The Secret Life of Bees (13 page)

At this point August stood up and struck the pose herself. She looked just like the statue standing there, her right arm raised and her hand clutched into a fist. She stayed like that for a few seconds while we sat, spellbound.

‘Obadiah pulled the figure out of the water,’ she went on, ‘and struggled to set her upright. Then he remembered how they’d asked the Lord to send them rescue. To send them consolation. To send them freedom. Obadiah knew the Lord had sent this figure, but he didn’t know who she was.

‘He knelt down in the marsh mud before her and heard her voice speak plain as day in his heart. She said, ‘It’s all right. I’m here. I’ll be taking care of you now.’

‘This story was ten times better than Beatrix the nun. August glided back and forth across the room as she spoke.

‘Obadiah tried to pick up the waterlogged woman who God had sent to take care of them, but she was too heavy, so he went and got two more slaves, and between them they carried her to the praise house and set her on the hearth.

‘By the time the next Sunday came, everyone had heard about the statue washing up from the river, how it had spoken to Obadiah. The praise house was filled with people spilling out the door and sitting on the window ledges. Obadiah told them he knew the Lord God had sent her, but he didn’t know who she was.’

‘He didn’t know who she was!’ cried Sugar-Girl, breaking in to the story. Then all the Daughters of Mary broke loose, saying over and over, ‘Not one of them knew.’

I looked over at Rosaleen, who I hardly recognized for the way she leaned forward in her chair, chanting along with them. When everything had quieted down, August said, ‘Now, the oldest of the slaves was a woman named Pearl. She walked with a stick, and when she spoke, everyone listened.

She got to her feet and said, ‘This here is the mother of Jesus.’

‘Everyone knew the mother of Jesus was named Mary, and that she’d seen suffering of every kind. That she was strong and constant and had a mother’s heart. And here she was, sent to them on the same waters that had brought them here in chains. It seemed to them she knew everything they suffered.’

I stared at the statue, feeling the fractured place in my heart.

‘And so,’ August said, ‘the people cried and danced and clapped their hands. They went one at a time and touched their hands to her chest, wanting to grab on to the solace in her heart.

‘They did this every Sunday in the praise house, dancing and touching her chest, and eventually they painted a red heart on her breast so the people would have a heart to touch.

‘Our Lady filled their hearts with fearlessness and whispered to them plans of escape. The bold ones fled, finding their way north, and those who didn’t lived with a raised fist in their hearts. And if ever it grew weak, they would only have to touch her heart again.

‘She grew so powerful she became known even to the master. One day he hauled her off on a wagon and chained her in the carriage house. But then, without any human help, she escaped during the night and made her way back to the praise house. The master chained her in the barn fifty times, and fifty times she loosed the chains and went home. Finally he gave up and let her stay there.’

The room grew quiet as August stood there a minute, letting everything sink in. When she spoke again, she raised her arms out beside her.

‘The people called her Our Lady of Chains. They called her that not because she wore chains…’

‘Not because she wore chains,’ the Daughters chanted.

‘They called her Our Lady of Chains because she broke them.’

June wedged the cello between her legs and played ‘Amazing Grace,’ and the Daughters of Mary got to their feet and swayed together like colorful seaweed on the ocean floor. I thought this was the grand finale, but no, June switched over to the piano and banged out a jazzed-up version of ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain.’

That’s when August started a conga line. She danced over to Lunelle, who latched on to August’s waist. Cressie hooked on to Lunelle, followed by Mabelee, and off they went around the room, causing Cressie to grab hold of her crimson hat. When they swung back by, Queenie and Violet joined them, then Sugar-Girl. I wanted to be part of it, too, but I only watched, and so did Rosaleen and Otis. June seemed to play faster and faster. I fanned my face, trying to get a little air, feeling light-headed. When the dance ended, the Daughters stood panting in a half circle before Our Lady of Chains, and what they did next took my breath away. One at a time they went and touched the statue’s fading red heart. Queenie and her daughter went together and rubbed their palms against the wood. Lunelle pressed her fingers to Mary’s heart, then kissed each one of them in a slow, deliberate way, a way that brought tears to my eyes. Otis pressed his forehead to the heart, standing there the longest time of them all, head to heart, like he was filling up his empty tank. June kept playing while each of them came, until there was only Rosaleen and me left. May nodded to June to keep on with the music and took Rosaleen’s hand, pulling her to Our Lady of Chains, so even Rosaleen got to touch Mary’s heart. I wanted to touch her vanishing red heart, too, as much as anything I’d ever wanted. As I rose from my chair, my head was still swimming some. I walked toward black Mary with my hand lifted. But just as I was about to reach her, June stopped playing. She stopped right in the middle of the song, and I was left in the silence with my hand stretched out. Drawing it back, I looked around me, and it was like seeing everything through a train’s thick window. A blur passed before me. A moving wave of color. I am not one of you, I thought. My body felt numb. I thought how nice it would be to grow smaller and smaller—until I was a dot of nothing. I heard August scolding, ‘June, what got into you?’ but her voice was so distant. I called to the Lady of Chains, but maybe I wasn’t really saying her name out loud, only hearing myself call on the inside. That’s the last I remember. Her name echoing through the empty spaces. When I woke, I was lying on August’s bed across the hall with an ice-cold washcloth folded over my forehead and August and Rosaleen staring down at me. Rosaleen had pulled up the skirt of her dress and was fanning me with it, showing most of her thighs.

‘Since when have you started fainting?’ she said, and sat down on the edge of the bed, causing me to roll into her side. She scooped me into her arms. For some reason this caused my chest to fill with more sadness than I could bear, and I wrestled myself free, claiming I needed a drink of water.

‘Maybe it was the heat,’ August said.

‘I should’ve turned on the fans. It must’ve been ninety degrees in there.’

‘I’m all right,’ I told them, but to tell the truth, I was bewildered at myself. I felt I’d stumbled upon an amazing secret—it was possible to close your eyes and exit life without actually dying. You just had to faint. Only I didn’t know how to make it happen, how to pull the plug so I could drain away when I needed to. My fainting spell had broken up the Daughters of Mary and sent May to the wailing wall. June had gone upstairs to her room and locked the door, while the Daughters huddled in the kitchen. We chalked it up to heat. Heat, we said. Heat would make a person do strange things. You should have seen how August and Rosaleen fussed over me the rest of the evening. You want some root beer, Lily? How about a feather pillow? Here, swallow this spoon of honey. We sat in the den, where I ate supper off a tray, which was a privilege in itself. June was still in her room, not answering August’s calls at the door, and May, who wasn’t allowed near the TV because she’d already spent way too much time today at the wall, was in the kitchen clipping recipes from McCall’s magazine. On the television Mr. Cronkite said they were going to send a rocket ship to the moon.

‘On July twenty-eighth, the United States of America will launch Ranger Seven from Cape Kennedy, Florida,’ he said. It was going to take a 253,665-mile flight before it crash-landed onto the moon. The whole point was to take pictures of the surface and send them back.

‘Well, baby Jesus,’ said Rosaleen.

‘A rocket to the moon.’

August shook her head.

‘Next they’ll be walking around up there.’

We had all thought President Kennedy was off his rocker when he declared we’d land a man on the moon. The Sylvan newspaper had called it a ‘Luna-tic Vision.’

I took the article to class for the current-events bulletin board. We all said, A man on the moon. Right. But you can never underestimate the power of cutthroat competition. We wanted to beat the Russians—that was what made the world go around for us. Now it looked like we would. August cut off the TV set.

‘I need some air.’

We all went, Rosaleen and August holding on to my elbows in case I started to keel over again. It was the in-between time, before day leaves and night comes, a time I’ve never been partial to because of the sadness that lingers in the space between going and coming. August gazed at the sky where the moon was rising, large and ghostly silver.

‘Look at her good, Lily,’ she said, ’

‘cause you’re seeing the end of something.’

‘Yes, you are, because as long as people have been on this earth, the moon has been a mystery to us. Think about it. She is strong enough to pull the oceans, and when she dies away, she always comes back again. My mama used to tell me Our Lady lived on the moon and that I should dance when her face was bright and hibernate when it was dark.’

August stared at the sky a long moment and then, turning toward the house, said, ‘Now it won’t ever be the same, not after they’ve landed up there and walked around on her.

She’ll be just one more big science project.’

I thought about the dream I’d had that night Rosaleen and I slept by the pond, how the moon had cracked to pieces. August disappeared into the house, and Rosaleen headed for her cot in the honey house, but I stayed on and stared at the sky, imagining Ranger 7 blasting away for it. I knew one day I would go back into the parlor when no one was around and touch the Lady’s heart. Then I would show August the picture of my mother and see if the moon broke loose and fell out of the sky.

Chapter Seven

How did bees ever become equated with sex? They do not live a riotous sex life themselves. A hive suggests cloister more than bordello.

—The Queen Must Die: And Other Affairs of Bees and Men

I
jumped every time I heard a siren. It might have been an ambulance off in the distance or a police chase on television—it didn’t matter. Part of me was always braced for T. Ray or Mr. Shoe Gaston to drive up and end my charmed life. We had been at August’s house eight whole days. I didn’t know how long black Mary could keep the curtain drawn. On Monday morning, July 3, I was walking back to the honey house after breakfast when I noticed a strange black Ford parked in the driveway. I lost my breath for a moment, till I remembered Zach was coming back to work today. It would be me and August and Zach. I’m not proud of it, but I resented the intrusion. He was not what I expected. I found him inside holding a honey drizzle like a microphone, singing, ‘I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill.’

I watched unseen from the doorway, not making a sound, but when he launched into ‘Viva Las Vegas,’ slinging his hips around Elvis-style, I broke out laughing. He whirled around, knocking over a tray of brood frames, which made a great big mess all over the floor.

‘I was just singing,’ he said, like this was news to me.

‘Who are you anyway?’

‘Lily,’ I said.

‘I’m staying with August and them for a while.’

‘I’m Zachary Taylor,’ he said.

‘Zachary Taylor was a president,’ I told him.

‘Yeah, so I’ve heard.’

He fished out a dogtag suspended on a chain under his shirt and held it up to my nose.

‘See right there. Zachary Lincoln Taylor.’

He smiled then, and I saw he had a one-side dimple. It’s a feature that has always gotten to me. He went and got a towel and cleaned up the floor.

‘August told me about you being here and helping us out, but she didn’t say anything about you being…white.’

‘Yep, I’m white, all right,’ I said.

‘White as can be.’

There was nothing white about Zachary Lincoln Taylor. Even the whites of his eyes weren’t exactly white. He had broad shoulders and a narrow waist and short-cropped hair like most of the Negro boys wore, but it was his face I couldn’t help staring at. If he was shocked over me being white, I was shocked over him be- ing handsome. At my school they made fun of colored people’s lips and noses. I myself had laughed at these jokes, hoping to fit in. Now I wished I could pen a letter to my school to be read at opening assembly that would tell them how wrong we’d all been. You should see Zachary Taylor, I’d say. I wondered how August could forget to tell him a thing like the fact that I was white. She’d told me plenty about him. I knew she was his godmother. That his daddy had left him when he was small, that his mama worked as a lunchroom lady at the same school where June taught. He was about to be a junior at the black high school, where he made all A’s and played halfback on the football team. She’d said he ran like the wind, which might be his ticket to a college up north. This had struck me as better than I would manage, since I was probably headed for beauty school now. I said, ‘August went out to the Satterfield farm to check on some hives. She said I should help you in here. What do you want me to do?’

‘Grab some frames from the hive boxes over there and help me load the uncapper, I guess.’

‘So who do you like best, Fats Domino or Elvis?’ I asked, dropping in the first frame.

‘Miles Davis,’ he said.

‘I don’t know who that is.’

‘Of course you don’t. But he’s the best trumpet player in the world. I’d give anything to play like him.’

‘Would you give up football?’

‘How do you know I play football?’

‘I know things,’ I said, and smiled at him.

‘I can see that.’

He was trying not to smile back. I thought, We’re going to be friends. He flipped the switch, and the extractor started to spin, building speed.