I waited outside the change room and, after the girls filed out for soccer practice, I rushed in and slid the plastic clothes-filled crates from their cubicles. It took a while to find one that contained a dress. I snatched a pink one and shoved it up my shirt. God, I hoped it was Estelle’s. She’d dressed up today, probably to impress her new boyfriends. This dress could be anyone’s, since her friends were now buying clothes from Esther. I scurried into the hall, out the door, and past the crowded football field. On the first street I headed west and didn’t stop running until I’d reached the clearing outside town.
When I got there, I noticed something odd: My honey had stopped flowing. It was only when I removed the dress from under my shirt where it was pressing against my skin that honey again began to seep from my pores.
I shook the dress out and examined it. Pink, made of satin, with a small steel hoop inside the waist. Unfortunately the dress was too big for Estelle but probably belonged to one of her cronies, which was almost as good. I pulled the dress over a bushel of hay and placed a rock on top to resemble a head. I placed my “scarecrow” in the centre of the clearing.
When my bees arrived, I sicced them on it. Oh, how I laughed and clapped my hands as the insects shoved their stingers through the lace on the chest, the ruffles on the short sleeves. When finished, I had them attack three, four, five more times!
The next day I did something I hadn’t done for weeks. I waited for my bees in the park near my parents’ house. The insects arrived in their whirling swarm and, as usual, I held my arms out like airplane wings, ran, and they followed me like a giant swinging tail. As we neared a row of clapboard houses, I feared someone would see me so I made a quick detour through the forest. I hid behind the hillock a block from the school where boys had once thrown glass at me, my chin pressed into a dirt groove bordered by ragweed. Before my eyes, a cluster of bull thistles; between them, a sliver of the empty, sunlit street. The black bees spun in a halo above me. I smelled dust and manure.
Soon two boys appeared, talking and throwing a football back and forth. One said, “Wow, check it out!”
“Holy shit.”
I ducked.
The silence was very long. When the boys spoke again, their voices sounded closer but shrunken, shorn of bravado. “Fuckin’ awesome. I never saw so many together like that.”
“Wouldn’t wanna piss ’em off.”
“Must be a honey pot there.”
“Throw the ball at them; see what they do.”
“You fucking crazy? Let’s go.”
Soon I heard only the distant chuff-chuff of the ball being caught. I lifted my head, peeked into the visible sliver of street. Beside my eye, a curling thorn. My bees circled, circled.
In the distance I made out two pink, floating blurs. My heart pounded. My fingers clenched into fists. My entire body stiffened. Estelle. Estelle. Please, let it be Estelle. I heard a cry. They’d seen the bees. I pushed my face down between two rocks. The girls approached.
“So many!” A tinny, nasal voice. I recognized it instantly as Mary-Lou’s.
“Oh my God.” A lower reedy voice. Millie McAllister. She’d assisted with the turd brigade. Two of Estelle’s pals. If I couldn’t get the queenpin, I could knock off her henchmen.
“There must be flowers on the other side of the hill.”
“Probably.”
I was surprised when three bees flew out of the spinning whirlpool and headed straight for the girls in their rayon dresses. Mary-Lou and Millie screamed.
I raised my head. They’d run out of the visible sliver of street.
Now was my chance. I jumped up and leapt off the hillock. My soles landed so hard on the ground, I lost balance and fell. The girls’ backs were receding down Bluebird Lane. They’d stopped running and walked hand in hand, their heads down. The bee cloud reeled and roared. I inhaled deeply, joined my hands, locked my elbows, raised my arms above my head, pressed my two index fingers together to form a massive prong at the top of my body. I bent my torso forward and ran straight on.
My feet pounded against the earth like fists, and the whirring bee wings sent breezes down across my body and over the ground; leaves, dust, even pebbles were lifted from the earth. When I glimpsed a faint fog of pink just ahead, I rammed my feet into the ground with such force that my body lurched, then froze with my stinger aimed frontward. The bees hurtled forth like a flaming ball flung from a sling-shot. I spun around and ran back toward the hillock. Behind me, I heard a blood-curdling scream and Mary-Lou’s “Oh, Millie! Millie!”
Without looking back, I jumped over the hillock and ran north into the woods where I followed a meandering, rock-strewn trail. I dashed along bare hills topped with sticks in teepee formations. I heard the cry of an ambulance, distant shouts. Into the woods I charged, past boulders draped with moss, through clouds of gnats that entered my mouth and flew up my nostrils. I reached a gravel road full of puddle-filled craters, turned west, and kept running. I stopped only when I came to the one-lane bridge. Its walls of steel criss-crossed upward to its roof, whose intersecting lines split the sky into triangles.
Arriving in my empty field, I threw my arms up, laughed, danced, and sang. Soon my bees appeared in the sky. They descended en masse. I fell to the earth and offered them the nectar that was only mine to give.
The following day, our principal stood before us in the school auditorium. Head bowed, he spoke solemnly. “Yesterday Millie McAllister was attacked by bees and taken to the hospital. She survived but is in great pain.”
It took all of my self-control not to burst out laughing. I bit my lower lip, put my face in my hands, and pretended to sob. I thought, next time I’ll get Estelle.
After school I returned to the hillock and waited with my swirling bees. This time no one approached. Even the boys kept their distance. Between the thistle stems, I saw a distant cloud of pink. Again I ran with my arms pressed together above my head. I stopped a block away from the girls, afraid they might turn my way. I fled into the trees, but my wonderful bees charged on ahead. Both girls were attacked this time. Unfortunately neither was Estelle, but one was her cousin and the other an Estelle groupie.
The third day I returned to the hillock and saw boys kicking in the dirt and throwing rocks at trees, so I waited until they left.
Over the next week I sicced my bees on anyone wearing one of Esther’s dresses. I discovered that I didn’t need to use the hillock and could hide behind garbage bins, mailboxes, or wide-trunked trees. Though I rejoiced in my daily successes, I was terrified of getting caught.
The townspeople viewed the first bee attack as a fluke. The second, an unlucky coincidence. The third was part of an emerging pattern. The fourth created panic. After the fifth, Cartwright was consumed by complete hysteria. We even got a headline in the Labrador Gazette: “Killer Bees Ravage Seaside Town.” In class, students sat quavering with fear. After school, parents drove their children home. I feigned anxiety and reminded myself not to smile.
All the next week there were emergency meetings of the town council, discussions between the mayor and biologists, doctors, and priests. After lengthy debate, the cause of the bee attacks was identified. The enemy was—flowers. The flowers had brought the bees here. Before roses and tulips grew in riotous profusion in Cartwright’s gardens, our town was placid and safe. Innocent children were not attacked. If our streets could return to their former state, peace would prevail. The mayor made a public pronouncement: “All flowers shall be cut down and burned in order to starve these bees and make Cartwright undesirable to them. Anyone refusing to destroy their flowerbeds or who is caught with bulbs or seed packets faces fines.”
Throughout Cartwright, petunias, gardenias, calla lilies, and roses were placed in stacks and set on fire. The town was full of the smell of perfume and burning ruffage. Bonfires blazed in every yard. The Atlantic easterlies whipped the flames into such high walls of fire that people feared their wooden houses would be engulfed. There was a correspon
ding rash of couple break-ups. Estelle lost all her boyfriends. No one talked of love anymore at the town council meetings.
Walking between the fragrant walls of flame, I threw my head back and snorted, delighting in the secret I carried in the very centre of my body.
“I told you something bad would happen when those bees came.” Mother was ecstatic. “Nobody believed me. They said I was the freak, but I showed those suckers.” Her increased confidence alarmed me. She immediately drilled me on Millie. Did I like her? Were we friends?
I kept my eyes lowered and muttered, “No, I don’t know her …”
She delicately kissed my forehead. “Thanks for being so good.” Then she abruptly rolled back her head, opened her mouth and sang forth the Lotto-Labrador winners, “1–5–4–7–3. And the daily double goes to 2–4–8 …” She’d resisted secular speaking-in-tongues; glossolalia in all forms was a gift from God. Besides, I think Mother realized that she was so full of tensions that if she didn’t release them, she’d explode.
The next day she went to the school, as she’d often done when you were here, Sam, and harassed the teachers. “Not enough is being done to protect students from bees. Security guards should be hired. I worry about my own daughter. And there’s still too much teaching of science without values,” she added. She knew such comments did nothing, but she was feeling powerful and longed to assert herself.
“The people at that school have their heads up their butts,” she snarled, scooping lobster chowder into my bowl at supper. Then her mouth twisted; she sighed and said, “Apparently, now Sam is getting aggressive with the doctors. He makes snide, sarcastic jokes at other people’s expense. He was never sarcastic with us. The doctors believe he’s getting stronger. I’m not so sure.”
Something crucial is happening with you, Sam. You are about to commit a major act.
On the radio the announcer said, “The coast guard caught a Spanish boat inside the 370 kilometre limit. The ship was manned with illegal trawl-nets …” Then a woman’s voice interrupted: “This just in. There has been another bee attack in Cartwright. Nancy Smitherson was attacked by a horde of bees while crossing the field near the main port.”
I dropped my fork. How could this be? I’d not ordered my bees to attack. I’d been at home all evening. But I knew that Nancy Smitherson wore dresses, never jeans. A prong of my fork curled toward me like an accusatory finger.
The next morning while I was skipping stones on the beach, Sandy Higginbott was attacked. Two days later Peter Fitsen, the town transvestite, was swarmed in his rayon jumpsuit when he went to the variety store to buy breath mints.
In my empty field I discovered that the satin scarecrow was more tattered and filled with holes than previously. Clearly I’d succeeded in programming the bees to assail anything in a dress, and now they did so without my prompting. I hadn’t wanted the bees to attack indiscriminately. I wanted Estelle to get nailed and, as yet, the bees hadn’t poked a single needle into her alabaster skin.
In class while everyone gathered round to admire the new aquarium, I darted to Estelle’s desk and snatched three blonde hairs from her chair back and stuffed them in my pocket.
Later I stole two pearl earrings from Mother’s dresser drawer because they were identical to Estelle’s. Armed with these weapons, I marched past the town limits. I stuck Estelle’s hair on top of the scarecrow’s stone head and taped an earring on each side. When my bees arrived, I held my arms up and repeatedly practised the long run and stabbing attack on Estelle. “Got her scent, guys? Remember it.” The bees spun round the mute body. “She’s the one you want.”
Shivering, I stripped off my clothes and rewarded the bees for their travails. I shrieked and giggled as they licked the sweat from my skin. “Dropper, you’re going too fast,” I sang. “Slim-slam, let Kim have some … Oh, Einstein, you silly boy, try to enjoy yourself for once in your life!”
We played for what seemed like hours. I ran my fingers through the grass as the bees leapt over me. I looked at the tattered “Estelle,” its stone face round as a giant eye. Straw fingers stuck through the holes in her dress. A light breeze blew and the three frail hair strands lifted like wings.
“You stupid bitch,” I yelled at it. “Pretty soon a hundred bees are going to sting your ugly face!”
Suddenly the scarecrow shook. She jolted to the left, the right; the stone fell off, and her torso bent forward to reveal two men pushing her to the ground. The taller man pointed the barrel of a rifle at me. The shorter man smiled. He had freckled skin and a cowlick that trembled in the breeze. “Jimmy!” In his right hand, he held the wire-cutters he carried in the woods.
“Don’t you move,” said Jimmy’s father. His lips were stained with tobacco juice and his hair striped red and grey. “We saw everything.”
“But I—”
“Shut up! Jimmy, go into town and tell officer Dolsen. I’ll keep her right here.”
Jimmy watched me, his brow pleated. All the honey on my skin had been lapped off. The bees had vanished.
“I said go!” shouted his father.
Jimmy hesitated, then ran toward town.
An hour later police cars, reporters with cameras, and the mayor arrived. Men in suits examined the satin dummy, poked at the straw with their fingers. One man picked up the Estelle head and shook it. Jimmy’s father was speaking with a policeman. “That bitch humiliated my son, so I pulled him out of school for a month.” The policeman scribbled on a pad. Jimmy hadn’t returned. A uniformed man approached me, touched the skin on my forearm, and walked away sniffing his thumb.
I was handcuffed, pushed into a police car, and driven to the Home for Young Offenders in West Bay. Sitting on a cot shaped like a matchbox covered with a paper-thin blanket, I eyed the bars on the window. They reminded me of the stripes on my beloved bees.
The next morning, Mother stumbled into my cell. Despite everything, I was glad to see her and we embraced. The first thing she said was, “Am I being punished for my pride? And my leniency? Have I not been paying attention?” Being the wicked stepmother takes work. Had she been slacking off? “Maybe I wanted to relax? Forgive me. Or am I too harsh? I know you think me obsessive. Fear is the strongest emotion in me; that’s my problem. But people who say disciplinary parenting doesn’t work are screwballs. Under no circumstances will you go the way of your brother.” She sat down on my bed. “Now Sam has completely lost his hunger for rocks. That means we’re doing things right. But he has become very quiet again.” You’re planning something drastic, Sam. What is it? “Don’t worry, Sue. I’m going to take action to make things better for you always.”
After she left, I looked out the window, saw the parking lot below, and beyond, the ocean. I put the tip of my finger on the glass where the horizon-line was. I knew that some day I would touch that line with my bare hands. I would lift and hold it between my fingers. I would play jump-rope with it and wrap it, cobra-like, around my neck.
I tried to think back to the days before bees, before honey. Yet I could think only of you, Sam. Was there ever a time when I was not defined by someone else? Could I ever be me, standing separate yet accepted by others? I had only a few scattered memories:
Mrs Bodner, my kindergarten teacher, had three needles protruding from a ball of red hair that crouched behind her head. Once she gave me a gold star to put on my forehead; it complemented my eyes, which she said shone beautifully.
Sandra Morning Star, a tiny Indian girl, agreed to be my friend for five days.
Once I came upon a frog flattened by transport truck wheels. I took it home and hung it like a trophy on my wall.
I was in these memories. Was I anywhere else?
That afternoon, when my honey started to flow, a horde of bees gathered above my cell. I heard Q-Tip’s high-pitched whine, Wiggle-Butt’s whimper, and Drooper’s snorting. The whole room vibrated to the scratching on the metal roof.
“Come, friends, yes, come!” I cried to them.
The sound co
ntinued for an hour, then faded. This building was maximum-security. Nothing could come in or go out.
The next afternoon, the bees arrived and again departed. The same thing happened the third, fourth, fifth days. A week later, at three-thirty on a Monday afternoon, I heard the faintest scratching of just one bee on the roof. Was it Drooper? I imagined him pressing his bent snout into the corrugated metal, rubbing it over and over, as tears poured from his eyes. Finally he flew up into the sky and left me. Yes, even Drooper abandoned me to the world of men. I sat in a silence I was sure would never break.
I pictured Estelle sitting before her mirror, surrounded by open jars of gel as Esther moulded her hair into a perfect labyrinth. Mother was surely praying to God as my father rocked back and forth on his spot on the sea. Sam, were you examining the walls? the ceiling?
I still believed my true mother was in the sky spinning honey scarves, mittens, and underpants on her giant spinning-wheel. When we finally meet, she will sit me down and pat me on the head with her honeycomb hands. Then she will tell me honey stories.
I thought of all the tales my true mother will tell:
First, she will describe the glue-bandit who travelled the world over and, though he left a conspicuous glue-trail behind him, was never caught, for whoever tried to follow the track stepped in it, got stuck, and could never move again.
She will tell me of the honey damsel who let her honey hair flow out a castle window and down to her lover below. When he tried to climb her hair, he got stuck in its folds, and all he could do was watch the sun rise and set or glare at her honey dandruff, which was as large and bulbous as apples.
Then my mother will speak of the glue family. They were stuck together, and only when they accidentally fell into an enormous bucket of paint thinner were they freed from each other. Yet the thinner was so corrosive that two children had polka-dot-stained skin for the rest of their lives, and the youngest child dissolved completely.
The Lava in My Bones Page 11