries on the fence had fried to raisins.

The asphalt ran out, turned to gravel. I listened to the sound it made scraping under our shoes. Perspiration puddled in the notch where Rosaleen's collarbones came together. I didn't know whose stomach was carrying on more about needing food, mine or hers, and since we'd started walking, I'd realized it was Sunday, when the stores were closed up. I was afraid we'd end up eating dandelions, digging wild turnips and grubs out of the ground to stay alive.

The smell of fresh manure floated out from the fields and took care of my appetite then and there, but Rosaleen said, “I could eat a mule.”

“If we can find some place open when we get to town, I'll go in and get us some food,” I told her.

“And what're we gonna do for beds?” she said.

“If they don't have a motel, we'll have to rent a room.”

She smiled at me then. “Lily, child, there ain't gonna be any place that will take a colored woman. I don't care if she's the Virgin Mary, nobody's letting her stay if she's colored.”

“Well, what was the point of the Civil Rights Act?” I said, coming to a full stop in the middle of the road. “Doesn't that mean people have to let you stay in their motels and eat in their restaurants if you want to?”

“That's what it means, but you gonna have to drag people kicking and screaming to do it.”

I spent the next mile in deep worry. I had no plan, no prospects of a plan. Until now I'd mostly believed we would stumble upon a window somewhere and climb through it into a brand-new life. Rosaleen, on the other hand, was out here biding time till we got caught. Counting it as summer vacation from jail.

What I needed was a sign. I needed a voice speaking to me like I'd heard yesterday in my room saying,
Lily Melissa Owens, your jar is open.

I'll take nine steps and look up. Whatever my eyes light on, that's my sign.
When I looked up, I saw a crop duster plunging his little plane over a field of growing things, behind him a cloud of pesticides parachuting out. I couldn't decide what part of this scene I represented: the plants about to be rescued from the bugs or the bugs about to be murdered by the spray. There was an off chance I was really the airplane zipping over the earth creating rescue and doom everywhere I went.

I felt miserable.

The heat had been gathering as we walked, and it now dripped down Rosaleen's face.

“Too bad there's not a church around here where we could steal some fans,” she said.

 

From far away the store on the edge of town looked about a hundred years old, but when we got up to it, I saw it was actually older. A sign over the door said
FROGMORE STEW GENERAL STORE AND RESTAURANT. SINCE
1854.

General Sherman had probably ridden by here and decided to spare it on the basis of its name, because I'm sure it hadn't been on looks. The whole front of it was a forgotten bulletin board: Studebaker Service, Live Bait, Buddy's Fishing Tournament, Rayford Brothers' Ice Plant, Deer Rifles $45, and a picture of a girl wearing a Coca-Cola bottle cap on her head. A sign announced a gospel sing at the Mount Zion Baptist Church that took place back in 1957, if anyone wanted to know.

My favorite thing was the fine display of car tags nailed up from different states. I would like to have read every single one, if I'd had the time.

In the side yard a colored man lifted the top of a barbecue pit made from an oil drum, and the smell of pork lathered in vinegar and pepper drew so much saliva from beneath my tongue I actually drooled onto my blouse.

A few cars and trucks were parked out front, probably belonging to people who cut church and came here straight from Sunday school.

“I'll go in and see if I can buy some food,” I said.

“And snuff. I need some snuff,” said Rosaleen.

While she slumped on a bench near the barbecue drum, I stepped through the screen door into the mingled smells of pickled eggs and sawdust, beneath dozens of sugar-cured hams dangling from the ceiling. The restaurant was situated in a section at the back while the front of the store was reserved for selling everything from sugarcane stalks to turpentine.

“May I help you, young lady?” A small man wearing a bow tie stood on the other side of a wooden counter, nearly lost behind a barricade of scuppernong jelly and Sweet Fire pickles. His voice was high-pitched, and he had a soft, delicate look to him. I could not imagine him selling deer rifles.

“I don't believe I've seen you before,” he said.

“I'm not from here. I'm visiting my grandmother.”

“I like it when children spend time with their grandparents,” he said. “You can learn a lot from older folks.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I learned more from my grandmother than I did the whole eighth grade.”

He laughed like this was the most comical thing he'd heard in years. “Are you here for lunch? We have a Sunday-plate special—barbecue pork.”

“I'll take two of them to go,” I said. “And two Coca-Colas, please.”

While I waited for our lunch, I wandered along the store aisles, stocking up for supper. Packages of salted peanuts, buttermilk cookies, two pimiento-cheese sandwiches in plastic, sour balls, and a can of Red Rose snuff. I piled it on the counter.

When he returned with the plates and drink bottles, he shook his head. “I'm sorry, but it's Sunday. I can't sell anything from the store, just the restaurant. Your grandma ought to know that. What's her name anyway?”

“Rose,” I said, reading it off the snuff can.

“Rose Campbell?”

“Yes, sir. Rose Campbell.”

“I thought she only had grandboys.”

“No, sir, she's got me, too.”

He touched the bag of sour balls. “Just leave it all here. I'll put it back.”

The cash register pinged, and the drawer banged out. I rummaged in my bag for the money and paid him.

“Could you open the Coke bottles for me?” I asked, and while he walked back toward the kitchen, I dropped the Red Rose snuff in my bag and zipped it up.

Rosaleen had been beaten up, gone without food, slept on the hard ground, and who could say how long before she'd be back in jail or even killed? She deserved her snuff.

I was speculating how one day, years from now, I would send the store a dollar in an envelope to cover it, spelling out how guilt had dominated every moment of my life, when I found myself looking at a picture of the black Mary. I do not mean a picture of just any black Mary. I mean the identical, very same, exact one as my mother's. She stared at me from the labels of a dozen jars of honey.
BLACK MADONNA HONEY,
they said.

The door opened, and a family came in fresh from church, the mother and daughter dressed alike in navy with white Peter Pan collars. Light streamed in the door, hazy, warped, blurred with drizzles of yellow. The little girl sneezed, and her mother said, “Come here, let's wipe your nose.”

I looked again at the honey jars, at the amber lights swimming inside them, and made myself breathe slowly.

I realized it for the first time in my life: there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining brightly, and we don't even know it.

I thought about the bees that had come to my room at night, how they'd been part of it all. And the voice I'd heard the day before, saying,
Lily Melissa Owens, your jar is open,
speaking as plain and clear as the woman in navy speaking to her daughter.

“Here's your Coca-Colas,” the bow-tied man was saying.

I pointed to the honey jars. “Where did you get those?”

He thought the tone of shock in my voice was really consternation. “I know what you mean. A lot of folks won't buy it 'cause it's got the Virgin Mary pictured as a colored woman, but see, that's because the woman who makes the honey is colored herself.”

“What's her name?”

“August Boatwright,” he said. “She keeps bees all over the county.”

Keep breathing, keep breathing. “Do you know where she lives?”

“Oh, sure, it's the darndest house you ever saw. Painted like Pepto-Bismol. Your grandmother surely's seen it—you go through town on Main Street till it turns into the highway to Florence.”

I walked to the door. “Thanks.”

“You tell your grandma hello for me,” he said.

Rosaleen's snores were making the bench slats tremble. I gave her a shake. “Wake up. Here's your snuff, but put it in your pocket, 'cause I didn't exactly pay for it.”

“You stole it?” she said.

“I had to, 'cause they don't sell items from the store on Sunday.”

“Your life has gone straight to hell,” she said.

I spread our lunch out like a picnic on the bench but couldn't eat a bite of it till I told her about the black Mary on the honey jar and the beekeeper named August Boatwright.

“Don't you think my mother must've known her?” I said. “It couldn't be just a coincidence.”

She didn't answer, so I said louder, “Rosaleen? Don't you think so?”

“I don't know what I think,” she said. “I don't want you getting your hopes up too much, is all.” She reached over and touched my cheek. “Oh, Lily, what have we gone and done?”

 

Tiburon was a place like Sylvan, minus the peaches. In front of the domed courthouse someone had stuck a Confederate flag in the mouth of their public cannon. South Carolina was Dixie first, America second. You could not get the pride of Fort Sumter out of us if you tried.

Strolling down Main Street, we moved through long blue shadows cast from the two-story buildings that ran the length of the street. At a drugstore, I peered through the plate glass at a soda fountain with chrome trim, where they sold cherry Cokes and banana splits, thinking that soon it would not be just for white people anymore.