A Place at the Table by Susan Rebecca White

me.
    “Don’t move.”
    He turns over angrily and puts the pillow on top of his head. I slap at his leg through the blanket. He better not think he can ignore me tonight.
    “I’m holding a jar full of bees. If you take the pillow off your head you can hear them buzzing. The jar is in my hand, under the sheet, and the lid is loose on top. I can release them right now. If you move I’ll release them, and maybe they’ll sting you, and maybe they won’t. And if they do, maybe I’ll run and get Daddy, or maybe I’ll wait until it’s too late.”
    “What the fuck?” He takes the pillow off his head.
    “Shut up. I want you to shut up and listen to me. Maybe you’ll get stung tonight or maybe you won’t. But know this: The woods behind our house are filled with bees and I know how to catch them. And I will. I’m a regular bee charmer. I will catch them again and again. I will bring a jar full of bees into our room every night and I will release them in your bed while you are sleeping and you will be stung and you will die. Do you hear me?”
    He sits up suddenly, jerking the covers off his body. The motion knocks the jar out of my hand. I hear it break on the hardwood floor below. The bees fly straight up, buzzing loudly, by the side of his top bunk.
    Hunter squeezes himself into the corner of the wall, like a kid in a horror film. I remain standing on the bunk bed railing, still taller than him.
    “I want you to leave me alone,” I say.
    “Just open the window, okay?” Hunter asks. “Get them out of here.”
    I climb down the railing, then walk to the head of his bed, where he is crouched in the corner. The bees buzz around me, but I am not afraid.
    “No more notes in my textbooks, no more calling me a fag infront of your friends, no more hiding things of Mama’s in my drawers, none of it.”
    “Get them out of here.”
    “First promise. Promise that you will leave me the fuck alone.”
    First time I’ve ever said that word aloud.
    “I promise. I promise. Please get them out.”
    “Why should I believe you?”
    He screws up his face into a pained expression, then starts to cry. My brother Hunter is crying. “Please. Please open the window and get them out.”
    His tears are a gift, revealing the power I now have.
    I walk to the bedroom window, turn the lock, and push the window up as far as it will go. As if summoned, the bees fly out, and it is done.

4
I Never . . .
    (Decatur, Georgia, 1977)
    E very afternoon during track practice I try to outrun Pete Arnold, who is a miler like me. I can’t. He can’t beat me either. We are matched, sprinting side by side, each motivating the other. The first time Coach Latham had us do time trials I shaved ten seconds off my personal best, which is nuts, considering it wasn’t even a real race. Pete acts all serious and “in the zone” during practice, but afterward, when the team gathers on the bleachers for Coach Latham to go over his “Daily Nuggets” (Coach’s term), Pete sits beside me, making commentary, his Yankee accent noticeable even at a whisper.
    “C’mon, man, the boys can’t breathe. Go up a size, will ya?” Pete laments while Coach Latham, sausaged into his shiny gym shorts, holds forth on the necessity of wearing a jockstrap. I have to stare at the ground and squeeze my wrist with my hand during Pete’s comedy routine, to keep myself from laughing out loud.
    It’s hard not to lose it around Pete.
    •  •  •
    My parents are almost always at our meets. Track is the only sport I’m any good at, and Mama and Daddy, taking whatever athleticism they can get, fall all over themselves to encourage me to Keep Running! Sometimes Pete’s mom comes to our meets, too, though she’s always late. She’s a secretary at a law firm downtown and doesn’t get off work until after 5:00. She’s beautiful in a trashy sort of way, her bleach blond hair feathered back on the sides like Farrah Fawcett’s. She wears lots and lots of mascara and