The Secret Life of Bees (15 page)

‘It’s purple!’ I said.

‘When the weather turns hot and the flowers dry up, the bees start sucking elderberry. It makes a purple honey. People will pay two dollars a jar for purple honey.’

He dipped his finger into the comb and, lifting my veil, brought it close to my lips. I opened my mouth, let his finger slide in, sucking it clean. The sheerest smile brushed his lips, and heat rushed up my body. He bent toward me. I wanted him to lift back my veil and kiss me, and I knew he wanted to do it, too, by the way he fixed his eyes on mine. We stayed like that while bees swirled around our heads with a sound like sizzling bacon, a sound that no longer registered as danger. Danger, I realized, was a thing you got used to. But instead of kissing me, he turned to the next hive and went right on with his work. The smoker had gone out. I followed be- hind him, and neither of us spoke. We stacked the filled supers onto the truck like the cat had our tongues, and neither of us said a word till we were back in the honey truck passing the city limits sign. TIBURON, POPULATION 6,502 Home of Willifred Marchant ‘Who is Willifred Marchant?’ I said, desperate to break the silence and get things back to normal.

‘You mean you’ve never heard of Willifred Marchant?’ he said.

‘She is only a world-famous writer who wrote three Pulitzer Prize books about the deciduous trees of South Carolina.’

I giggled.

‘They didn’t win any Pulitzer Prizes.’

‘You better shut your mouth, because in Tiburon, Willifred Marchant’s books are way up there with the Bible. We have an official Willifred Marchant Day every year, and the schools hold tree-planting ceremonies. She always comes wearing a big straw hat and carrying a basket of rose petals, which she tosses to the children.’

‘She does not,’ I said.

‘Oh, yes. Miss Willie is very weird.’

‘Deciduous trees are an interesting topic, I guess. But I myself would rather write about people.’

‘Oh, that’s right, I forgot,’ he said.

‘You’re planning on being a writer. You and Miss Willie.’

‘You act like you don’t believe I can do it.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You implied it.’

‘What are you talking about? I did not.’

I turned to concentrate on things beyond the window. The Masonic Lodge, Hot Buy Used Cars, the Firestone Tire store. Zach braked at a stop sign next to the Dixie Cafe, which sat practically in the front yard of the Tri-County Livestock Company, and for some reason this made me furious. What I wanted to know was how people ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner with the smell of cows—and worse—overwhelming their nose buds. I wanted to scream out the window, ‘Eat your damned breakfast grits somewhere else, why don’t you? There’s cow shit in the air!’ The way people lived their lives, settling for grits and cow shit, made me sick. My eyes stung all around the sockets. Zach crossed the intersection. I could feel his eyes bore into the back of my head.

‘You mad at me?’ he said. I meant to say, Yes, I most certainly am, because you think I will never amount to anything. But what came out of my mouth was something else, and it was embarrassingly stupid.

‘I will never throw rose petals to anybody,’ I said, and then I broke down, the kind of crying where you’re sucking air and making heaving sounds like a person drowning. Zach pulled over on the side of the road, saying, ‘Holy moly. What’s the matter?’

He wrapped one arm around me and pulled me across the seat to him. I’d thought the whole thing was about my lost future, the one Mrs. Henry encouraged me to believe in by plying me with books and summer reading lists and big talk about scholarships to Columbia College, but sitting there close to Zach, I knew I was crying because he had that oneoside dimple I loved, because every time I looked at him I got a hot, funny feeling that circulated from my waist to my kneecaps, because I’d been going along being my normal girl self and the next thing I knew I’d passed through a membrane into a place of desperation. I was crying, I realized, for Zach. I laid my head on his shoulder and wondered how he could stand me. In one short morning I had exhibited insane laughter, hidden lust, pissy behavior, self-pity, and hysterical crying. If I’d been trying to show him my worst sides, I could not have done a better job than this. He gave me a squeeze and spoke into my hair.

‘It’s gonna be all right. You’re gonna be a fine writer one day.’

I saw him glance behind us, then across the road.

‘Now, you go back over to your side of the truck and wipe your face,’ he said, and handed me a floor rag that smelled like gasoline. When we got to the honey house, it was deserted except for Rosa- leen, who was gathering up her clothes so she could move up to May’s room. I’d been gone two slim hours, and our whole living arrangement had been overturned.

‘How come you get to sleep over there?’ I asked her. ’

‘Cause May gets scared at night by herself.’

Rosaleen was going to sleep in the extra twin bed, get the bottom drawer of May’s dresser for her stuff, and have the bathroom at her fingertips.

‘I can’t believe you’re leaving me over here by myself!’ I cried. Zach grabbed the hand truck and wheeled it out as fast as he could to start unloading the supers from the honey wagon. I think he’d had enough female emotion for the time being.

‘I’m not leaving you. I’m getting a mattress,’ she said, and dropped her toothbrush and the Red Rose snuff into her pocket. I crossed my arms over my blouse that was still damp from all the crying I’d been doing.

‘Fine then, go on. I don’t care.’

‘Lily, that cot is bad on my back. And if you ain’t noticed, the legs on it are all bent out of whack now. Another week and it’s gonna collapse on the floor. You’ll be fine without me.’

My chest closed up. Fine without her. Was she out of her mind? ‘I don’t wanna wake up from the dream world,’ I said, and midsentence my voice cracked, and the words twisted and turned in my mouth.

She sat on the cot, the cot I now hated with a passion because it had driven her to May’s room. She pulled me down beside her.

‘I know you don’t, but I’ll be here when you do. I might sleep up there in May’s room, but I’m not going anywhere.’

She patted my knee like old times. She patted, and neither of us said anything. We could’ve been back in the policeman’s car riding to jail for how I felt. Like I would not exist without her patting hand. I followed Rosaleen as she carried her few things over to the pink house, intending to inspect her new room. We climbed the steps onto the screen porch. August sat on the porch swing that was suspended from two chains in the ceiling. She was rocking back and forth, having her orangeade break and reading her new book, which she’d gotten from the bookmobile. I turned my head to read the title. Jane Eyre. May was on the other side of the porch running clothes through the rubber rollers on the wringer washing machine. A brand-new pink Lady Kenmore, which they kept out on the porch because there was no room in the kitchen. In television commercials the woman who worked the Lady Kenmore wore an evening gown and seemed to be enjoying herself. May just looked hot and tired. She smiled as Rosaleen went by with her things.

‘Are you okay with Rosaleen moving over here?’ August said, propping the book on her stomach. She took a sip of her drink, then ran her hand across the cold moisture on the glass and pressed her palm to the front of her neck.

‘I guess so.’

‘May will sleep better with Rosaleen in there,’ she said.

‘Won’t you, May?’

I glanced over at May, but she didn’t seem to hear over the washer. Suddenly the last thing I wanted was to follow Rosaleen and watch her tuck her clothes into May’s dresser. I looked at August’s book.

‘What are you reading about?’ I asked, thinking I was making casual conversation, but boy, was I wrong.

‘It’s about a girl whose mother died when she was little,’ she said. Then she looked at me in a way that made my stomach tip over, the same way it’d tipped over when she’d told me about Beatrix.

‘What happens to the girl?’ I asked, trying to make my voice steady.

‘I’ve only started the book,’ she said.

‘But right now she’s just feeling lost and sad.’

I turned and looked out toward the garden, where June and Neil were picking tomatoes. I stared at them while the crank on the washer squeaked. I could hear the clothes falling into the basin behind the rollers. She knows, were thought. She knows who I am. I stretched out my arms like I was pushing back invisible walls of air and, looking down, caught sight of my shadow on the floor, this skinny girl with wild hair curling up in the humidity, with her arms flung out and her palms erect like she was trying to stop traffic in both directions. I wanted to bend down and kiss her, for how small and determined she looked. When I glanced back at August, she was still staring at me, like she expected me to say something.

‘Well, I guess I’ll go see Rosaleen’s new bed,’ I said. August picked up her book, and that was that. The moment passed, and so did the feeling that she knew who I was. I mean, it didn’t make sense: how could August Boatwright know anything about me? It was around this time that June and Neil started a first-class fight out there in the tomato garden. June shouted something, and he shouted back.

‘Uh-oh,’ said August. She put down the book and stood up.

‘Why can’t you just let it be?’ yelled June.

‘Why does it always come back to this? Get this through your head: I’m not getting married. Not yesterday, not today, not next year!’

‘What are you scared of?’ Neil said.

‘For your information, I’m not scared of anything.’

‘Well, then, you’re the most selfish bitch I ever met,’ he said, and started walking toward his car.

‘Oh, Lord,’ said August under her breath.

‘How dare you call me that!’ said June.

‘You come back here. Don’t you walk off when I’m talking to you!’ Neil kept right on walking, didn’t look over his shoulder once. Zach, I noticed, had stopped loading supers onto the hand truck and watched, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe he was witnessing another scene where people’s worst sides come out.

‘If you leave now, don’t plan on coming back!’ she yelled. Neil climbed into his car, and suddenly June came running with tomatoes in her hands. She reared back and threw one, splat! right into the windshield. The second one landed on the door handle.

‘Don’t you come back!’ she yelled as Neil drove off. Trailing tomato juice. May sank down onto the floor, crying and looking so hurt inside I could almost see soft, red places up under her rib bones. August and I walked her out to her wall, and for the umpteenth time she wrote June and Neil on a scrap of paper and wedged it between the rocks. We spent the rest of the day working on the supers that Zach and I had hauled in. Stacked six high, they made a miniature skyline all through the honey house. August said it looked like Bee City in there. We ran twelve extractor loads through the whole system—all the way from the uncapping knife to the bottling tank. August didn’t like her honey to sit around waiting too long, because the flavor got lost. We had two days to finish it up, she said. Period. At least we didn’t have to store the honey in a special hot room to keep it from crystallizing, because every room we had was a hot room. Sometimes Carolina heat turned out to be good for something. Just when I thought we were done for the day and could go eat dinner and say our evening prayers with the beads, no, we were just beginning. August had us load up the empty supers and haul them out to the woods so the bees could come and do the big cleanup. She would not store her supers for the winter until the bees had sucked out the last remaining bits of honey from the combs. She said that was because honey remnants attracted roaches. But really, I’m sure it was because she loved throwing a little end-of-the-year party for her bees, seeing them descend on the supers like they’d discovered honey heaven. The whole time we worked, I marveled at how mixed up people got when it came to love. I myself, for instance. It seemed like I was now thinking of Zach forty minutes out of every hour, Zach, who was an impossibility. That’s what I told myself five hundred times: impossibility. I can tell you this much: the word is a great big log thrown on the fires of love. That night it felt strange to be in the honey house by myself. I missed Rosaleen’s snoring the way you’d miss the sound of ocean waves after you’ve gotten used to sleeping with them. I didn’t realize how it had comforted me. Quietness has a strange, spongy hum that can nearly break your eardrums. I didn’t know if it was the emptiness, the stifling heat, or the fact it was only nine o’clock, but I couldn’t settle into sleep despite how tired I was. I peeled off my top and my underwear and lay on the damp sheets. I liked the feel of nudeness. It was a smooth, oiled feeling on the sheets, a set-free feeling. I imagined then that I heard a car pull into the driveway. I imagined it was Zach, and the thought of him moving in the night just outside the honey house caused my breath to speed up. I rose and slipped across the dark space to the wall mirror. Pearled light poured through the open window behind me, molding to my skin, giving me a true halo, not just around my head but across my shoulders, along my ribs and thighs. I was the last person to deserve a halo, but I studied the effect, cupping my hands under my breasts, studying my pinky-brown nipples, the thin curves of my waist, every soft and glowing turn. It was the first time I’d felt like more than a scraggly girl. I closed my eyes, and the balloon full of craving finally burst open in my chest, and when it did, wouldn’t you know—one minute I was dreaming of Zach and the next I was hungering for my mother, imagining her calling my name, saying, Lily, girl. You are my flower. When I turned to the window, there was no one there. Not that I had expected there would be. Two days later, after we had run ourselves into the ground harvesting the rest of the honey, Zach showed up with the prettiest notebook—green with rosebuds on the cover. He met me coming out of the pink house.

‘This is for you,’ he said.

‘So you can get a head start on your writing.’

That’s when I knew I would never find a better friend than Zachary Taylor. I threw my arms around him and leaned into his chest. He made a sound like Whoa, but after a second his arms folded around me, and we stayed like that, in a true embrace. He moved his hands up and down my back, till I was almost dizzy. Finally he unwound my arms and said, ‘Lily, I like you better than any girl I’ve ever known, but you have to understand, there are people who would kill boys like me for even looking at girls like you.’