The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd Page B

speaking to her daughter.
    â€œHere’s your Coca-Colas,” the bow-tied man was saying.
    I pointed to the honey jars. “Where did you get those?”
    He thought the tone of shock in my voice was really consternation. “I know what you mean. A lot of folks won’t buy it ’cause it’s got the Virgin Mary pictured as a colored woman, but see, that’s because the woman who makes the honey is colored herself.”
    â€œWhat’s her name?”
    â€œAugust Boatwright,” he said. “She keeps bees all over the county.”
    Keep breathing, keep breathing. “Do you know where she lives?”
    â€œOh, sure, it’s the darndest house you ever saw. Painted like Pepto-Bismol. Your grandmother surely’s seen it—you go through town on Main Street till it turns into the highway to Florence.”
    I walked to the door. “Thanks.”
    â€œYou tell your grandma hello for me,” he said.
    Rosaleen’s snores were making the bench slats tremble. I gave her a shake. “Wake up. Here’s your snuff, but put it in your pocket, ’cause I didn’t exactly pay for it.”
    â€œYou stole it?” she said.
    â€œI had to, ’cause they don’t sell items from the store on Sunday.”
    â€œYour life has gone straight to hell,” she said.
    I spread our lunch out like a picnic on the bench but couldn’t eat a bite of it till I told her about the black Mary on the honey jar and the beekeeper named August Boatwright.
    â€œDon’t you think my mother must’ve known her?” I said. “It couldn’t be just a coincidence.”
    She didn’t answer, so I said louder, “Rosaleen? Don’t you think so?”
    â€œI don’t know what I think,” she said. “I don’t want you getting your hopes up too much, is all.” She reached over and touched my cheek. “Oh, Lily, what have we gone and done?”
    Â 
    Tiburon was a place like Sylvan, minus the peaches. In front of the domed courthouse someone had stuck a Confederate flag in the mouth of their public cannon. South Carolina was Dixie first, America second. You could not get the pride of Fort Sumter out of us if you tried.
    Strolling down Main Street, we moved through long blue shadows cast from the two-story buildings that ran the length of the street. At a drugstore, I peered through the plate glass at a soda fountain with chrome trim, where they sold cherry Cokes and banana splits, thinking that soon it would not be just for white people anymore.
    We walked past Worth Insurance Agency, Tiburon County Rural Electric office, and the Amen Dollar Store, which had Hula Hoops, swim goggles, and boxes of sparklers in the window with SUMMER FUN spray-painted across the glass. A few places, like the Farmers Trust Bank, had GOLDWATER FOR PRESIDENT signs in their windows, sometimes with a bumper sticker across the bottom saying AFFIRMATION VIETNAM.
    At the Tiburon post office I left Rosaleen on the sidewalk and stepped inside to where the post office boxes and the Sunday newspapers were kept. As far as I could tell, there were no wanted posters in there of me and Rosaleen, and the front-page headline in the Columbia paper was about Castro’s sister spying for the CIA and not a word about a white girl breaking a Negro woman out of jail in Sylvan.
    I dropped a dime into the slot and took one of the papers, wondering if the story was inside somewhere. Rosaleen and I squatted on the ground in an alley and spread out the paper, opening every page. It was full of Malcolm X, Saigon, the Beatles, tennis at Wimbledon, and a motel in Jackson, Mississippi, that closed down rather than accept Negro guests, but nothing about me and Rosaleen.
    Sometimes you want to fall on your knees and thank God in heaven for all the poor news reporting that goes on in the world.

Honeybees are social insects and live in colonies. Each colony is a family unit, comprising a