The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

silver petals creaking a little when the breezes rose. The sun had baked everything to perfection; even the gooseberries on the fence had fried to raisins.
    The asphalt ran out, turned to gravel. I listened to the sound it made scraping under our shoes. Perspiration puddled in the notch where Rosaleen’s collarbones came together. I didn’t know whose stomach was carrying on more about needing food, mine or hers, and since we’d started walking, I’d realized it was Sunday, when the stores were closed up. I was afraid we’d end up eating dandelions, digging wild turnips and grubs out of the ground to stay alive.
    The smell of fresh manure floated out from the fields and took care of my appetite then and there, but Rosaleen said, “I could eat a mule.”
    â€œIf we can find some place open when we get to town, I’ll go in and get us some food,” I told her.
    â€œAnd what’re we gonna do for beds?” she said.
    â€œIf they don’t have a motel, we’ll have to rent a room.”
    She smiled at me then. “Lily, child, there ain’t gonna be any place that will take a colored woman. I don’t care if she’s the Virgin Mary, nobody’s letting her stay if she’s colored.”
    â€œWell, what was the point of the Civil Rights Act?” I said, coming to a full stop in the middle of the road. “Doesn’t that mean people have to let you stay in their motels and eat in their restaurants if you want to?”
    â€œThat’s what it means, but you gonna have to drag people kicking and screaming to do it.”
    I spent the next mile in deep worry. I had no plan, no prospects of a plan. Until now I’d mostly believed we would stumble upon a window somewhere and climb through it into a brand-new life. Rosaleen, on the other hand, was out here biding time till we got caught. Counting it as summer vacation from jail.
    What I needed was a sign. I needed a voice speaking to me like I’d heard yesterday in my room saying, Lily Melissa Owens, your jar is open.
    I’ll take nine steps and look up. Whatever my eyes light on, that’s my sign. When I looked up, I saw a crop duster plunging his little plane over a field of growing things, behind him a cloud of pesticides parachuting out. I couldn’t decide what part of this scene I represented: the plants about to be rescued from the bugs or the bugs about to be murdered by the spray. There was an off chance I was really the airplane zipping over the earth creating rescue and doom everywhere I went.
    I felt miserable.
    The heat had been gathering as we walked, and it now dripped down Rosaleen’s face.
    â€œToo bad there’s not a church around here where we could steal some fans,” she said.
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    From far away the store on the edge of town looked about a hundred years old, but when we got up to it, I saw it was actually older. A sign over the door said FROGMORE STEW GENERAL STORE AND RESTAURANT. SINCE 1854.
    General Sherman had probably ridden by here and decided to spare it on the basis of its name, because I’m sure it hadn’t been on looks. The whole front of it was a forgotten bulletin board: Studebaker Service, Live Bait, Buddy’s Fishing Tournament, Rayford Brothers’ Ice Plant, Deer Rifles $45, and a picture of a girl wearing a Coca-Cola bottle cap on her head. A sign announced a gospel sing at the Mount Zion Baptist Church that took place back in 1957, if anyone wanted to know.
    My favorite thing was the fine display of car tags nailed up from different states. I would like to have read every single one, if I’d had the time.
    In the side yard a colored man lifted the top of a barbecue pit made from an oil drum, and the smell of pork lathered in vinegar and pepper drew so much saliva from beneath my tongue I actually drooled onto my blouse.
    A few cars and trucks were parked out front, probably belonging to people who cut church and came here