The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd Page A

straight from Sunday school.
    â€œI’ll go in and see if I can buy some food,” I said.
    â€œAnd snuff. I need some snuff,” said Rosaleen.
    While she slumped on a bench near the barbecue drum, I stepped through the screen door into the mingled smells of pickled eggs and sawdust, beneath dozens of sugar-cured hams dangling from the ceiling. The restaurant was situated in a section at the back while the front of the store was reserved for selling everything from sugarcane stalks to turpentine.
    â€œMay I help you, young lady?” A small man wearing a bow tie stood on the other side of a wooden counter, nearly lost behind a barricade of scuppernong jelly and Sweet Fire pickles. His voice was high-pitched, and he had a soft, delicate look to him. I could not imagine him selling deer rifles.
    â€œI don’t believe I’ve seen you before,” he said.
    â€œI’m not from here. I’m visiting my grandmother.”
    â€œI like it when children spend time with their grandparents,” he said. “You can learn a lot from older folks.”
    â€œYes, sir,” I said. “I learned more from my grandmother than I did the whole eighth grade.”
    He laughed like this was the most comical thing he’d heard in years. “Are you here for lunch? We have a Sunday-plate special—barbecue pork.”
    â€œI’ll take two of them to go,” I said. “And two Coca-Colas, please.”
    While I waited for our lunch, I wandered along the store aisles, stocking up for supper. Packages of salted peanuts, buttermilk cookies, two pimiento-cheese sandwiches in plastic, sour balls, and a can of Red Rose snuff. I piled it on the counter.
    When he returned with the plates and drink bottles, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, but it’s Sunday. I can’t sell anything from the store, just the restaurant. Your grandma ought to know that. What’s her name anyway?”
    â€œRose,” I said, reading it off the snuff can.
    â€œRose Campbell?”
    â€œYes, sir. Rose Campbell.”
    â€œI thought she only had grandboys.”
    â€œNo, sir, she’s got me, too.”
    He touched the bag of sour balls. “Just leave it all here. I’ll put it back.”
    The cash register pinged, and the drawer banged out. I rummaged in my bag for the money and paid him.
    â€œCould you open the Coke bottles for me?” I asked, and while he walked back toward the kitchen, I dropped the Red Rose snuff in my bag and zipped it up.
    Rosaleen had been beaten up, gone without food, slept on the hard ground, and who could say how long before she’d be back in jail or even killed? She deserved her snuff.
    I was speculating how one day, years from now, I would send the store a dollar in an envelope to cover it, spelling out how guilt had dominated every moment of my life, when I found myself looking at a picture of the black Mary. I do not mean a picture of just any black Mary. I mean the identical, very same, exact one as my mother’s. She stared at me from the labels of a dozen jars of honey. BLACK MADONNA HONEY, they said.
    The door opened, and a family came in fresh from church, the mother and daughter dressed alike in navy with white Peter Pan collars. Light streamed in the door, hazy, warped, blurred with drizzles of yellow. The little girl sneezed, and her mother said, “Come here, let’s wipe your nose.”
    I looked again at the honey jars, at the amber lights swimming inside them, and made myself breathe slowly.
    I realized it for the first time in my life: there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining brightly, and we don’t even know it.
    I thought about the bees that had come to my room at night, how they’d been part of it all. And the voice I’d heard the day before, saying, Lily Melissa Owens, your jar is open, speaking as plain and clear as the woman in navy