Lost in the Beehive

by Michele Young-Stone

  “Not bad.”

  “Can you tell me a number between one and ten?”

  “Six.”

  “Great! That’s not too terrible.”

  Lisa came back into the room. She had whitish-blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. “So, I didn’t quite get him,” she said to Maggie. “He knows he’s on call, but he didn’t pick up.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Everything’s fine,” Maggie said. “This hospital is full of doctors just dying to deliver their first baby.”

  Lisa laughed, and the pain surged. I lurched forward, moaning.

  Maggie said, “Remember, don’t push.”

  “It hurts again.”

  “What’s your number?” she asked.

  “Fuck a number!”

  Lisa said, “I’m going to check.” I felt her gloved hand between my legs. “She’s already eight easy.”

  Maggie said, “Okay.”

  “What’s eight?”

  “That’s how many centimeters you’re dilated.”

  I grabbed onto the belt of her nice uniform. “Where’s Dr. Donato? I think it’s time to have this baby.” I lurched forward again.

  Maggie said, “Don’t push. It’s not time.”

  Lisa said, “How many ccs did you give her?”

  “Not enough. Where is that pompous asshole?”

  Lisa said, “Are you thirsty? I’ll get you some ice chips.”

  I was. “Please.”

  “You’re doing great,” Maggie said. She checked me again. “You’re already at nine. You’re really fast. How many children do you have?”

  “This is my first.”

  “Wow!”

  “I need to push,” I said. Maggie went to the door and called to Lisa, “Forget the ice. It’s nearly time.” They both put on new gloves that popped at their wrists. Then they tied on surgical masks. Maggie said, “Check her.”

  “She’s fast. She’s ten.”

  “I hate Dr. Donato,” Maggie said.

  “He always does this shit.”

  Maggie said, “You are a warrior princess, Gloria. You are about to be a new mom. You can do anything. Are you ready?”

  I grunted.

  “Then, let’s do this. When you feel like pushing, bear down like you’re taking a big poop and push as hard as you can.”

  I pushed once, and then I fell back, panting. “You can do this,” Lisa said. My feet were in the stirrups, but she took hold of both my hands and pulled me up, helping me to bear down.

  Maggie said, “I see the head. One more push.”

  Lisa helped me push again.

  “The baby’s crowning. You’re doing amazing, Gloria.”

  With the last push, I grabbed onto the backs of my knees and stayed there. I was going to push until my baby came out. Then, Maggie said, “It’s a girl.” She caught my baby and raised her up. She was slimy, her eyes closed, a shock of sticky white hair. Beautiful. Magnificent. Motionless.

  I burst into tears. “She’s not breathing. Why isn’t she breathing? What’s wrong with her?”

  “It’s okay.” Lisa and Maggie were calm. How could they be calm?

  I fell back, a deep sorrow building in my chest. I watched as Lisa used a blue suction bulb in one of my baby’s nostrils and then the other, wiping her face with a cloth. My baby took her first gurgled breath, then a second. Then, she wailed. She screamed, her mouth red and wide. Her voice full and loud. “My baby.” The God that I’d lost when Sheff died came back with the force of gravity. He was bowling balls, anchors, and anvils pinning me down, clobbering me. I had a daughter. She was a miracle. I said, “Give me.”

  “We need to clean her up.”

  “Give her to me now!”

  Maggie handed her to me. I was oblivious to everything that followed.

  Maggie said, “We need to clean her up and get her Apgar, and we need to get you cleaned up. I think you might’ve torn a little.” Then, Dr. Donato walked into the delivery room. He was scrubbed and ready to go.

  Lisa rolled her eyes and shook her head and walked past him.

  “Looks like you did a good job, Gloria.”

  “Thank you.” I beamed.

  Later that night, I woke up itchy from the drugs. I was clean, in a fresh grown, and in a new room. The moon outside my window was full. Maggie came in with my baby girl swaddled in a blanket. “Here’s your mama,” she said, handing her to me. “Do you have a name?” she asked.

  “I have one in mind.”

  “Do you want to share?”

  “Zelda.”

  “I like it.”

  “Thanks.”

  It was after eleven o’clock when Big Mama and Betty were allowed to visit. They’d already seen Baby Blount through the nursery glass. “She’s beautiful,” Big Mama said.

  “I’m so proud of you,” Betty said. “You did great. Wham bam, thank you, ma’am, they said. Way to go.”

  Big Mama said, “We got in touch with Early Bird, and he said that he’d find Jacob. I’m sure he’ll be here first thing in the morning.”

  Betty and Big Mama were with me. I had a beautiful daughter. I had no complaints.

  “Did you call my mother, Betty?”

  “I did. She and your dad are over the moon. They’re going to call you.”

  One of the nurses wheeled my baby into the room. I let Betty and Big Mama hold her. For now, her name was Baby Blount, but Zelda was starting to stick.

  That night, after Betty and Big Mama had gone home and Zelda had been taken back to the nursery, I heard a buzzing sound. I turned to see a small hole to the right of the window unit air conditioner. Bees flew in through the hole, congregating and multiplying, spreading out along the windowsill. I sat up and watched their numbers grow. Their buzzing rivaled the air conditioner’s hum. The bees circled one another, their buzzing morphing into something akin to words, his voice. They said, “I’m proud of you.” I heard them, him.

  I knew that it was crazy, but I felt him there. “I love you so much,” I said. I remembered holding him. Then, I felt him beside me, and I slept.

  29

  BABY MADE THREE. I WASN’T leaving Jacob. I couldn’t. What would I tell a judge?

  “I’m not happy in my marriage. Sometimes, he loses his temper. Sometimes he pushes me. He’s put his hand over my mouth. No, your honor. I never told anyone.”

  “Marriage takes work, Mrs. Blount. This man loves you. Have you ever called the police on him? Do you have any evidence to support that he’s abusive?”

  “No, your honor.”

  “Furthermore, how are you going to support your daughter? Where are you going to live? Is it really so bad at home, so bad that you would tear your family apart?”

  Jacob would say, “You promised you’d never leave me. You said you loved me. You lied. You’re a liar.”

  “Your honor,” a lawyer would say, “Mrs. Ricci was institutionalized as an adolescent for being a homosexual. I don’t see how she can be a responsible parent. For all we know, she might sexually molest her daughter.”

  These dialogues played in my head. I was stuck, but it was all right because I was in love with my baby.

  At first, she slept between me and Jacob, but then Jacob moved down the hall to the spare bedroom. He came and went as he had before. When he was home, he said, “You’re such a cutie,” to Zelda, feeding her spoonfuls of rice cereal. He sometimes burped her, but he never changed a diaper. When she cried, he called, “Gloria, Zelda needs you.” After dinner, he played “This little piggy went to market” with her, but then he left her to me. I bathed her and put her to bed. He was the man who came and went, making cooing sounds.

  Everyone had warned me that the first year of motherhood would be tough, but it wasn’t. It was bliss. My whole life, every second of every hour of every day, was spent caring for Zelda. If I’d had other responsibilities, life would’ve been incredibly difficult, but I had and wanted nothing else.

  Her eyes were dark like J
acob’s. Her hair was fair and curly like mine. She had rosy cheeks, pink lips, chubby thighs, and sweet fingers and toes that begged to be kissed. She rarely cried because I rarely put her down. When I took a bath, she took a bath. When I went to Betty’s or Big Mama’s, she came along. I wouldn’t take her home to Maryville because I knew she’d get upset on the long car ride.

  When my parents came to visit, I wouldn’t let them do very much to help. “No, I don’t need a break.” “No, I don’t want to go shopping with Betty, not without Zelda.” “No, I don’t need you to feed or bathe or put her to bed. I’ve got it.” At night, I held her in my arms, Frank Sinatra on the turntable. “ ‘Fly me to the moon,’ ” I sang. Instead of putting her in her crib, I took her to bed with me.

  “Motherhood suits you,” my father said.

  My mother said, “You were such a sweet baby.” My amazing mother was becoming the woman she’d always wanted to be. When Zelda was two months old, Mother received a teaching assistantship at a small liberal arts college.

  In Greeley, Betty and I were raising Zelda. If I ever came clean and told anyone how I felt about Betty, I’d lose what we had. I was happy with how things were. I was with my two favorite people in the whole world, and when the weather was warm, the hive joined in. On hot summer afternoons, Betty picked me and Zelda up, and we went to Wampus Creek. Zelda loved the water. Betty had bought a green float that had a sling and it held Zelda aloft. She could splash and kick, floating around, spinning in the water. The honeybees and dragonflies zipped past. The late-afternoon sun filtered through the trees, dappling Betty’s dark hair with white light.

  Then one afternoon in late August, Betty was slurping creek water in her mouth, spurting it up, playing fountain over Zelda’s head, when I, without thinking, swam over and kissed her.

  She swam away. I was in the light, and she was in the shade. She said, “What was that about, Gloria?” She was flustered. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She stated the obvious. “You’re married.” Then, she added, “And you’re not gay.”

  “I’m sorry. My hormones are all screwy, I think.”

  “Look, Gloria, I thought you knew this already. You don’t have to be someone you’re not when you’re with me. I like you just how you are.” She put her right hand at her neck, where a rash was breaking out. I’d upset her.

  I wanted to tell her the truth: I am gay, Betty, and I’m in love with you. I wanted to kiss her again, but instead, I said, “I’m really sorry. You’re my best friend.” I made a funny face at Zelda to try and relieve the tension I’d created.

  Betty said, “Is Jacob still working a lot? That’s gotta be really tough on you.”

  It wasn’t tough. It was a relief. I said, “It’s fine. I’m sorry.”

  She said, “Are we okay?”

  “Of course.” The facade that was I, Gloria Blount, was cracking apart. There were big fissures. I was breaking open.

  30

  ZELDA SAT AT THE KITCHEN table, her face slick with butter and cinnamon. It was the fall of 1977. She was three. Time had passed quickly, and very little had changed. I heard Jacob’s boots clomp down the steps.

  “Do you want eggs?” I asked.

  “None for me, but thanks.” He kissed Zelda’s forehead. “You’re sticky,” he said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “I’m probably staying in Raleigh for the night. Another estate sale.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you need anything from the market before I leave this afternoon?”

  “We’re good. We’re going to the carnival tonight with Betty.”

  “Take Zelda on the Ferris wheel.”

  “As long as she’s not scared.”

  “I’m never scared,” she said. “You know that, Mommy.”

  Jacob kissed me on the cheek before he left.

  Betty picked us up at six. Zelda wore her favorite red dress. She called it her fancy dress, which made me laugh. She liked tulle and taffeta, everything frilly, and when she said the word fancy, she elongated the an sound. She was terribly fancy, no question. She wore red cowboy boots. “I’m all ready,” she said. “I want to see a polar bear and a lion.”

  “I don’t think there will be polar bears or lions.”

  We got into Betty’s car. Zelda sat in the back seat. She said, “But I want to see a big cat.”

  Betty put the car in reverse. “What about a kitten? Kittens are better than big cats.”

  “And a kitten,” Zelda said.

  “Aunt Betty can get you your very own kitten,” Betty said. She had recently started feeding a colony of strays.

  “No, thank you, Aunt Betty,” I said.

  “No, Mommy,” Zelda said. “I would like to have a kitten.”

  I looked at Betty. I didn’t need to say anything. We’d be getting a kitten. I knew it.

  “Can we get the kitten tonight?”

  “Soon,” Betty said. Then we sang “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” on the way to the carnival. When we got to the fairgrounds, it was dark, but the area was strung with orange and white lights. We spotted the Ferris wheel and the Tilt-A-Whirl. Betty said, “The Tilt-A-Whirl is my favorite.” We each took one of Zelda’s hands, and swung her as we crossed the field heading toward the rides. “I think we have to buy tickets,” Betty said. “I haven’t been in a decade.” We got our tickets at a squat concession stand and walked along a line of oaks, their leaves fallen. They crunched underfoot. The air smelled of fall.

  We passed by a pumpkin patch, and Zelda said, “Let’s see the pumpkins.” It wasn’t an actual patch, just an area roped off and strewn with pumpkins. It’d been a hot, dry summer. The pumpkins had been trucked in for the carnival and Halloween. I smelled popcorn and burning wood. Zelda walked methodically from pumpkin to pumpkin, trying to lift each one. By the sixth pumpkin, she succeeded. “I’ll take this one,” she said.

  “We’ll have to get it on the way out,” I explained. “You don’t want to carry it around the whole time, right?”

  “I’ll take this one,” she repeated.

  I said, “Let’s set it over here so that no one else takes it.”

  She nodded, and followed me to the perimeter of the patch, setting it down. “Don’t go anywhere,” she warned the pumpkin. Betty tousled her curls. I watched the two of them before reaching out and grabbing Betty’s hand. She smiled.

  A south wind came out of nowhere, whipping up dust, cut grass, leaves, and trash. A crumpled handbill tumbled by my boot. I bent down and picked it up. The black letters were faded, but there was no mistaking the words Madame Zelda, Fortune-Teller. My mouth tasted chalky from the dust. I looked for Zelda, but she was gone. “Zelda?”

  “She was just here,” Betty said.

  “Zelda!”

  “Zelda!” Betty called.

  I looked at Zelda’s special pumpkin. I walked and then ran the perimeter of the pumpkin patch. Betty started asking everyone if they’d seen a little girl, red dress, blonde curls, red boots. “You can’t miss her.”

  “Zelda!” I screamed. “Where are you?” The old handbill was balled in my fist. I asked the man who’d taken our pumpkin money if he’d seen Zelda.

  “No, ma’am,” he said, “but there’s a lost-and-found for kids over there.” He pointed toward the main tent. Betty and I jogged in that direction, shouting Zelda’s name.

  I told Betty, “She never runs off. Never!”

  “I know.”

  “Do you think someone grabbed her?”

  “She was right here.”

  “Then she was gone.” I scanned the crowd. Betty looked back toward the patch. Then, I spotted Zelda’s red tulle and boots. She stood before a yellow-and-orange-striped spired tent. A spotlight shone onto the image of a fortune-teller, her hands hovering over a crystal ball. I watched Zelda slip between two staked canvas flaps. Betty and I were already running toward her. “Wait, Zelda.” We followed her between the canvas flaps, and immediately, my Zelda grabbed onto my
thigh. “I got blown over here, Mommy.”

  Betty got down on her knees. “Thank God you’re safe.”

  “The wind caught me, Aunt Betty.”

  There was a plywood placard painted in hues of purple, orange, and black, the image of a woman in a lavender shawl. The one and only, the legendary Madame Zelda, Fortune-Teller. “Look, Mommy,” Zelda said, pointing to the sign. “It’s a witch.”

  Betty said, “Never run off like that.”

  “I didn’t run, Aunt Betty. The wind picked me up and blew me here like a leaf.”

  Then, I spotted Madame Zelda leaning against a post. The wind popped the tent flap at her feet. She wore a long purple skirt adorned with tiny mirrors. She had one arm folded at her waist, and she smoked a cigarette, the smoke rising, curling before her hook nose. I saw that her bony fingers were still covered with rings. Her hair was white, how I remembered, and her eyes were a dull brown. She flicked her cigarette, stubbing it with the toe of a purple boot, her skirt dragging the dirt, and approached us. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Betty whispered, “Do you know her?”

  “I do,” I said. “Can you stay with Zelda while we talk?”

  Madame Zelda said, “Your little girl is telling the truth. The wind did carry her here.”

  Betty picked Zelda up. She clearly didn’t think Madame Zelda was in her right mind. Probably, she’d grabbed our Zelda. “We’ll be just outside,” Betty said.

  Madame Zelda said, “Take your time. The girl and I need to talk.” By the girl, she meant me. Then, she said, “Wait,” and reached out, taking my Zelda’s face in her crooked fingers. “You’re a very pretty girl. The wind most certainly carried you to me.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Zelda said.

  “Now go have some fun while I talk to your mother.”

  Betty held tight to our Zelda. “We’ll meet you out here.”

  Zelda said, “Let’s find the kittens, Aunt Betty.”

  Madame Zelda said, “Follow me.” I trailed her through two inner flaps. The table was just as I remembered, but now there was a crystal ball.

  “Why have the ball if you don’t use it?”