Hour of the Bees

by Lindsay Eagar

  She grinned brighter than the white desert sun during solstice. “Hola, Sergio!” she cried, running to him. Her hugs still smelled like honey and vanilla. They held their faces close together.

  “Where are you coming from this time? Somewhere new, or somewhere old?” Sergio whispered.

  “Very old,” she said. “The oldest. The Cradle of Life in Ethiopia.”

  This, too, was a routine conversation. Sergio didn’t care where she traveled to, not really, and Rosa had given up long ago trying to convince him that the world was fascinating. But it was routine, and such routines were difficult to break after marriages as long as theirs.

  “Are you wearing your bracelet?” he asked.

  She held out her wrist, the bracelet smartly tied. “You’re a worrywart,” she said. “Always fretting.”

  Suddenly her smile turned into a gasp, and she bent over, arms holding her waist, as if something had snapped in her spine.

  “What is it?” Sergio grabbed her.

  Rosa closed her mouth, then rolled her eyes to the sky. She collapsed in the dirt, limbs buckling like a dropped marionette.

  “Rosa!” Sergio made her a pillow of his elbow and held her there.

  She stared at the sky as if she were on another planet. “Something’s … happening. Something’s wrong.” With obvious effort, she turned her head toward the house. “Where’s my Raúl?”

  “Raúl is … gone.” Sergio hated that word. “I’ll get the truck right now and find him.”

  “No.” Rosa coughed, and blood splattered the earth. She looked at her husband. “Stay with me.”

  Fear. He never thought he’d see fear in those brave black eyes. He muttered prayers in Spanish under his breath while she coughed and coughed, the sounds of drowning echoing off the ridge.

  “So this is how it all ends,” Rosa whispered.

  “So you want the ending, the real ending?” Dad’s eyes lock on to mine. “The real ending is death.”

  “I thought Grandma Rosa got cancer,” I say.

  “She did,” Dad says, and his sentences are tethered inside him; he has to force them out.

  But I push. “I don’t get it. What did Grandpa do?”

  “She got cancer, but Papá wouldn’t take her in. A doctor came every once in a while and checked on her, but Papá always refused further care. He wouldn’t let her leave the house.”

  So that’s it, then. The feud is because Dad thinks Grandpa’s responsible for Grandma Rosa’s death. He thinks Grandpa let her die.

  “Mamá took another ten years to die, and Papá grew more and more scared, and more and more protective. She was finally stuck at the ranch, and she hated it. I came back to see her as much as I could, even though Papá and I wanted to strangle each other.” He shakes his head slowly, over and over. “He trapped her there, to keep her safe, but she still died. She died because he wouldn’t let her leave.”

  “What about the tree?” I whisper.

  “What about it?”

  “Does it ever grow back?”

  “That tree only belongs in a story, Carol, a made-up story about a world that never existed, a past that never happened,” Dad says.

  “I know,” I mumble.

  “Grandpa’s stories were ones he made up to make losing her easier.” His bottom lip trembles, and he holds my hands like they’re anchors. “What story am I going to tell, huh? To make losing him easier?”

  Before I can answer, he straightens, wipes his nose, and says, “Oh, kid. Let’s go home.”

  I measure time in school supplies. A binder, six pencils, four billion sheets of college-ruled paper, and an eraser shaped like a watermelon.

  I measure time in glances from Alta. She looks at Grandma Rosa’s bracelet on my wrist and throws stones with her eyes.

  On my first day of seventh grade, I walk with my friends to school, the four of us wearing our messenger bags.

  Mine digs into my shoulder. “This thing’s giving me welts.” I rub my red skin.

  “But they’re so cute,” Manny says.

  Why did I agree to this silly bag? I spent forty bucks on it, and now I’m wishing I had my ratty old backpack. At least those straps are comfortable.

  The morning sky is pale blue, so watered down it’s mostly white. The lack of color makes me ache for the ranch. At the ranch the sunrise would be striped like a bowl of rainbow sherbet, and when the light hit the ridge, the sand would sparkle.

  I half limp, lugging my bag, to catch up with my friends. “We’re kind of ridiculous,” I say.

  The three others stare at me, as if I shouted swear words.

  “Admit it. These don’t really work so well as schoolbags.”

  Gabby clutches hers defensively, even as pencils spill out the front pocket.

  “What do you suggest?” Manny says. She lifts her nose in the air, and I almost laugh. She thinks I’m challenging her, but I’m not; I just really hate carrying this bag.

  “I should have bought snake-stomping boots,” I say.

  “Snake-stomping boots?” Manny repeats. “Carol, what are you even talking about?”

  “My grandpa —” I’m about to explain Grandpa’s boots to my confused friends when there’s a sound, one I haven’t heard in days, not since we left the ranch.

  A bee, buzzing around my head. I search for it in the air, and even though I can’t spot it, I hear it.

  I’m sure I look insane — demented — as I spin in a slow circle on a stranger’s lawn, searching for the bee. “Are you okay?” Manny asks.

  The buzzing fades, lost among the noise of city birds chirping and cars driving. I breathe out and let it go — let it all go. The bee. The ranch, lost forever to some buyer. Grandpa, lost to the Seville and sedatives — and to dementia. This is junior high, the moment I’ve been waiting for all summer. I’ve got Manny as my locker partner. New school clothes. New schedule. New Carol.

  “I’m okay,” I say. “And I love our bags. I do. I just have to get used to the strap.”

  We reach the school and find our homeroom, and my friends chat with our classmates, but I have nothing to contribute to the conversations. No gossip to share, since I was gone all summer. I’m as still as the desk I’m sitting at.

  There’s a letdown when our teacher’s just a normal teacher. We’re in junior high now; we’re supposed to get young, good-looking teachers who wear silly ties and read us books for teenagers but still let us into the candy stash. This guy’s hair is snowy white, and his tie is plain blue. MR. ADAIR is written on the whiteboard behind him.

  “When I call your name,” he says, “stand up and tell us how you spent your summer. If there’s a nickname you prefer to go by, let me know.”

  A report on our summer — how original.

  “I’m Gabriela, but I go by Gabby,” Gabby says. Mr. Adair makes a note. “This summer, I stayed home, and hung out with friends. We had lots of sleepovers.”

  Gabby also spent the summer getting taller. I can’t stop gawking at her legs — when did they get so long?

  “I’m Sofía, but I go by Sofie.” Mr. Adair makes a note. “This summer …”

  My ears shut off, muffle all sound. Sofie’s always been pretty, but the new eyeliner she wears makes her look like a real junior high girl. No — she looks like Alta. I’m like a little girl in her mom’s lipstick.

  My friends are blooming into trees, and I’m still just a seed.

  It’s my turn, and suddenly I’m aware of a still-healing scrape on my knee that makes me look like a clumsy little kid.

  “I’m Carolina,” I say, and stare at my messenger bag dangling off my chair, “but I go by Carol.” Mr. Adair makes a note.

  Caro-leeen-a. Caro-leeen-a.

  “I spent my summer at my grandpa’s ranch.”

  My bottom half thuds into my seat, relieved to have the spotlight off me, but the teacher doesn’t let me get away so easily.

  “What does your grandfather keep?”

  “Sheep,” I say, “but he
can’t take care of them anymore.”

  “Takes hard work to raise sheep,” Mr. Adair says. “I’ll bet you learned a lot from him.”

  I nod, and Mr. Adair prompts, “Such as?”

  How can I answer this? I’m just now unraveling the hundreds of things I learned from Grandpa.

  I look out the big square window while I think.

  It’s raining.

  Navy and gray clouds stain the sky, and the rain falls like someone turned on a faucet. “Rain,” I say, and point. The class looks, unimpressed.

  “Sorry,” I murmur, trying to cleanse my cluttered mind. “I haven’t seen rain in two months. There’s a drought at my grandpa’s ranch. It hasn’t rained in a hundred years.”

  “The southwestern desert?” Mr. Adair asks, and I nod. “I’ll bet your grandpa’s happy the drought’s finally over.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s been raining there all morning. Drought’s over just like that.” He snaps his fingers.

  I forget I’m in school, forget that the other kids are staring at me like a cactus grew out of my ear.

  No rain for a hundred years.

  Caro-leeen-a.

  The teacher calls the next kid on his roll. I pretend to sharpen a pencil while Eduardo, call me Eddie, shares about his summer at camp, and I watch the rain drizzle down the windowpane.

  No one else gapes at it like me. I trace the dark clouds as far as I can see them. Rain’s common in Albuquerque. But it’s raining at the ranch? After a hundred years? The drought is over, just like that?

  I think of the bees landing on the seed, the water they carried, one by one.

  When the teacher’s back is turned, I pull out my phone and Google it. He’s right — the drought is over. Flash-flood warnings in southern New Mexico.

  Did the bees really bring back the rain?

  Something flies past the window.

  A bee. It feels like an answer: yes.

  My heart flutters the rest of the day.

  Manny sits with Sofie, Gabby, and me at lunch. The entire cafeteria is whirring with whispers at this new social development, but I’m still rain-shocked.

  “I just can’t believe it’s raining,” I say.

  My friends don’t even try to mask their boredom with this topic. “So what?” Gabby says. “It rains all the time.”

  “You heard the teacher,” Manny says to me. “The drought’s over. You should be happy.”

  “I am happy.” Then why is my heart pounding so hard, it feels like it’ll burst from my chest? Like something strange or wonderful or terrible — or all of these — is about to happen?

  When they ask if I want to come to Manny’s after school, I make an excuse. “Uh, Mom wants us to have family time,” I fib.

  “You were with your family all summer,” Manny says.

  “Yeah, come on, we didn’t see you for two months!” Gabby says, and I almost give in. I did miss my friends. But Grandpa’s rumpled face flashes through my mind.

  “I really can’t, sorry.” I push my lunch tray to the center of the table. “Who wants my cookie?”

  When school is done, my friends walk me home, but before they can invite me over again, I run across our slick grass. When a bee buzzes in my ear, I don’t flick it away.

  Alta’s powder-blue car is parked sideways in our driveway, like she was in too much of a hurry to straighten it out. I guess Alta won the battle of the convertible.

  “Mom!” I cry before the front door is even open all the way. “You won’t believe it! It’s raining!”

  No one’s in the living room.

  I take the stairs two at a time and find Mom in her bathroom, putting makeup on. Lu’s reading a stack of board books. Mom and Dad’s TV is on, but no one watches.

  “Hi, hon,” Mom says, widening her eyes for the mascara wand. “How was your first day?”

  First day?

  Oh. School. “Good. Fine,” I say. “But Mom —”

  “No, come on,” she says, more energy in her voice than there ever was at the ranch. “I need more than ‘fine.’ Your first day of junior high! Was it as bad as you thought it would be?”

  I think for a minute.

  But it’s not my first day of junior high that I think of; it’s my first day at the ranch. When Lu went missing and all the dangerous things at the ranch rolled through my head like a horror movie: What if he drowns in a trough, swallows a rusty nail, gets attacked by a sheep or a coyote or a hawk?

  For months I’ve had every dangerous junior high school scenario on a loop in my mind, too: What if I get lost? What if my teachers are mean, or I don’t understand the homework assignment, or my locker gets stuck and I’m late to class?

  But today I didn’t worry about any of that. I didn’t even think of those things once. My mind was in other places. It was twenty minutes away, in an assisted-living facility, wondering if they served lunch the same time my school did. It was three hours south, wondering if that little seed was drinking rain. I don’t think I’ve gotten braver; I think I’ve just found other things to be scared of than tripping in the lunchroom or walking down the wrong hallway.

  Things like a lonely grandfather who still has a story to finish.

  “School,” I say, “is going to be just fine.”

  Mom smiles her famously melting smile. “Well, Alta’s on a date with Marco, and I’m running some errands with Lu. You’ll have the house to yourself for a while. I’m sure you have some homework.”

  “Where’s Dad?” I ask.

  “Work,” she says. “He’ll be home late.”

  “Mom,” I try again. “Look, it’s raining. Isn’t that amazing?”

  She glances out the window, the rain still coming down in buckets. “So?”

  “And it’s raining at the ranch,” I tell her. “It’s been raining all morning. The drought’s over!” I wait for this announcement to rock her core, for her to gasp, sigh, maybe drop her makeup bag.

  “Oh, yeah, I saw that on the news,” she says, pulling on a blouse. “Now that’s some cruel timing, isn’t it? Right after Grandpa moved?”

  “Can we go see him?” I ask.

  She nods. “Of course.”

  “Now?” I hold my breath.

  She scrunches up her eyebrows. “What’s the rush?”

  “It’s raining,” I say, but Mom still looks confused. I’ll have to connect the dots for her. “I want to make sure Serge sees the rain.”

  “I’m sure he can; he has windows,” Mom says.

  “He was a zombie last time we were there!” I say. “What if he can’t get to the window by himself?”

  “He’s got nurses.”

  This conversation is treading water, about to go under. “I just need to make sure.”

  Mom sighs. “Not tonight, hon.”

  “But the rain!” I say. “What if it’s not raining tomorrow?”

  “Saturday,” she promises.

  “But that’s too far away!”

  “Carol! It’s a school night, plus I have errands to run.” She picks up Lu, and I follow them downstairs. “Look,” she says, by way of consolation. “Get some homework done. Relax. You’ve got a nice quiet house to yourself. We’ll be back before dinner.”

  I must be frowning still, because she gives me a little hug and says, “Why don’t you try calling the Seville? You can talk with Serge as long as you like. Tell him it’s raining. The number’s on the fridge.” She and Lu leave.

  I turn off the TV. The house feels even emptier than it is. Every room is an echo chamber for my unspoken thoughts. Mom couldn’t have been more off — I don’t want to be alone. I want to be with Grandpa. After about an hour of homework, I try calling Dad to see if he’ll take me to see Grandpa. But he doesn’t answer.

  Maybe I am being dramatic. Maybe I should just call. I dial the Seville’s number. A nurse with a sickly-sugary voice connects me to room 104, but the phone just rings and rings, buzzing and buzzing, until the nurse picks back up and says,
“Sorry, dear, he’s not picking up.”

  Of course he isn’t, I think. He’s probably still zonked out, asleep with his eyes open, sedated past the point of even knowing what a phone is.

  I wish I could be there right now. He needs to know it’s raining at the ranch. After a lifetime of drought, Grandpa needs to know the bees brought back the rain.

  I call again and again and again, until the nurse asks me to stop calling, please, and I hang up, defeated. I try to get lost in my pile of classroom outlines and first homework assignments, but my mind won’t concentrate on anything but rain.

  I close my eyes and wish, with the force of a thousand bees, that I could find a way to get to Grandpa.

  But it doesn’t happen.

  Slowly, the house fills back up. Dad comes home first. He takes a shower and turns on a baseball game. Then Mom and Lu, bearing Chinese food. Alta trudges in an hour past her curfew, eyes slitted, snapping at anyone who talks to her but pouting when no one asks her what’s wrong.

  I fall asleep disappointed, hoping I’ll dream of bees.

  But my dreams are empty.

  The rain wakes me.

  It’s one in the morning, and it still hasn’t let up. I watch out the window. The rain plink-plinks onto the windshields of the cars below — Dad’s pickup truck, the minivan, and finally Alta’s little speck of a car, parked crooked at the end of the driveway.

  The night is black, but the raindrops glisten silver as they fall. I wonder if Grandpa can see the same thing.

  I go downstairs for a drink of water and wish I had stayed in bed, because I’m about to do something crazy.

  Alta’s car keys are on the counter.

  An ideal time to practice driving is about one in the morning, on the highway leading to the south part of Albuquerque. There’s almost no one else on the road, so you can just glide along at your own pace, alone. Which is a good thing, since I’ve never driven with any other cars around.

  Today — or yesterday, I guess, technically — Mr. Adair made me stand in front of the class and say my name. If I could stand in front of my class now, I would say different things. I am different. On the inside.