The Honey Bus

by Meredith May

  On one of our drives to Big Sur, I finally asked him why he was a beekeeper.

  “Well, my dad kept bees, and his father kept bees, and my cousins kept bees. There were beehives on the Post Ranch, where my mother was born. Her daddy and granddad keep bees, so I guess I just did, too.”

  “Why do you like it?”

  We slowed to a stop on Highway 1 as an RV in front of us lumbered toward one of the oceanside pullouts, where tourists were snapping photos of the single-arch Bixby Bridge that connected two sections of coastline. Grandpa waited patiently with the truck idling.

  “Well...you can work by yourself. People don’t bother you. You have to move slowly when you work the bees, so it’s a job that’s calm, I suppose. And people always like it when I give them honey.”

  The RV was out of our way now, and Grandpa exchanged a wave with the driver as we continued south.

  “And Big Sur is a good place for bees,” Grandpa continued.

  “Why?”

  “I have to take good care of them and put them in a place where they can fly free.”

  I was confused. Can’t bees fly wherever they wanted?

  He unscrewed his thermos while keeping one hand on the steering wheel, and handed the cup to me, signaling me to fill it with coffee. I waited for him to let the caffeine kick in, and then he rolled down his window and rested his elbow on the door, settling in to explain something to me.

  “There are three different kinds of beekeepers,” he began.

  Hobbyists, he said, keep a handful of hives to learn about bees and harvest a little honey; sideliners like himself run small businesses with more than a hundred hives in fixed locations; and then there are the big guys with thousands of hives who truck their bees across the country to pollinate huge agricultural farms.

  “Those migratory beekeepers don’t even bother with honey. They make all their money renting bees to farmers,” he said.

  I had never imagined beekeeping any other way than how Grandpa did it. He worked in harmony with the bees, attuned to their needs. It was hard to believe that outside Big Sur it was the other way around. Bees were shuttled on the highways and forced to work for humans.

  “Where are all those bees going?”

  Mostly to the almond farms in the Central Valley, he said. There aren’t enough bees in the whole state to pollinate all the almond flowers, and the trees depend on bees because their pollen is too heavy for the wind to carry. Beekeepers come in from other states, and use forklifts to lower their hives into the orchards, leaving the bees there for several weeks in spring to pollinate rows and rows of almond trees as far as the eye can see. Bees need a diet of diverse pollen to stay healthy, he said, but traveling bees are forced to eat the same thing, day in and out.

  “Imagine eating a hot dog every day for a month; then a hamburger every day for a month,” Grandpa said. “What do you think would happen to you?”

  “I’d probably throw up,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  Once the bees finish pollinating one farm, the beekeepers retrieve their hives and haul them to the next crop in bloom, unleashing their bees on cherry farms in Stockton or apple orchards in Washington. Bees-for-hire toil from February to August, which means that a typical honeybee in America spends more time on a highway than in the wild.

  “That’s why I don’t move my bees,” Grandpa said. “I think those commercial bees are stressed out. It’s not natural to take bees out of their environment. They get disoriented, and it takes them a while to establish themselves again. It’s too hard on their system.”

  It’s not the traveling alone that does the bees in, Grandpa said. It’s also the crop pesticides the bees pick up and absorb into the architecture of their hives. Like living in a home with lead-based paint, the exposure can be undetectable at first, but over time the bees develop nervous system disorders, lose the ability to fly and die.

  “That’s why I put my bees in a place far away from people, where there are no chemicals. So I can protect them.”

  Grandpa’s bees were safe, but now I was worried for the traveling bees. Were they all going to get sick and die?

  “Are bees in trouble?”

  “Not yet,” Grandpa said. “But if we keep treating them like slaves, we could lose bees for good.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we don’t eat.”

  There was the answer to my question. Grandpa was a beekeeper because he understood the things that really mattered.

  He knew that there should be a balance between the taking and the giving a person does in one lifetime. That a good relationship, between bees and humans, or two middle school classmates, or between a mother and daughter, all needs to start from a mutual understanding that the other is precious.

  13

  Hot Water

  1982

  Not long after I started middle school, there was an abrupt change to my family’s living arrangements. The rental house next door became available, and Granny seized her opportunity. No sooner had the neighbor lady, who made wicker bassinets, packed up her last bit of thread than Granny had an announcement: Mom, me and Matthew were moving in and she would pay the rent. As part of the deal, Mom would need to get a job to pay for utilities and groceries. The carrot worked. Mom found part-time work as a loan officer in a bank. Finally, seven years after we arrived, Granny was getting her house back.

  Our new home was even tinier than Granny and Grandpa’s, had no shower or heat, and the floorboards were warped in places, but it was all ours. The linoleum in both the bathroom and kitchen was chipped and cracked, the screen door listed to one side, and there were cigarette burns in the moss green carpet, but none of it mattered because I believed this little rundown house was where we were going to finally become a family again. Out from under Granny’s wing, Mom could start over as our parent. This house would be our comeback, and maybe, just maybe, one day when things were all better again I could invite Sophia over.

  There were two bedrooms at opposite ends of the house. Mom took one, and Matthew and I would share the other one, which had been converted from a garage. Our bedroom door opened to three descending steps, and the floor was concrete and covered with a thin tan carpet pad instead of an actual carpet. There were two windows, at waist level, on opposite walls. The room was cold, and the rough-hewn knotted pine walls lacked insulation, but its saving grace was two closets, giving Matthew and me our first bits of personal space.

  Granny went to the auction house in Monterey for our furniture. She bought a set of bunk beds and a vintage Western dresser with an age-spotted mirror for my brother and me to share. The auction house delivered a twin bed, a laminated wood dresser and a one-drawer side table for Mom’s room. Couches were too pricey, so Granny bought a scratchy floral print love seat with wooden armrests instead. It was the only seating in our living room, and the most impractical choice for three because only two people could sit on it at once. We became the new owners of a flimsy bookcase that wobbled when you took a book out, and a six-inch black-and-white television with rabbit ears that Mom placed on the mantel over the fireplace, where it was too far to see from the love seat. The final touch was a portable record player that she set on top of the tiled coffee table, so she could play her three albums in rotation: Saturday Night Fever, Grease and The Bee Gees. Mom decorated with macramé plant holders and spider ferns she picked up at garage sales.

  On move-in day, Matthew and I carefully arranged and rearranged our clothes and shoes in our two closets.

  “Hey,” Matthew said. He poked his head out of his closet, where he was stacking his Lego sets on the shelf.

  “What.”

  “Is there anything to eat in the kitchen?”

  “Go look.”

  “No, you.”

  “You’re such a baby,” I snapped.

  The refrigerator was an avocad
o color, to match the oven. I winged open the door and found little on offer: a six-pack of Fresca, an enormous tub of low-fat cottage cheese, celery sticks, half a shriveled grapefruit and a package of English muffins. Mom was dieting again. I opened all the cupboards until I spotted a bowl, and spooned some cottage cheese in.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  I jumped back, feeling suddenly guilty.

  Mom whisked the bowl from the counter and tipped the contents back into the cottage cheese container, resealed the lid and returned it to the fridge. She slammed the door for emphasis.

  “First of all, that’s food I bought for me. You can’t just take things around here,” she said. “Second of all, don’t leave the refrigerator door open like that. You’ll let all the cold air out.”

  And thus the new order was established: the house was hers, and Matthew and I just happened to be living in one small corner of it. I washed the empty bowl and tried to remember Grandpa’s advice to not let Mom upset me. I wanted to protest but knew it was futile. When Mom got mad, she was like a train in motion that couldn’t be pulled off the tracks. She had that prickly kind of anger that wanted to attach itself to everyone around her, as if she already knew she was going to be mad for the rest of her life and wanted company. I said nothing while I dried the bowl and returned it to the cupboard, leaving her waiting for an apology as I returned to my new bedroom. It had been naive to think Mom would find Matthew and me less irritating simply because we switched locations. A person’s beliefs don’t change with the scenery. I let my hope go just as easily as it came, a pretty ribbon fluttering out of my hand. Matthew’s face fell when he saw me return empty-handed.

  “Let’s go check Granny’s fridge,” I said.

  Over the next few weeks, we learned Mom’s house rules. The food was carefully separated into diet sodas and low-sugar snacks for her, and microwave meals for us to heat up on our own: frozen burritos, hamburgers and TV dinners. But her possessiveness extended far beyond groceries. My brother and I needed permission to turn on the television, use the phone, or plug in the space heater. Now that she had bills to consider, Mom calculated every watt and every drop of water we used. When one of us took a bath, Mom listened outside the door and banged on it when we hit her perceived water limit. My brother and I learned to use the appliances before she got home from work, and to turn the television off at least an hour before her arrival so it would cool off and not give us away. She retaliated by dragging the TV into her bedroom so we couldn’t use it. Then she dragged the phone in. Then the radio, until eventually we saw less of her than we had at the old house. It didn’t take Matthew and me long to migrate back to Granny and Grandpa’s home for warm meals, uninterrupted showers and television.

  When she couldn’t cover the bills, Mom started migrating next door, too. First, to save money she canceled her garbage service and started putting her trash bags in Granny and Grandpa’s cans. She did her laundry at Granny’s to save on water. Then she came over to borrow milk, or butter, or filch some wood from Grandpa’s woodpile. Granny started giving her a monthly allowance so she’d stay in her own house.

  My favorite place in the new rental house was the bathroom because it afforded the one spot of true privacy. I liked to disappear for a good hour in the tub reading one of my Hardy Boys mystery books until the water went cold. I was doing exactly this one afternoon when I got the idea that I could extend my bath and read longer if I let some of the tepid water out and reheated with more hot. I knew it was risky because Mom might hear that I was using more than a tubful of water, but if I just pried up the bath plug a millimeter with my toe and let the water trickle out quietly, maybe she wouldn’t hear it. It took a long time, but eventually I’d let out half the water. I turned the hot faucet slightly, and put the washcloth under the stream to muffle the sound. The warmth of my glorious insurrection pooled around my legs, and when steam rose again from the water, I relaxed back with my book once more.

  Two sentences in, I heard footsteps gathering speed, and the bathroom door burst open with a bang. Mom wrenched off the tap, grabbed the book out of my hand and chucked it into the wall. She grabbed the side of the tub and leaned toward me so that her hot breath mixed with mine. She seemed feline, like she was leaning in to smell my fear.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  I tried not to make any sudden movements. She and I both knew exactly what I had been doing. Stealing water. Mom grabbed my upper arm and yanked me out of the tub so fast that I had to cling to her to keep from stumbling. I found my footing and stood there dripping as she blocked the exit with her body. She was seething, her face a shade of red I’d never seen.

  “Don’t think you’re smarter than me,” she said, jabbing her finger at me.

  “I don’t.”

  I was starting to shiver. I needed to figure out how I could get around her and out the door. Maybe if I apologized.

  “I’m sick and tired of both you kids wasting water. You seem to think I’m made of money. Well, listen and listen good—I’m not.”

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered.

  Truth was, I wasn’t sorry at all. I was mad as a teapot. Water consumption never came up in Sophia’s house. If we needed to wash dishes or take a shower or flush the toilet, we didn’t think twice. But at home I fretted over water all the time, and just the sight of it made my stomach knot up worrying about its preciousness. I knew I shouldn’t have tried to take more than my share. My mind scrabbled around trying to figure out how to calm her down and get a towel.

  “You don’t sound sorry.”

  “Can I have a towel?”

  Mom narrowed her eyes. “I’m not finished with you.”

  I didn’t know if she had just given me a reprieve, or a threat. But I didn’t wait to find out. I lunged for the towel rack and ripped down a towel, then scooted behind her and out the door before she had time to react. I ran for the bedroom hoping Matthew was there, because two of us stood a better chance against one.

  Before my mind had time to register what was happening, I felt her weight land like a mattress on my back. I pitched forward and landed on the carpet with such force that the wind knocked out of me. I felt time stop as I searched for my breath again, and then felt myself being rolled like a rag doll onto my back, and then Mom pinning me underneath her like a wrestler. Her body pressed on me like a bag of sand, and I gasped for air.

  “All you kids do is take, take, take! After all I’ve done for you! I’ve had to do this all on my own, but do I ever get a thank you? Nooooooooooo!”

  My heart thumped against her inner thigh as I slapped at her arms and tried to buck, but I was trapped. Adrenaline coursed through me, and I thrashed as hard as I could, but I couldn’t budge her. We were like two cats pawing at one another as she tried to grasp my flailing arms. Finally she caught my wrists and wrenched my arms to my chest, where she held them folded. Her lips tightened in fury and she shouted over me, at a spot on the wall.

  “You have no idea the hell I lived with!” Her nonsensical outburst shocked me into submission, and I stopped struggling, uncertain of what was happening. She seemed to be talking to someone I couldn’t see.

  “Nobody liked me. Nobody EVER liked me!”

  A quiet terror filled my lungs. Mom was somewhere else in her mind, in an altered state where I couldn’t reach her. The voice that came out of her was familiar, but much younger, how I imagined she sounded as a small girl. It seemed possible that she wasn’t even aware of what she was doing. And this was most frightening of all, because what if she was capable of doing far, far worse to me? I begged for release, but my words bounced off her, unheard. Her anguish distilled into a one-word drumbeat.

  “Nobody! Nobody! Nobody!”

  She buried her hands in my wet hair, curled her fingers around two hanks of it and pulled. An instant, white pain of a thousand needles pricked my scalp. Sh
e yanked my head side to side, and we were both screeching now, unintelligible sounds like trapped animals wailing for rescue. I felt my follicles rip away, and from the corner of my eye I saw my hair slip from her fingers and flutter to the ground. I squirmed to get loose, but she shifted her weight slightly to block my escape. I had no way out.

  I went limp, giving in to whatever was coming next. I closed my eyes and saw myself sinking toward the bottom of a dark ocean, floating farther and farther away from her. As I descended, it got quieter and quieter, until her screams dissolved. I gently floated down to the bottom without sight, without sound. As I rested on the soft sand, retracting steel doors slammed down around all four sides of my heart, boxing it in where she would never reach it again.

  That’s when I made up my mind that I no longer belonged to her. As soon as the thought came to me, a warm light broke through the darkness all the way to the seafloor, warming my skin all over. I was free. She could do whatever she wanted to me now, and it wouldn’t matter. I was mine now, and would never again be hers. Relief enclosed me in a cocoon, knowing that I didn’t have to love her simply because she was my mother. All I had to do was survive her, and one day I could leave her for good. Grandpa was right. If I just obeyed and kept out of her way, I’d survive. My body was imprisoned beneath her, but my mind didn’t have to be. The thought made me smile.

  “Oh, you think this is funny?”

  She raised her palm and her slap was quick and sharp, sending an electric jolt across my cheek. I tried to cover my face with my hands and turn my head away, and through my fingers I spotted Matthew coming out of the bedroom just as Mom swiped her fingernails across my opposite cheek.

  “Mom!” he shouted. “Stop hitting her!”

  His voice landed on her like a lasso and she instantly stilled. She looked down at me with a quizzical expression, as if she didn’t recognize me. She gasped once, rolled off me and slumped on the carpet, her shoulders heaving. I scuttled like a crab in the opposite direction, backing up to the wall so I could keep my eyes on her. She was sobbing now, rocking back and forth with her arms wrapped around her knees. I reached up and touched my hairline, and pressed on the bald spot to make it stop throbbing. I rose to my feet and crept on wobbly legs along the wall to the bedroom, and quickly pulled on some clothes. I heard the bedroom door creak on its hinges, and froze.