The Secret Life of Bees

by Sue Monk Kidd

  He flopped into the rocker and pushed back and forth, that got-you-now grin glued on his face. “So you’ve been here the whole time, staying with colored women. Jesus Christ.”

  Without realizing it, I’d backed over to the statue of Our Lady. I stood, immobilized, while he looked her over. “What the hell is that?”

  “A statue of Mary,” I said. “You know, Jesus’ mother.” My voice sounded skittish in my throat. Inside, I was racking my brain for something to do.

  “Well, it looks like something from the junkyard,” he said.

  “How did you find me?”

  Sliding up on the edge of the cane seat, he dug in his pants pocket until he brought up his knife, the one he used to clean his nails with. “It was you who led me here,” he said, puffed up and pleased as punch to share the news.

  “I did no such thing.”

  He tugged the blade out of the knife bed, pushed the point into the arm of the rocker, and carved out little chunks of wood, taking his sweet time to explain. “Oh, you led me here, all right. Yesterday the phone bill came, and guess what I found on there? One collect call from a lawyer’s office in Tiburon. Mr. Clayton Forrest. Big mistake, Lily, calling me collect.”

  “You went to Mr. Clayton’s and he told you where I was?”

  “No, but he has an old-lady secretary who was more than happy to fill me in. She said I would find you right here.”

  Stupid Miss Lacy.

  “Where’s Rosaleen?” he said.

  “She took off a long time ago,” I lied. He might kidnap me back to Sylvan, but there was no need for him to know where Rosaleen was. I could spare her that much at least.

  He didn’t comment on Rosaleen, though. He seemed happy to carve up the arm of the rocking chair like he was all of eleven years old, putting his initials in a tree. I think he was glad he didn’t have to fool with her. I wondered how I would survive back in Sylvan. Without Rosaleen.

  Suddenly he stopped rocking, and the nauseating smile faded off his mouth. He was staring at my shoulder with his eyes squinted almost to the closed position. I looked down to see what had grabbed his attention and realized he was staring at the whale pin on my shirt.

  He got to his feet and walked over to me, deliberately stopping four or five feet away, like the pin had some kind of voodoo curse on it. “Where did you get that?” he said.

  My hand went up involuntarily and touched the little rhinestone spout. “August gave it to me. The woman who lives here.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not lying. She gave it to me. She said it belonged to—” I was afraid to say it. He didn’t know anything about August and my mother.

  His upper lip had gone white, the way it did when he was badly upset. “I gave that pin to your mother on her twenty-second birthday,” he said. “You tell me right now, how did this August woman get it?”

  “You gave this pin to my mother? You did?”

  “Answer me, damn it.”

  “This is where my mother came when she ran away from us. August said she was wearing it the day she got here.”

  He walked back to the rocker, shaken-looking, and eased down onto the seat. “I’ll be goddamned,” he said, so low I could hardly hear him.

  “August used to take care of her back when she was a little girl in Virginia,” I said, trying to explain.

  He stared into the air, into nothing. Through the window, out there in the Carolina summer, I could see the sun beating down on the roof of his truck, lighting up the tips of the picket fence that had all but disappeared under the jasmine. The truck was spattered with mud, like he’d been trolling the swamps looking for me.

  “I should have known.” He was shaking his head, talking like I wasn’t in the room. “I looked for her everywhere I could think. And she was right here. Jesus Christ, she was right here.”

  The thought seemed to awe him. He shook his head and looked around, as if thinking, I bet she sat in this chair. I bet she walked on this rug. His chin quivered slightly, and for the first time it hit me how much he must’ve loved her, how it had split him open when she left.

  Before coming here, my whole life had been nothing but a hole where my mother should have been, and this hole had made me different, left me always aching for something, but never once did I think what he’d lost or how it might’ve changed him.

  I thought about August’s words. People can start out one way, and by the time life gets through with them they end up completely different. I don’t doubt he started off loving your mother. In fact, I think he worshiped her.

  I had never known T. Ray to worship anyone except Snout, the dog love of his life, but seeing him now, I knew he’d loved Deborah Fontanel, and when she’d left him, he’d sunk into bitterness.

  He jabbed the knife into the wood and got to his feet. I looked at the handle sticking in the air, then at T. Ray as he walked around the room touching things, the piano, the hatrack, a Look magazine on the drop-leaf table.

  “Looks like you’re here by yourself?” he said.

  I could feel it coming. The end of everything.

  He walked straight toward me and reached for my arm. When I jerked away, he brought his hand across my face. T. Ray had slapped me lots of times before, clean, sharp smacks on the cheek, the kind that cause you to draw a quick, stunned breath, but this was something else, not a slap at all. This time he’d hit me full force. I’d heard the grunt of exertion escape his lips as the blow landed, seen the momentary bulge of his eyes. And I’d smelled the farm on his hand, smelled peaches.

  The impact threw me backward into Our Lady. She crashed onto the floor a second before I did. I didn’t feel the pain at first, but sitting up, gathering my feet under me, it slashed from my ear down to my chin. It caused me to drop back again onto the floor. I stared up at him with my hands clutched at my chest, wondering if he would pull me by my feet outside to his truck.

  He was shouting. “How dare you leave me! You need a lesson, is what you need!”

  I filled my lungs with air, tried to steady myself. Black Mary lay beside me on the floor, giving off the overpowering smell of honey. I remembered how we’d smoothed it into her, every little crack and grain till she was honey-logged and satisfied. I lay there afraid to move, aware of the knife stuck in the arm of the chair across the room. He kicked at me, his boot landing in my calf, like I was a tin can in the road that he might as well kick because it was there in front of him.

  He stood over me. “Deborah,” I heard him mumble. “You’re not leaving me again.” His eyes looked frantic, scared. I wondered if I’d heard him right.

  I noticed my hands still cupped over my chest. I pressed them down, hard into my flesh.

  “Get up!” he yelled. “I’m taking you home.”

  He had me by the arm in one swoop, lifting me up. Once on my feet, I wrenched away and ran for the door. He came after me and caught me by the hair. Twisting to face him, I saw he had the knife. He waved it in front of my face.

  “You’re going back with me!” he yelled. “You never should have left me.”

  It crossed my mind that he was no longer talking to me but to Deborah. Like his mind had snapped back ten years.

  “T. Ray,” I said. “It’s me—Lily.”

  He didn’t hear me. He had a fistful of my hair and wouldn’t let go. “Deborah,” he said.

  “Goddamn bitch,” he said.

  He seemed crazy with anguish, reliving a pain he’d kept locked up all this time, and now that it was loose, it had overwhelmed him. I wondered how far he’d go to try and take Deborah back. For all I knew, he might kill her.

  I am your everlasting home. I am enough. We are enough.

  I looked into his eyes. They were full of a strange fogginess. “Daddy,” I said.

  I shouted it. “Daddy!”

  He looked startled, then stared at me, breathing hard. He turned loose my hair and dropped the knife on the rug.

  I stumbled backward and caught myself. I he
ard myself panting. The sound filled up the room. I didn’t want him to see me look down at the knife, but I couldn’t help myself. I glanced over to where it was. When I looked back at him, he was still staring at me.

  For a moment neither of us moved. I couldn’t read his expression. My whole body was shaking, but I felt I had to keep talking. “I’m—I’m sorry I left like I did,” I said, taking small steps backward.

  The skin over his eyes sagged down onto his eyelids. He looked away, toward the window, like he was contemplating the road that had brought her here.

  I heard a creaking floorboard in the hallway outside. Turning, I saw August and Rosaleen at the door. I gave them a quiet signal with my hand, waving them away. I think I just needed to see it through by myself, to be with him while he came back to his senses. He seemed so harmless, standing there now.

  For a moment I thought they were going to ignore me and come in anyway, but then August put her hand on Rosaleen’s arm and they eased out of sight.

  When T. Ray turned back, he fastened his eyes on me, and there was nothing in them but an ocean of hurt. He looked at the pin on my shirt. “You look like her,” he said, and him saying that, I knew he’d said everything.

  I leaned over and picked up his knife, bent the blade closed, and handed it to him. “It’s all right,” I said.

  But it wasn’t. I had seen into the dark doorway that he kept hidden inside, the terrible place he would seal up now and never return to if he could help it. He seemed suddenly ashamed. I watched him pushing out his lips, trying to gather back his pride, his anger, all that thunderclap he’d first come striding in here with. His hands were moving in and out of his pockets.

  “We’re going home,” he said.

  I didn’t answer him, but walked over to Our Lady where she lay on the floor and lifted her upright. I could feel August and Rosaleen outside the door, could almost hear their breathing. I touched my cheek. It was swelling where he’d hit me.

  “I’m staying here,” I said. “I’m not leaving.” The words hung there, hard and gleaming. Like pearls I’d been fashioning down inside my belly for weeks.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said I’m not leaving.”

  “You think I’m gonna walk out of here and leave you? I don’t even know these damn people.” He seemed to struggle to make his words forceful enough. The anger had been washed out of him when he’d dropped the knife.

  “I know them,” I said. “August Boatwright is a good person.”

  “What makes you think she would even want you here?”

  “Lily can have a home here for as long as she wants,” August said, stepping into the room, Rosaleen right beside her. I went and stood with them. Outside, I heard Queenie’s car pull into the driveway. It had a muffler you couldn’t mistake. Apparently August had called the Daughters.

  “Lily said you’d run off,” T. Ray said to Rosaleen.

  “Well, I guess I’m back now,” she said.

  “I don’t care where the hell you are or where you end up,” he said to her. “But Lily’s coming with me.”

  Even as he said it, I could tell he didn’t want me, didn’t want me back on the farm, didn’t want to be reminded of her. Another part of him—the good part, if there was such a thing—might even be thinking that I’d be better off here.

  It was pride now, all pride. How could he back down?

  The front door opened, and Queenie, Violet, Lunelle, and Mabelee stumbled into the house, all wound up and looking like they had their clothes on backward. Queenie stared at my cheek. “Everybody all right?” she said, out of breath.

  “We’re all right,” said August. “This is Mr. Owens, Lily’s father. He came for a visit.”

  “I didn’t get an answer at Sugar-Girl’s or Cressie’s house,” Queenie said. The four of them lined up beside us, clutching their pocketbooks up against their bodies like they might have to use them to beat the living hell out of somebody.

  I wondered how we must look to him. A bunch of women—Mabelee four foot ten, Lunelle’s hair standing straight up on her head begging to be braided, Violet muttering, “Blessed Mary,” and Queenie—tough old Queenie—with her hands on her hips and her lip shoved out, every inch of her saying, I double-dog dare you to take this girl.

  T. Ray sniffed hard and looked at the ceiling. His resolve was crumbling all around him. You could practically see bits of it flaking off.

  August saw it, too. She stepped forward. Sometimes I forgot how tall she was. “Mr. Owens, you would be doing Lily and the rest of us a favor by leaving her here. I made her my apprentice beekeeper, and she’s learning the whole business and helping us out with all her hard work. We love Lily, and we’ll take care of her, I promise you that. We’ll start her in school here and keep her straight.”

  I’d heard August say more than once, “If you need something from somebody, always give that person a way to hand it to you.” T. Ray needed a face-saving way to hand me over, and August was giving it to him.

  My heart pounded. I watched him. He looked once at me, then let his hand drop to his side.

  “Good riddance,” he said, and moved toward the door. We had to open up our little wall of women to let him through.

  The front door banged against the back wall as he jerked it open and walked out. We all looked at each other and didn’t say a word. We seemed to have sucked all the air from the room and were holding it down in our lungs, waiting to be sure we could let it out.

  I heard him crank the truck, and before reason could stop me, I broke into a run, racing into the yard after him.

  Rosaleen called after me, but there was no time to explain.

  The truck was backing along the driveway, kicking up dirt. I waved my arms. “Stop, stop!”

  He braked, then glared at me through the windshield. Behind me, August, Rosaleen, and the Daughters rushed onto the front porch. I walked to the truck door as he leaned his head out the window.

  “I just have to ask you,” I said.

  “What?”

  “That day my mother died, you said when I picked up the gun, it went off.” My eyes were on his eyes. “I need to know,” I said. “Did I do it?”

  The colors in the yard shifted with the clouds, turned from yellow to light green. He ran his hand across his face, stared into his lap, then moved his eyes back to me.

  When he spoke, the roughness was gone from his voice. “I could tell you I did it. That’s what you wanna hear. I could tell you she did it to herself, but both ways I’d be lying. It was you who did it, Lily. You didn’t mean it, but it was you.”

  He looked at me a moment longer, then inched backward out of the driveway, leaving me with the smell of truck oil. The bees were everywhere, hovering over the hydrangea and the myrtle spread across the lawn, the jasmine at the wood’s edge, the lemon balm clustered at the fence. Maybe he was telling me the truth, but you could never know a hundred percent with T. Ray.

  He drove away slowly, not tearing down the road like I expected. I watched till he was gone from sight, then turned and looked at August and Rosaleen and the Daughters on the porch. This is the moment I remember clearest of all—how I stood in the driveway looking back at them. I remember the sight of them standing there waiting. All these women, all this love, waiting.

  I looked one last time at the highway. I remember thinking that he probably loved me in his own smallish way. He had forfeited me over, hadn’t he?

  I still tell myself that when he drove away that day he wasn’t saying good riddance; he was saying, Oh, Lily, you’re better off there in that house of colored women. You never would’ve flowered with me like you will with them.

  I know that is an absurd thought, but I believe in the goodness of imagination. Sometimes I imagine a package will come from him at Christmastime, not the same old sweater-socks-pajama routine but something really inspired, like a fourteen-karat-gold charm bracelet, and in his card he will write, “Love, T. Ray.” He will use the word “love,” a
nd the world will not stop spinning but go right on in its courses, like the river, like the bees, like everything. A person shouldn’t look too far down her nose at absurdities. Look at me. I dived into one absurd thing after another, and here I am in the pink house. I wake up to wonder every day.

  In the autumn South Carolina changed her color to ruby red and wild shades of orange. I watch them now from my upstairs room, the room June left behind when she got married last month. I could not have dreamed such a room. August bought me a new bed and a dressing table, white French Provincial from the Sears and Roebuck catalog. Violet and Queenie donated a flowered rug that had been laying around in their extra room going to waste, and Mabelee sewed blue-and-white polka dot curtains for the windows with fringe balls along the hem. Cressie crocheted four eight-legged octopuses out of various colors of yarn to sit on the bed. One octopus would have been enough for me, but it’s the only handicraft Cressie knows how to do, so she just keeps doing it.

  Lunelle created me a hat that outdid every other hat she’d ever made, including June’s wedding hat. It reminds me a little of the pope’s hat. It is tall, just goes up into the air and keeps going. It does have more roundness than the pope’s hat, however. I expected blue, but no, she sewed it in golds and browns. I think it’s supposed to be an old-fashioned beehive. I only wear it to the Daughters of Mary meetings, since anywhere else it would stop traffic for miles.

  Clayton comes over every week to talk to us about how he’s working things out for me and Rosaleen back in Sylvan. He says you cannot beat up somebody in jail and expect to get away with it. Even so, he says, they will drop all the charges against me and Rosaleen by Thanksgiving.

  Sometimes Clayton brings his daughter Becca over when he comes. She’s a year younger than me. I always picture her like she is in the photograph in his office, holding his hand, jumping a wave. I keep my mother’s things on a special shelf in my room, and I let Becca look at them but not touch. One day I will let her pick them up, since it seems that’s what a girlfriend would do. The feeling that they are holy objects is already starting to wear off. Before long I’ll be handing Becca my mother’s brush, saying, “Here, you wanna brush your hair with this?” “You wanna wear this whale pin?”