The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd Page A

off crying. It worked for things like tomato rot, but not for much else. A few times she cried so bad, ranting and tearing her hair, that Rosaleen had to come get August from the honey house. August would calmly send May out back to the stone wall. Going out there was about the only thing that could bring her around. May didn’t allow rat traps in the house, as she couldn’t even bear the thought of a suffering rat. But what really drove Rosa- leen crazy was May catching spiders and carrying them out of the house in the dustpan. I liked this about May, since it reminded me of my bug-loving mother. I went around helping May catch granddaddy longlegs, not just because a smashed bug could send her over the edge but because I felt I was being loyal to my mother’s wishes. May had to have a banana every morning, and this banana absolutely could not have a bruise on it. One morning I watched her peel seven bananas in a row before she found one without a bad place. She kept tons of bananas around the kitchen, stoneware bowls chock-full; next to honey, they were the most plentiful thing in the house. May could go through five or more every morning looking for the ideal, flawless banana, the one that hadn’t gotten banged up by the grocery world. Rosaleen made banana pudding, banana cream pie, banana Jell-O, and banana slices on lettuce leaf till August told her it was all right, just throw the blooming things away. The one it was hard to get a fix on was June. She taught history and English at the colored high school, but what she really loved was music. If I got finished early in the honey house, I went to the kitchen and watched May and Rosaleen cook, but really I was there to listen to June play the cello. She played music for dying people, going to their homes and even to the hospital to serenade them into the next life. I had never heard of such a thing, and I would sit at the table drinking sweet iced tea, wondering if this was the reason June smiled so little. Maybe she was around death too much. I could tell she was still bristled at the idea of me and Rosaleen staying; it was the one sore point about our being here. I overheard her talking to August one night on the back porch as I was coming across the yard to go to the bathroom in the pink house. Their voices stopped me beside the hydrangea bush.
    ‘You know she’s lying,’ said June.
    ‘I know,’ August told her.
    ‘But they’re in some kind of trouble and need a place to stay. Who’s gonna take them in if we don’t—a white girl and a Negro woman? Nobody around here.’
    For a second neither spoke. I heard the moths landing against the porch lightbulb. June said, ‘We can’t keep a runaway girl here without letting somebody know.’
    August turned toward the screen and looked out, causing me to step deeper into the shadows and press my back against the house.
    ‘Let who know?’ she said.
    ‘The police? They would only haul her off someplace. Maybe her father really did die. If so, who better is she gonna stay withforthe time being than us?’
    ‘What about this aunt she mentioned?’
    ‘There’s no aunt and you know it,’ said August. June’s voice sounded exasperated.
    ‘What if her father didn’t die in this so-called tractor accident? Won’t he be looking for her?’
    A pause followed. I crept closer to the edge of the porch.
    ‘I just have a feeling about this, June. Something tells me not to send her back to some place she doesn’t want to be. Not yet, at least. She has some reason for leaving. Maybe he mistreated her. I believe we can help her.’
    ‘Why don’t you just ask her point-blank what kind of trouble she’s in?’
    ‘Everything in time,’ August said.
    ‘The last thing I want is to scare her off with a lot of questions. She’ll tell us when she’s ready. Let’s be patient.’
    ‘But she’s white, August.’
    This was a great revelation—not that I was white but that it seemed like June might not want me here because