The Secret Life of Bees (22 page)

‘You all right?’ said August, easing to her feet. May didn’t answer.

‘May?’ June said. I even smiled over at Rosaleen and nodded, as if to say, Can you believe how well she’s taking this? August, though, turned off the television and studied May, frowning. May’s head was angled to the side, and her eyes were fixed on a cross-stitched picture of a birdhouse that hung on the wall. It struck me all of a sudden that her eyes weren’t actually seeing the picture. They had glazed completely over. August went over to May.

‘Answer me. Are you all right?’

In the silence I heard May’s breathing grow loud and a little ragged. She took several steps backward, until she came to the wall. Then she slid down onto the floor without making a sound. I’m not sure when it sank in that May had gone off to some unreachable place inside herself. Even August and June didn’t realize it right away. They called her name like she’d only lost her hearing. Rosaleen bent over May and spoke in a loud voice, trying to get through to her.

‘Zach is gonna be all right. You don’t need to worry any. Mr. Forrest is getting him out of jail on Wednesday.’

May stared straight ahead like Rosaleen wasn’t even there.

‘What’s happened to her?’ June asked, and I could hear a note of panic in her voice.

‘I’ve never seen her like this.’

May was here but not here. Her hands lay limp in her lap, palms up. No sobbing into her dress skirt. No rocking back and forth. No pulling at her hair braids. She was so quiet, so different. I turned my face to the ceiling, I just couldn’t watch. August went to the kitchen and came back with a dish towel filled with ice. She pulled May’s head to her so it rested against her shoulder for a minute, and then she lifted her sister’s face and pressed the towel to May’s forehead and temples and along her neck. She kept on doing this for several minutes, then put the cloth down and tapped May’s cheeks with her hands. May blinked a time or two and looked at August. She looked at all of us, huddled above her, as if she were returning from a long trip.

‘You feel better?’ said August. May nodded.

‘I’ll be okay.’

Her words came out in an odd monotone.

‘Well, I’m glad to see you can talk,’ said June.

‘Come on, let’s get you in the bathtub.’

August and June pulled May to her feet.

‘I’m going to the wall,’ May said. June shook her head.

‘It’s getting dark.’

‘Just for a little while,’ May said. She moved into the kitchen, with all of us following after her. She opened a cabinet drawer, took out a flashlight, her tablet, a stub of a pencil, and walked onto the porch. I pictured her writing it down—Zach in jail—and pushing it into a crevice in the wall. I felt somebody should personally thank every rock out there for the human misery it had absorbed. We should kiss them one by one and say, We are sorry, but something strong and lasting had to do this for May, and you are the chosen ones. God bless your rock hearts.

‘I’ll go with you,’ said August. May spoke over her shoulder.

‘No, please, August, just me.’

August started to protest.

‘But—’

‘Just me,’ said May, turning to face us.

‘Just me.’

We watched her go down the porch steps and move into the trees. In life there are things you can’t get over no matter how hard you try, and that sight is one of them. May walking into the trees with the little circle of light bobbing in front of her, then swallowed up by the dark.

Chapter Ten

A bee’s life is but short. During spring and summer—the most strenuous periods of foraging—a worker bee, as a rule, does not live more than four or five weeks…Threatened by all kinds of dangers during their foraging flights, many workers die before they have reached even that age.

—The Dancing Bees

I
sat in the kitchen with August, June, and Rosaleen while the night spread out around the house. May had been gone a whole five minutes when August got up and began to pace. She walked out to the porch and back and then stared out toward the wall. After twenty minutes she said, ‘That’s it. Let’s go get her.’

She got the flashlight from the truck and struck out for the wall, while June, Rosaleen, and I hurried to keep pace. A night bird was singing from a tree branch, just singing its heart out, urgent and feverish, like it was put there to sing the moon up to the top of the sky.

‘Ma-a-a-a-y,’ called August. June called, too, then Rosaleen and me. We went along shouting her name, but no sound came back. Just the night bird singing up the moon. After we walked from one end of the wailing wall to the other, we went back and walked it again, like this time we were going to get it right. Walk slower, look closer, call louder. This time May would be there kneeling with the flashlight batteries burned out. We would think, My goodness, how did we miss her here the first time? That didn’t happen, though, so we walked into the woods behind the wall, calling her name louder and louder till I could hear the hoarseness creeping into our throats, but not one of us would say, Something is terribly wrong. Despite the night, the heat had lingered on bad as ever, and I could smell the hot dampness of our bodies as we combed the woods with a spot of light four inches across. Finally August said, ‘June, you go to the house and call the police. Tell them we need help to find our sister. When you hang up, you kneel before Our Lady and beg her to watch over May, then you come back. We’re going to walk toward the river.’

June took off running. We could hear her crashing through the brush as we turned toward the back of the property where the river flowed. August’s legs moved faster and faster. Rosaleen struggled to keep up, gulping for air.

When we reached the river, we stood there a moment. I’d been in Tiburon long enough for the full moon to fade away and grow back full again. It hung over the river, sliding in and out of clouds. I stared at a tree on the opposite bank, where the roots were exposed and twisted, and felt a metallic-dry taste rise from the back of my throat and slide over my tongue. I reached for August’s hand, but she had turned right and was moving along the bank, calling May’s name.

‘Ma-a-a-ay.’

Rosaleen and I moved behind her in our clumsy knot, so close we must have seemed to the night creatures like one big organism with six legs. I was surprised when the prayer we said after dinner each night, the one with the beads, started up of its own accord and recited itself in the back reaches of my head. I could hear each word plainly. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. It wasn’t till August said, ‘Good, Lily, we should all pray,’ that I realized I’d been repeating it out loud. I couldn’t tell if I was saying it as a prayer or muttering it as a way to push down the fear. August said the words with me, and then Rosaleen did, too. We walked along the river with the words streaming behind us like ribbons in the night. When June came back, she was holding another flashlight she’d dug up somewhere at the house. The puddle of light wobbled as she came through the woods.

‘Over here,’ called August, aiming her flashlight up through the trees. We waited for June to reach the riverbank.

‘The police are on their way,’ she said. The police are coming. I looked at Rosaleen, at the ends of her mouth turned down. The police hadn’t recognized me the day I’d visited the jail; I hoped they didn’t get lucky with Rosaleen. June shouted May’s name and plowed up the riverbank into the dark, followed by Rosaleen, but August moved slowly now, carefully. I stayed close behind her, saying Hail Marys to myself, faster and faster. Suddenly August stopped in her tracks. I stopped, too. And I didn’t hear the night bird singing anymore. I watched August, not taking my eyes off her. She stood tense and alert, staring down at the bank. At something I could not see.

‘June,’ she called in a strange, whispery voice, but June and Rosaleen had pushed farther up the riverbank and didn’t hear. Only I heard. The air felt thick and charged, too thick to breathe. I stepped over beside August, letting my elbow touch her arm, needing the weight of her next to me; and there was May’s flashlight, shut off and sitting on the wet ground. It seems odd to me now how we went on standing there another minute, me waiting for August to say something, but she didn’t speak, just stood, soaking up that last moment. A wind rose up, raking its sound along the tree branches, hitting our faces like an oven blast, like the sudden breezes of hell. August looked at me, then moved her flashlight beam out to the water. The light swept across the surface, making a spatter of inkgold splotches before it stopped, abruptly. May lay in the river, just beneath the surface. Her eyes were wide open and unblinking, and the skirt of her dress fanned out and swayed in the current. I heard a noise come from August’s lips, a soft moan. I clutched frantically at August’s arm, but she pulled free of me, threw down her flashlight, and waded into the river. I splashed in after her. Water surged around my legs, causing me to fall once on the slippery bottom. I grabbed for August’s skirt, just missing. I came up sputtering. When I reached her, August was staring down at her baby sister.

‘June,’ she shouted.

‘June!’ May lay in two feet of water with a huge river stone on top of her chest. It weighted her body, holding it on the bottom. Looking at her, I thought, She will get up now. August will roll away the stone, and May will come up for air, and we will go back to the house andget her dry. I wanted to reach down and touch her, shake her shoulder a little. She couldn’t have died out here in the river. That would be impossible. The only parts of her not submerged were her hands. They floated, her palms little ragged cups bobbing on the surface, the water weaving in and out of her fingers. Even now that’s the picture that will wake me up in the night, not May’s eyes, open and staring, or the stone resting on her like a grave slab. Her hands. June came thrashing into the water. When she reached May, she stood beside August, panting, her arms dangling beside her body.

‘Oh, May,’ she whispered and looked away, squeezing her eyes closed. Glancing toward the bank, I saw Rosaleen standing ankle deep in the river, her whole body shaking. August knelt down in the water and shoved the stone off May’s chest. Grabbing May by the shoulders, she pulled her up. Her body made an awful sucking sound as it broke the surface. Her head rolled back, and I saw that her mouth was partially open and her teeth were rimmed with mud. River reeds clung to her hair braids. I looked away. I knew then. May was dead. August knew, too, but she put her ear to May’s chest, listening. After a minute, though, she drew back and pulled May’s head to her breast, and it almost seemed like she wanted May to listen now for her heart.

‘We’ve lost her,’ August said. I started to shiver. I could hear my teeth in my mouth, crashing against each other. August and June scooped their arms under May’s body and struggled to carry her to the bank. She was saturated, bulging. I grabbed her ankles and tried to steady them. The river, it seemed, had carried away her shoes. When they laid her down on the bank, water gushed from her mouth and nostrils. I thought, This is the way Our Lady came washing up on the river near Charleston. I thought, Look at her fingers, her hands. They are so precious. I imagined how May had rolled the rock from the bank out into the river, then lay down, pulling it on top of her. She had held it tight, like a baby, and waited for her lungs to fill. I wondered if she had flailed and jerked toward the surface at the last second, or did she go without fighting, embracing the rock, letting it soak up all the pain she felt? I wondered about the creatures that had swum by while she died.

June and August, sopping wet, stooped on either side of her, while mosquitoes sang in our ears and the river went on about its business, coiling off into the darkness. I was sure they’d pictured May’s last moments, too, but I did not see horror on their faces now, just a heartbroken acceptance. This had been the thing they’d been waiting for half their lives without even realizing it. August tried to close May’s eyes with her fingers, but they would only stay half shut.

‘It’s just like April,’ June said.

‘Hold the flashlight on May for me,’ August said to her. The words came out quiet and steady. I could barely hear them over the bamming of my heart. By the small beam of light, August plucked out the tiny green leaves stuck in the plaits in May’s hair and tucked each one into her pocket. August and June scraped off every piece of river debris there was from May’s skin and clothes, and Rosaleen, poor Rosaleen, who I realized had lost her new best friend, stood, not making a sound, but with her chin shaking so awful I wanted to reach up and hold it for her. Then a sound I will never forget whooshed out of May’s mouth—a long, bubbling sigh, and we all looked at each other, confused, with a second of actual hope, as if the miracle of miracles was about to take place after all, but it was only a pocket of swallowed air that had suddenly been released. It swept across my face, smelling like the river, like a piece of old wood that had gone moldy. I looked down at May’s face and felt a wave of nausea. Stumbling off into the trees, I bent over and vomited. Afterward, as I wiped my mouth on the hem of my shirt, I heard a sound break through the darkness, a cry so piercing it made the bottom of my heart drop. Looking back, I saw August framed in the light of June’s flashlight, the sound coming from deep in her throat. When it faded away, she dropped her head straight down onto May’s soggy chest. I reached for the limb of a small cedar and held tight, as though everything I had was about to slip from my hands.

‘So you’re an orphan?’ the policeman said. It was that tall, crewcut Eddie Hazelwurst who’d escorted August and me in to see Zach in jail. Rosaleen and I sat in the rocking chairs in the parlor, while he stood before us holding a small notebook, ready to capture every word. The other policeman was outside searching around the wailing wall, for what I couldn’t imagine. My chair rocked so fast I was in danger of being pitched out of it. Rosaleen’s, however, remained motionless—her face closed down. When we’d first gotten back to the house after finding May, August had met both policemen and then sent me and Rosaleen upstairs.