Hour of the Bees

by Lindsay Eagar

  Bees follow me on all days, good and bad. They’re as reliable as the sunrise; if it’s been twenty-four hours since I’ve seen one, I know I’m due. But they only find me when I’m alone, which has made it impossible to convince anyone else that they’re real.

  Dad: “You must be seeing some kind of striped fly; there are definitely no bees around here.”

  Mom: “I don’t know what to say, honey — I don’t think Serge has any bug spray. Here, hold Lu while I get dressed, please?”

  Alta: “Buzz off, Carol!”

  The one person who might actually believe me is the one person I can’t tell. Rule number one this summer: don’t upset Serge. He made such a ruckus over bees that first day we were here, I don’t even dare mention the letter B to him.

  I shoo a bee away from my toast and see Mom out the window, rebuilding a section of the fence. She smashes her thumb with the hammer, but just sucks on it and keeps working. In no time at all, she’s nailed half the fence together. I marvel at her power. Mom’s stronger than I ever knew. She’s a dragon in disguise.

  I wonder if the ranch will bring out the dragon in me. Only two weeks left to find out.

  I wash down my toast with milk and head to the porch. The temperature is ninety-seven degrees, according to the thermometer, and it’s still morning. We’ll be in triple digits by lunchtime. My tank top’s already plastered to my back with sweat.

  I close my eyes, thinking of that cool green lake from Serge’s story. How delicious it would be to jump headfirst into chilly water and wash the sticky sweat away …

  “Morning, sleepyhead.” Mom strolls to the sink and refills her water bottle.

  “Want me to hold your nails for you?” I say.

  “Actually, I’ve got something else I need you to do.” Mom sets the hammer down and calls down the hallway for Alta.

  “Tell me if Grandpa starts walking in,” she says. “I don’t want him to hear.”

  Outside, Dad and Serge are fifty feet apart, the pasture between them, but their silhouettes are similar — they both lean to their left sides, using their right wrists to wipe their foreheads. Serge’s back hunches over at a sharper angle than Dad’s and he’s thicker around the middle, but it’s like gazing into a crystal ball at Dad’s future old-man self.

  Serge is cleaning sheep hooves, one leg at a time. Dad’s pulling dead, dry plants from the dirt. It’s obvious who’s working on projects for staying at the ranch and who is working to leave.

  “Alta! Shake a leg, we’re waiting!” Mom rolls her eyes.

  My sister finally comes into the kitchen, sparkling with baby oil, in her pink bikini.

  Mom snorts. “Now that’s the perfect outfit for a sheep ranch.”

  Alta shoots laser beams from her eyes. “I just need to lay out for ten minutes, before the rays get too hot.”

  “Finish your chores first. And the laundry you were supposed to do yesterday,” Mom says, “then you can work on your tan. Come on, girls, I’ll show you what I need you to do today.” She waves for us to follow her down the hallway and barges into Serge’s room.

  “Um, Dad said I’m not supposed to go in there,” I say from the hall. That room is haunted by Serge’s memories of Grandma Rosa. Maybe by Grandma Rosa herself. Alta rolls her eyes at my obnoxious display of respect and walks right in.

  Mom sighs. “I hereby grant you permission to intrude. Now listen. I’m driving Serge to his doctor’s appointment. While we’re gone, I want both of you to pack up the closet.” She doesn’t waste any time with darkness; she rips the cardboard sheets from the windows. Bright white New Mexican sun fills the room, the first time it’s seen light in twelve years.

  Alta sneers at the grimy room around her. “Ew.”

  Mom ignores her and opens the dirty windows, and it’s like the room lets out a breath it’s been holding for more than a decade.

  “Dad thinks it’ll upset your grandpa to see Grandma Rosa’s things,” she says. “So I’m going to take these things to the storage unit tomorrow before my shift. Get as much packed as you can while Serge is gone. Boxes are in the living room.” She wiggles the closet doors. “Open up,” she grunts, and tightens her grip.

  A bee — of course a bee — finds me, buzzing in a halo around my head. Bzzz … I listen — that same collective droning, buzzing, humming I heard coming from the closet on my first night here … It’s muted, but impossible to miss.

  Impossible.

  Mom cocks her head. “Do you hear that?”

  I freeze. The buzzing gets louder.

  “Shoot,” she says. “Lu’s up early.” She bounds into the guest bedroom, and Alta seizes the chance to escape.

  I grasp the closet doorknobs and pull, but they won’t open, as if a ghost is pulling from the other side.

  Ghost bees.

  The noise behind the door grows louder, and I have a sudden, irrational fear that maybe it isn’t an air force– worthy fleet of bees; maybe it’s just one giant bee with a stinger the size of a samurai sword. I blink the ridiculous image away.

  I use all my weight to yank on the doors, and when they finally give, I stumble, nearly landing on my back with the force.

  The great buzzing is now above me, and louder — much louder. It’s a swarm of bees, released from the closet into the bedroom, a gritty gold-and-black-striped cloud. I try to scream, but no sound comes out. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands — they bunch and spread out, bunch and spread out, swimming through the air like a school of fish.

  And then they’re gone, out the open window and buzzing to freedom. I pant, steadying myself against the bedpost. I wait here, finding my breath, with no way to measure time. Has it been two minutes? Ten minutes? An hour?

  Bees, trapped in Serge’s closet, after a century of drought … It’s weird enough to be one of Serge’s stories.

  “Okay, okay!” comes my sister’s exasperated voice from the hallway. “I’m doing it now!”

  Mom’s carping at her to get to work. Alta reenters the room, robe over her bikini, smelling like successfully burnt skin. Lu’s on her hip, munching a soggy waffle.

  “Did you get boxes yet?” she asks, already bored.

  “No,” I manage to get out, my heartbeat finally under control.

  She huffs and trudges back down the hall, reappearing a minute later with some boxes. “Let’s get this over with,” she says.

  I step hesitantly into the closet. There’s a strange scent: layers of wet earth and wood, clay baking in sunshine, new rain on green grass. Alta switches on a light, and even she can’t hide her amazement.

  “Whoa,” we both whisper. Lu claps in approval.

  The closet is a museum of color, a rainbow in the otherwise drab ranch house. Not only every color imaginable, but different fabrics, textures, feathers, jewels. Shelves and drawers, hangers and coat racks, all filled with clothing, hats, scarves, bags …

  “What is Serge doing with all this stuff?” Alta says. She sets Lu on the carpet, and he finds an old pair of castanets to clatter together.

  “It’s not his,” I realize. “These are — were — Rosa’s things.”

  I shiver. Like the Rosa in Grandpa Serge’s story, Grandma Rosa must have traveled, too.

  Alta nearly trips on a pair of red wooden Japanese sandals. “There’s something from everywhere in here.” She runs her fingers along a peacock-blue silk sari.

  “Did she travel a lot? Do you remember?” I ask. Alta was four when Mom and Dad got married.

  “I only met Grandma Rosa a few times, and she was sick. Always in bed.” My sister’s eyes stare far away. “Then … she died. I said good-bye before I ever really said hello.” I stay quiet. She never talks about this time of her life, when Mom married Dad and the families had to blend. But my sister shrugs back to normal and slips a flamenco dress over her head. The dress jingles; little bells are sewn into its layers of sherbet-colored ruffles.

  “What do you think?” she says. “Prom worthy?”

  I grin.
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  “Go on,” she says. “Try something on.”

  For now, Alta isn’t a too-cool seventeen-year-old, and I’m not twelve. We’re both five, playing dress-up. I drape a shiny crimson matador cape around my shoulders.

  Alta shrieks.

  “What? What is it?” More bees?

  I track where she’s looking, my heart thumping at double time. An ostrich head peeks at us, stuffed and mounted on the closet wall, tangles of necklaces hanging from its skinny dead neck.

  “Creepy!” Alta says.

  “So, Grandma Rosa was a bird poacher?” I say.

  Alta, miracle of miracles, is about to laugh at my joke, but her mouth opens into a glossy pink triangle. “Oh. Hi,” she says, looking over my shoulder.

  Someone’s behind me. Serge?

  It’s only Dad.

  “What are you girls doing?” His eyes fly over Rosa’s things like he’s seeing fairies.

  I pull off the matador cape and lift up Lu, using him as a shield for my guilt. “Mom told us to pack up the closet while Serge is gone.”

  Dad gawps. “I haven’t seen this stuff in years.” He points at the bird’s head. “That’s an emu,” he says. “She got it in Australia. It used to scare me as a kid.”

  “Australia?” Alta says. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”

  “She and Serge sure got around,” I say.

  Dad raises his eyebrows. “Not Papá. He always stayed here. His idea of traveling is walking to the ridge and back.”

  The four of us stay in the closet for another hour, packing one item at a time. Well, we pack. Lu plays. Dad plays, too — he recounts where everything came from as simply as the alphabet. That mask is from South Africa. Those hats are from Morocco. This painting is from Colorado, when Mamá first saw snow. This seashell is from the Pacific Ocean — Mamá just loved the ocean.

  Dad’s face is soft as he speaks, and Alta and I cling to every word. We set the things in the boxes as if we’re packing away vintage china: gingerly, carefully. These are as much Dad’s treasures as they were Rosa’s.

  “You girls should pick something,” he says. “This is going into storage until — well, until further notice. So if something calls to you, take it.” He leaves the room, carrying boxes.

  We glance back at the remaining clothes with new eyes. Permission to bring one of these exotic, exciting treasures home! What should I pick? A creamy robe from Korea with hand-stitched cherry blossoms on the sleeves? A ruby-encrusted lizard brooch? Red patent-leather dancing shoes from Madrid?

  Alta’s stopped packing and instead has her arms full of things that have called to her: everything, apparently.

  Then I find something.

  A bracelet. Black bark strung onto a leather strip. It jumps out from all the sparkly, bedazzled jewelry because it’s so simple. Like the ranch. I pick it up.

  It’s like the bracelet from the story.

  Alta sets her things down and looks at the bracelet in my open palm. She uses her coral fingernail to prod the bracelet’s bark. “Pretty,” she coos.

  “I know,” I say. The bark swirls, grains trickling into formation, a cellular wooden waterfall frozen in time. It feels like staring at eternity, looking at this bracelet.

  It calls to me.

  “It’s really pretty,” Alta says again. A flame flickers in my chest. I know what she’s doing. She’s going to try to con me into giving it to her.

  She’ll wear it for a month, then toss it out instead of passing it down to me. She hates giving me her old things — she wants to be the only owner of things forever.

  “This would go perfectly with a dress I saw at the mall,” Alta says.

  I’m not backing down. “Dad said I could pick something,” I say, “and I’m picking this.”

  Alta glares. “It doesn’t match anything you have.”

  Exactly, I think. This bracelet matches nothing in my wardrobe, matches nothing in Albuquerque. Nothing in my life. The bracelet isn’t anything like who I am; it’s a bracelet for who I want to be.

  “I saw it first,” I say, hating how like a little kid I sound.

  “Hey, what’d you find?” Dad comes back from stacking boxes in the minivan. I hold out the bracelet, and he takes in a sharp breath.

  “Mamá’s bracelet. She wore it everywhere.” Dad ties it around my wrist. I try hard not to smirk at Alta. “It’s kind of perfect that you found it,” he says, “since you look so much like her these days.”

  “I do?” I ask, and I realize that I don’t actually know what Grandma Rosa looked like.

  “See for yourself.” He pulls a sepia-toned photo down from a shelf.

  Rosa looks like an old-fashioned movie star. She’s tall and curvy as a cello, with pouty lips and black wavy hair hanging past her hips.

  At first, nothing in her face is familiar. She’s beautiful and glamorous, and I’m, well, I’m like my dad. But then I realize her eyes are just like our eyes, too — squinty, with stubby eyelashes and no color in the irises, just dull black. Looking at Rosa, I see how I can tilt my chin up, glance at the world from beneath my eyelids like they’re heavy drapes, and add sparkle to my dark eyes by thinking mischievous thoughts. I practice it while Alta and Dad pack another box. It feels like a grown-up way to see the world.

  “Here’s Mamá in Chile.” Dad puts another photo in my hands, patting Lu on the head as he walks by him. “That’s one of her scarves, see?” My grandmother’s neck is draped in a knitted scarf that looks softer than clouds. “And here she is at the Olympics.” Rosa aims an arrow at the camera, tongue sticking out the side of her mouth in concentration.

  “Grandma was in the Olympics?” I say, surprised — no one in our family is athletic.

  “No, no,” Dad says. “She was at the Olympics selling her scarves and made friends with the Spanish archery team. Everyone loved those scarves. People paid a lot of money for them.”

  “Was there anything Grandma couldn’t do?” I say, entranced by the photos. “She was so …”

  I pause, overwhelmed by the words that could end this sentence: So adventurous? So talented? So wild and free?

  So unlike Serge?

  Dad has to clear his throat a few times before he can speak. “She was something, all right.” He gives us instructions to finish packing. “I’ll haul it out to the minivan later, when the old man isn’t looking.” Then he leaves, taking Lu with him, and Alta and I are alone.

  I flex my wrist, examining the bracelet. Old wood, young skin. This is how I hoped to feel in my school clothes from ForeverTeen: ready to mount a horse and ride to the other side of the world. Like in Serge’s story.

  So much of his story is stolen from real life. There’s a girl named Rosa who travels the world. There’s a sheep ranch in the desert. The world’s most persistent bees. A bundle of souvenirs from every country that’s ever existed. And now this black-bark bracelet … There’s even a scabby tree stump beyond the pasture, I realize, that kind of matches up. I wonder if Serge was always such a clever storyteller, weaving reality with fiction as masterfully as Grandma Rosa knit her famous scarves. Or is this another side effect of dementia? Does Grandpa Serge actually believe the stories he’s telling me?

  Bzzz, bzzz … Alta’s phone rings in her robe pocket and brings me back to the here and now. “You can just pack all this up.” She gestures to the pile of Rosa treasures she plucked up so greedily moments ago.

  “You don’t want any of it?” I hold up the brocade bag from New Orleans that Alta gushed over. “Not even this?”

  Her eyes shift cold: Moody Alta. “It’s all just a bunch of junk. She wasn’t even my real grandma, anyway.”

  My chest deflates. Didn’t we just talk about Grandma Rosa, how amazing she was, and now Alta won’t even claim her? “But you’re my sister,” I say, “and she was my grandma. So that’s basically like saying she was your grandma, too.”

  “Well, if you want to be technical, you’re really only my half sister …” she says, and I swear
, something burns the outside of my wrist. The bracelet presses against my skin, its heat radiating up my body, exploding out of my mouth like I’m breathing fire:

  “You’re just mad about the bracelet. Well, it’s mine. For once, something is mine. Your daddy can’t buy it for you, and you can’t bat your eyelashes and make me hand it over. It’s mine.” I love the way that word tastes, so I say it again. “Mine.”

  Her glare penetrates me — there might be scorch marks on the wall behind me. “You’re right,” she says. “Your bracelet. Your grandma Rosa, your grandpa Serge, so it’s your closet to finish packing.”

  She glides out of the room, a rattlesnake retreating, and my face glows red, like I’ve just been slapped.

  I don’t know how long I stand there, waiting to cool down, but when I venture into the back of the closet to finish the packing by myself, it doesn’t surprise me to hear a faint buzz. Whenever I’m by myself at the ranch, the bees turn up their volume. This time I’m glad for their company. They make me feel less alone.

  I snap my fingers, just to see how fast a second is. Things change that quickly.

  Just minutes ago Alta and I were equals, playing dress-up in the closet. If only I could have bottled that moment up and saved it for when I needed it — but moments can’t be stored or repeated. They are lived once, then gone.

  I measure time with changes.

  The bracelet is heavy now, scratching my wrist. It’s the prize for winning against Alta, a bittersweet victory. Not my real grandma, she had said. Not real sisters.

  I finish the closet joylessly, folding, draping, and packing in robotic movements. When the closet is empty, I shoo a few rogue bees out the bedroom window, and that’s when I spot something on the floor, back in the dark corner… . Something small and round… .

  A seed.

  A seed, black as a scorpion, the size of a penny. I examine it in my palm. A seed, in Grandma Rosa’s closet. A seed that grows into what? I guess we’ll never know; it would probably just fizzle and die if buried in the ranch’s gritty, sandy dirt.

  While I’m puzzling over this, a bee lands on the seed and scurries along its surface. It inspects it, almost sniffing (do bees have noses?), then flies away.