Sam, you astonished me. Somebody you met caused this? You who are solitary were affected by someone else? That woman must be possessed of such force and power like that of the wind that blows or the liquids that churn through my body. Potent forces exist in the universe and you’d been touched by one of them. But there was more to it than this. You’d read my last letter. You want to help me but don’t know how. If you smash rock against rock, something has to give, so you went insane.
At that moment, the distant buzzing became louder. I noticed my honey was flowing faster. Two drops fell from my bent elbow and landed on the tablecloth.
When Father entered the kitchen, Mother shoved the note in his face and yelled, “See! I did nothing to Sam. I should’ve done more to keep him here safe and sound. Now he’s in the hospital because someone, some slutty bitch in Europe, has ruined him. And you’re the one who always said he should go on dates!”
Father was silent for only an instant. “If me son had a girl, I say good for ’im. Good for ’im.”
“He’s completely shut down,” Mother murmured tearfully. “He won’t speak or open his mouth but just looks out the window.”
Are you thinking about me, Sam? Are you broken because you see it was wrong to break our bond? You can still find some way to help me, Sam. I believe it!
The buzzing crescendoed.
After dinner Mother took my hand and dragged me up the winding path leading to the highest viewpoint on the tallest cliff, where the Virgin Mary stands with her hands outstretched, her lips shut, her pupil-less eyes staring across the sea. Mother only comes to this spot during crises. Mary thrusts into the sky, and here the heavens were the closest we could get to them.
Yet even here, we could hear the distant buzzing. Mother said, “Just stand here, sweetie,” then turned and spoke into the wind. “God, strengthen me! Solidify me! I bring my daughter with me now so she can see the truth and not be as difficult as Sam was.” She dropped my hand, totally forgetting me as she spoke alone to her Lord. “God, I know I cling to You to compensate for my faults, the desperation and incompleteness at my centre that has made me shrill and hysterical, but what can I do with this rage that’s always within me? So many people in this town are losers. My husband ignores me and loves a stupid mermaid. What can I do about these forces that oppress? Sam is suffering; he eats rocks, and my dear daughter sweats honey. It’s all disastrous and now”—she pointed at the distant droning—“Satan’s minions are waiting on our doorstep.”
I concentrated on a crack in the earth by my feet. Sam, you always told me that to be outside the influence of Mother and her God, I should never raise my head. Whether the atmosphere was blue, black, or grey didn’t matter. The Earth was an ever-spinning merry-go-round—and it was there that the true source of life lies. Long ago I decided that this brittle, contradiction-filled woman, who can be so difficult to love, was not my real mother but the stepmother in a fairy tale. I believe my true mother lives in the sky! One day, I will lift my head and see her. She’ll be threading long, golden strings of solidified honey, surrounded by open jars and honey pots that are the same colour as her skin; her hair will flow in undulating waves over her neck and shoulders; her whole body will drip—mouth, breast, chin, knees—constantly flowing and being replenished by some hidden spring. As she spins her spinning wheel, the skin on her face will change hue like the shifting shades on a burning candle. She will call me by my name. I will step forward and, when we embrace, our skins will merge. So different she’ll be from this harsh woman beating her hands together beside me.
The wind stopped blowing. Mother took me in her arms and held me for a good while. “Everything will be fine.” She kissed me on the cheek. Then she stepped away and clenched her fists so tightly that the veins on her forearm bulged. “We’ll do something to make things right. God said so. We won’t screw up like with Sam. This time, we’ll watch.”
That evening she made Father install a lock on the outside of my bedroom door. He shrugged, asked, “What’s the point?” but obeyed. Mother explained, “It’s for you, Sue, if you start having problems. Sam fled at night, and we don’t want you to end up in his situation.” As she touched the new lock with one hand, she had a rare moment of insight. “Indeed, Sue, my religion didn’t make me who I am. I made my religion who I am.”
The next day the buzzing was so overpowering, the fish wouldn’t come near shore, and the men had to go farther out to sea in their boats. At school the buzzing made the fluorescent lights flicker, rattled the windows, vibrated my chair, and caused chalk dust to rise and fill the room with a pink fog. Estelle’s hairdo trembled on her head like a blonde jelly salad. Students glanced toward the windows and shifted in their chairs. Several times Mr Schmidt had to erase what he’d written on the board. “Excuse me,” he muttered.
My honey flow was especially heavy, yet no one tried to stick anything on me, distracted as they were by the deafening drone. The sound confused people and sapped their energy. I felt less visible.
As usual the final school bell rang at three-thirty. When I stepped out of the building, the buzzing abruptly ceased. Everyone on the street lifted their heads. The world hung suspended in an eerie silence. Girls clutched books like shields against their chests. A group of boys stood still as a basketball bounced once, twice, struck the curb, and scuttled away.
For the first time in weeks, we heard bushes rustle in the wind. A bird chirped. From a window, a transistor radio. The sky was extremely clear. However, the stillness did not feel like stasis. Nothing was resolved. The air seemed tense and forcibly contained like a breath held in.
I breathed quickly, my chest rising and falling. My honey flow was so rapid that drops hung in rows along my pant hems and the ends of my sleeves; with each step I took, honey splattered onto the sidewalk. I reached the empty field near my parents’ house. I stepped into the open space. When I was exactly half-way across, suddenly the deafening buzzing started up like a stereo kicked on at full-blast. I looked up and saw that the sky was filled with a hundred gyrating inkblots. Each blot seemed to contain hordes of buzzing bees. I stood stock-still as the blots came together at the centre of the sky to form a giant axe-like shape. Its edges rippled, as if seen through water. The axe drifted slowly northward, inched slightly to the east. The buzz-roar steadily crescendoed, then quickly stopped. In an uncanny silence, when it seemed the whole world was listening, the shape began to fall down toward the Earth, toward the empty plain, toward me standing in the field’s centre like a bull’s eye.
I screamed and ran toward the southern part of the field, but the form was falling there; I charged east, but saw the shape was falling there too. The axe was falling everywhere at once.
I searched the open field for a place to hide. There were no ditches, ruts, or gopher holes, just solid crabgrass-covered ground and a few scraggly anthills. Could I burrow underground? I scratched at the stony soil and foolishly pulled up rocks from the earth. The shadow on the earth grew darker. Gasping, I turned round to see the underside of the vast, black shape descending toward me. I cried out every formula I knew to save me. “Help, Mr Schmidt, help! Mother Mary, protect me! Sam, rescue me! Holy Spirit fill me! Ten plus ten equals twenty!” I screamed to every God that existed, but in the end could only fall backwards to the earth.
The back of my skull struck a protruding stone, my vision blurred, my eyelids closed. When I opened my eyes, for one split-second I saw a horrific, black cloud of writhing insects with glistening, armoured torsos, jointed pelvises, legs clawing like flailing multi-jointed fingers, silver wings twisting like twirling blades of cutlery, and jet-black stingers pointed straight down like diviner’s rods.
The buzzing blanket of eyes, legs, and pelvises fell upon me and covered my body completely as my heart beat wildly like a fist in a cage and honey flowed in torrents along all the surface of my skin. The bees swarmed along my arms, legs, neck, face; they slid under my T-shirt, flowed beneath the elastic in my training bra, streamed
up through the bottom of my pants, along my legs, and crossed under the elasticized line on my panties. They lapped and leapt, snorted, buzzed, and spit.
Thump-thump, went my heartbeat. Thump-thump went my heart. I shall listen to my heart and it shall save me. I shall listen to my heart and I’ll be free.
Yet as the bees’ black-armoured bodies frenetically writhed and shook, as they clambered in and out of my ears, leapt from my upper lip to my lower, crawled in scrabbling masses along my scalp and through the forest of my hair, lapping at the honey tears that flowed in rivulets down my cheeks, I realized I was not harmed. The bees had not touched me with their stingers. I only felt a million tongues licking the pores of my skin and creating a warmth in my navel, a tingling in the crevice behind my ears, a slight tickling on the pale flesh of my inner thigh, and a pleasant scratch-scratching about the follicles on my scalp. My breathing became regular, and though still frightened, I thought, soon they’ll be finished; any moment now, they’ll leave.
The velvety fur on their backs brushed gently against the inner dome of my armpits, pressed against the sensitive skin on the underside of my jaw. I gazed into the black-bead eye of one bee who peered back into my own from its place by my lower lash. Its body shivered. Its eyes clung to each side of its head like tiny balls of mercury. I wondered, what colour are bees’ eyelids? I waited for it to blink but thought, do bees even have eyelids?
All at once several bees shot up into the air. The others followed and formed a roaring, black blanket that hovered and rippled over my body. The shape dissolved as the insects dispersed, flying in all directions at once.
I sat alone in the empty field.
I touched my arm to discover my skin was licked clean and was as smooth as polished porcelain. Still shaken, I walked home sobbing quietly. When I entered our kitchen, Mother asked sharply, “What’s the matter? You look flushed.”
“It’s very windy.”
That evening I went back to the spot where I’d met the bees. I noticed that the sky was again very clear. I remembered the softness of the bees’ fur, the slight tickling as their twig-like legs stepped hesitantly about the hair in my armpits, and the ululating warmth as their stingers stroked the skin behind my knees. The wind was blowing again. I listened deeply into the distance, heard a cow mooing and an old woman calling, “Come home, Madeleine, come home!”
Having at last admitted I would never belong to a circle of friends at school, I wondered if I could be absorbed by something else, something unknown and so bizarre and beyond logic that it seemed to have sprung from the depths of my own imagination. I snaked my hand up my shirt sleeve and felt the return of that fetid stickiness. For the first time, I felt happy to be who I was.
The next morning we woke to a town bursting with swollen-headed flowers that had bloomed overnight. Pollen-carrying bees buzzed in tremulous haloes about the open mouths of moisture-beaded tulips, lush frilly-skirted chrysanthemums, and rouge-lipped gardenias, which lined sidewalks, filled parks, exploded in riotous displays of colour in once-meagre rock-gardens or crept up the peeling walls of wooden bungalows. From a distance the long-stemmed roses wavered like lipstick smudges in an air now laden with the dizzying odour of floral perfume rather than salt.
Girls ran laughing from house to house picking flowers while boys charged through clouds of bees that, though ubiquitous, were continually out of reach. My mother, terrified by the profusion of blooms in our backyard, closed the blinds and swore she wouldn’t go outside even if God ordered her to.
In school, boys fidgeted beside laughing girls who’d placed tulips behind their ears, in their hair, or in the V-cleavage of dresses. Unfortunately, Estelle looked magnificent. I was completely ignored, which pleased me. No one stuck anything on me; the days of Sue the garbage hedgehog seemed over. As I sat writing my essay on the War of 1812, I luxuriated in the glow of my beautiful secret: Cartwright had blossomed because of me.
That afternoon when I left school, the streets were eerily silent. I entered the field and, as before, the roaring swarms of bees gathered in the sky, then descended. I was ready for them this time. My sweat flowed in a honey-torrent over the exposed expanses of my body. I laughed and screamed with delight as they licked and leapt, crawled, nestled, frolicked, snorted or, crouching on the cliff edges of my lower eyelids, stared right into me. Then they disappeared, and I rose feeling cleansed and refreshed.
Back home, Mother was pounding cookie-dough with both fists. She looked at me and narrowed her eyes. Since the bees’ arrival, she’d lost the ability to speak in tongues. Their presence in the atmosphere cut off her access to the Holy Spirit, and when she closed her eyes and raised her hands, she caught high-frequency soundwaves that had nothing to do with God. Yesterday she’d opened her mouth and a shriek like microphone feedback emerged. Flustered, she tried again and caught the radio waves of CBNK: “This song’s to Donna from George who says you’re one hot baby doll.” Now Mother put the cookies in the oven, sat down, and braced herself. She’d make another attempt. She shut her eyes and opened her lips, but this time a man’s gravel voice emerged. “These walkie-talkies work, Gladys. Lets me know what time your husband leaves and I’ll comes out of the bushes.”
Mother covered her face. “Oh God, what have I done? Am I not working hard enough? Sue, tell me if you’re involved in this!” She rummaged through my closet and dresser drawers for clues, happy to find nothing. She wrote a letter to the newspaper urging that the bees’ hives be found and destroyed. “So many insects is unnatural,” she argued. She didn’t mention God this time, but still the letter wasn’t published. “They laugh at what I send,” she snapped. “They think I’m a weirdo.”
I began to commune with my insects daily. I indulged eagerly, but it was a guilty pleasure. I felt slightly perverse and was terrified of getting caught, so now I waited for the insects in a clearing outside town. We’d meet, then run up and down the bare rock hills, the bees roaring behind me like a furnace; their swarm changed shape—it was like an amoeba, a huge question mark, a whirlpool, or a spinning Ferris wheel. The wind was a giant hand pushing my back as I charged into valleys, up hillsides, over streambeds, along the shores of crystalline lakes, by foaming waterfalls that sprayed and rumbled, in and out of fog-clouds that blew in from the ocean. Brother, you said the pressure in rocks is what moves life forward, but I believe it is the air that drives us, that churns the sea, that brought the bees from their faraway home to be with me.
On the softest spot of earth in the bare field, I’d fall backward, the bees would descend, and I’d be cocooned in the most beautiful darkness imaginable. Although the bees numbered in the thousands, I could distinguish some of them. Each had his or her own habits and I gave names to my favourites. Drooper was the bee whose stinger slanted diagonally to the right. Fuzz-Bucket had an inordinate amount of hair on his forehead. Q-Tip had a long, narrow body with two bulbous ends. Einstein was always pondering the mole on my right cheek. The Dabbler repeatedly touched her stinger over and over to the same eyebrow hair, while Cowardly Kim lingered outside my right nostril wanting to go in, I assumed, but afraid he’d get lost.
I became addicted to the bees, Sam. I just couldn’t stop.
At dinner, Mother announced, “Sam has started to speak again. Apparently he actually smiles.” Are you thinking about ways to help me, Sam? “He asks the doctors questions. But if anyone mentions Europe, he clams up. He hates that whole continent and finds Switzerland particularly disgusting. I think that’s a good sign.” You are gathering strength, Sam. I am glad.
Father now spent even more time staring into the ocean depths from his boat. I no longer tried to stop my honey flow. I still visited Dr Merton regularly, but he despaired of finding the reason for my ailment. I suspected its cause was beyond what science understood.
Lying alone on my bed, I’d play honey games. I’d place a fingertip against my leg and lift it to make a luxuriously undulating syrup string. Or I’d clasp then separate my hands to creat
e a gooey cat’s cradle. I’d press my lower jaw against my neck and repeatedly raise it, delighting in the wonderful thwuh-thwuh sound.
Running with my bees, I’d hold both my arms straight over my head and point my fingers so that my hands and body formed one giant stinger—at such moments I felt I was a bee myself. I’d stop running and the bees would rush ahead, land on whatever was before us—a knotted tree, a wooden fence, or telephone pole—and the ones who got there first would drive their stingers in. Each time twenty or thirty bees expired and lay stingerless below the pocked wood. I didn’t play this game often as I didn’t want to deplete my swarm, but it was a wonderful sport and I enjoyed it immensely.
The kids at school were too occupied with their new lovers to bother ostracizing me. Everywhere love had blossomed thanks to the thousands of blooming flowers, a side-effect of the bees’ arrival. Estelle now had two boyfriends, there were no school virgins left, and Mr Schmidt’s wife was pregnant with twins. The old lady on Brown Street was engaged to her gardener, the mayor was having an affair with the baker’s wife, and fishermen hesitated before cracking fish’s heads with mallets. At town council meetings, representatives winked at each other across boardroom tables and stirred coffee in cups decorated with hearts. In the hospital, nurses asked out doctors who longed to French-kiss patients. Workers at Dairy-Freeze always had ice cream on their faces, and production in the steel foundry slowed because workers took flirt-breaks.
While I enjoyed my new invisibility, I resented that the students who’d tortured me were now happy. Every time I saw a smouldering dog turd, I remembered how they’d felt on my back. When I came upon a rotting lobster claw on the beach, I pictured it stuck to my cheek. One afternoon after playing with my new friends, I glared at the small pile of dead bees below a stinger-filled birch and had a deliciously horrible idea.
The Lava in My Bones Page 10