back.’
‘You can work it off,’ said August. May came in with witch hazel and cotton balls and began to clean up Rosaleen’s stitches.
‘Somebody knocked the daylights out of you,’ she said, and a moment later she was humming ‘Oh! Susanna’ at that same frantic speed she’d hummed it before. June jerked her head up from the table, where she was inspecting the purchases.
‘You’re humming the song again,’ she said to May.
‘Why don’t you excuse yourself?’
May dropped her cotton ball on the table and left the room. I looked at Rosaleen, and she shrugged. June finished cleaning the stitches herself; it was distasteful to her, I could tell by the way she held her mouth, how it drew into a tight buttonhole. I slipped out to find May. I was going to say, I’ll sing ‘Oh! Susanna’ with you start to finish, but I couldn’t find her. It was May who taught me the honey song: Place a beehive on my grave and let the honey soak through. When I’m dead and gone, that’s what I want from you. The streets of heaven are gold and sunny, but I’ll stick with my plot and a pot of honey. Place a beehive on my grave and let the honey soak through. I loved the silliness of it. Singing made me feel like a regular person again. May sang the song in the kitchen when she rolled dough or sliced tomatoes, and August hummed it when she pasted labels on the honey jars. It said everything about living here. We lived for honey. We swallowed a spoonful in the morning to wake us up and one at night to put us to sleep. We took it with every meal to calm the mind, give us stamina, and prevent fatal disease. We swabbed ourselves in it to disinfect cuts or heal chapped lips. It went in our baths, our skin cream, our raspberry tea and biscuits. Nothing was safe from honey. In one week my skinny arms and legs began to plump out and the frizz in my hair turned to silken waves. August said honey was the ambrosia of the gods and the shampoo of the goddesses. I spent my time in the honey house with August while Rosaleen helped May around the house. I learned how to run a steam heated knife along the super, slicing the wax cap off the combs, how to load them just so into the spinner. I adjusted the flame under the steam generator and changed the nylon stockings August used to filter the honey in the settling tank. I caught on so fast she said I was a marvel. Those were her very words: Lily, you are marvel. My favorite thing was pouring beeswax into the candle molds. August used a pound of wax per candle and pressed tiny violets into them, which I collected in the woods. She had a mail-order business to stores in places as far away as Maine and Vermont. People up there bought so many of her candles and jars of honey she couldn’t keep up with it, and there were tins of Black Madonna All-Purpose Beeswax for her special customers. August said it could make your fishing line float, your button thread stronger, your furniture shinier, your stuck window glide, and your irritated skin glow like a baby’s bottom. Beeswax was a miracle cure for everything. May and Rosaleen hit it off right away. May was simpleminded. I don’t mean retarded, because she was smart in some ways and read cookbooks nonstop. I mean she was naive and unassuming, a grown-up and a child at the same time, plus she was a touch crazy. Rosaleen liked to say May was a bona ride candidate for the nuthouse, but she still took to her. I would come into the kitchen and they would be standing shoulder to shoulder at the sink, holding ears of corn they couldn’t get shucked for talking. Or they’d be dabbing pinecones with peanut butter for the birds. It was Rosaleen who figured out the mystery of ‘Oh! Susanna.’
She said if you kept things on a happy note, May did fine, but bring up an unpleasant subject—like Rosaleen’s head full of stitches or the tomatoes having rot-bottom—and May would start humming ‘Oh! Susanna.’
It seemed to be her personal way of warding
‘You can work it off,’ said August. May came in with witch hazel and cotton balls and began to clean up Rosaleen’s stitches.
‘Somebody knocked the daylights out of you,’ she said, and a moment later she was humming ‘Oh! Susanna’ at that same frantic speed she’d hummed it before. June jerked her head up from the table, where she was inspecting the purchases.
‘You’re humming the song again,’ she said to May.
‘Why don’t you excuse yourself?’
May dropped her cotton ball on the table and left the room. I looked at Rosaleen, and she shrugged. June finished cleaning the stitches herself; it was distasteful to her, I could tell by the way she held her mouth, how it drew into a tight buttonhole. I slipped out to find May. I was going to say, I’ll sing ‘Oh! Susanna’ with you start to finish, but I couldn’t find her. It was May who taught me the honey song: Place a beehive on my grave and let the honey soak through. When I’m dead and gone, that’s what I want from you. The streets of heaven are gold and sunny, but I’ll stick with my plot and a pot of honey. Place a beehive on my grave and let the honey soak through. I loved the silliness of it. Singing made me feel like a regular person again. May sang the song in the kitchen when she rolled dough or sliced tomatoes, and August hummed it when she pasted labels on the honey jars. It said everything about living here. We lived for honey. We swallowed a spoonful in the morning to wake us up and one at night to put us to sleep. We took it with every meal to calm the mind, give us stamina, and prevent fatal disease. We swabbed ourselves in it to disinfect cuts or heal chapped lips. It went in our baths, our skin cream, our raspberry tea and biscuits. Nothing was safe from honey. In one week my skinny arms and legs began to plump out and the frizz in my hair turned to silken waves. August said honey was the ambrosia of the gods and the shampoo of the goddesses. I spent my time in the honey house with August while Rosaleen helped May around the house. I learned how to run a steam heated knife along the super, slicing the wax cap off the combs, how to load them just so into the spinner. I adjusted the flame under the steam generator and changed the nylon stockings August used to filter the honey in the settling tank. I caught on so fast she said I was a marvel. Those were her very words: Lily, you are marvel. My favorite thing was pouring beeswax into the candle molds. August used a pound of wax per candle and pressed tiny violets into them, which I collected in the woods. She had a mail-order business to stores in places as far away as Maine and Vermont. People up there bought so many of her candles and jars of honey she couldn’t keep up with it, and there were tins of Black Madonna All-Purpose Beeswax for her special customers. August said it could make your fishing line float, your button thread stronger, your furniture shinier, your stuck window glide, and your irritated skin glow like a baby’s bottom. Beeswax was a miracle cure for everything. May and Rosaleen hit it off right away. May was simpleminded. I don’t mean retarded, because she was smart in some ways and read cookbooks nonstop. I mean she was naive and unassuming, a grown-up and a child at the same time, plus she was a touch crazy. Rosaleen liked to say May was a bona ride candidate for the nuthouse, but she still took to her. I would come into the kitchen and they would be standing shoulder to shoulder at the sink, holding ears of corn they couldn’t get shucked for talking. Or they’d be dabbing pinecones with peanut butter for the birds. It was Rosaleen who figured out the mystery of ‘Oh! Susanna.’
She said if you kept things on a happy note, May did fine, but bring up an unpleasant subject—like Rosaleen’s head full of stitches or the tomatoes having rot-bottom—and May would start humming ‘Oh! Susanna.’
It seemed to be her personal way of warding
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