The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd Page B

farmer flicked on the radio and the Supremes blared through the truck cab with ‘Baby, baby, where did our love go?’
    There’s nothing like a song about lost love to remind you how everything precious can slip from the hinges where you’ve hung it so careful. I laid my head against Rosaleen’s arm. I wanted her to pat life back into place, but her hands lay still in her lap. Ninety miles after we’d climbed in his truck, the farmer pulled off the road beside a sign that read TIBURON 3 MILES. It pointed left, toward a road curving away into silvery darkness. Climbing out of the truck, Rosaleen asked if we could have one of his cantaloupes for our supper.
    ‘Take yourself two,’ he said. We waited till his taillights turned to specks no bigger than lightning bugs before we spoke or even moved. I was trying not to think how sad and lost we really were. I was not so sure it was an improvement over living with T. Ray, or even life in prison. There wasn’t a soul anywhere to help us. But still, I felt painfully alive, like every cell in my body had a little flame inside it, burning so brightly it hurt.
    ‘At least we got a full moon,’ I told Rosaleen. We started walking. If you think the country is quiet, you’ve never lived in it. Tree frogs alone make you wish for earplugs. We walked along, pretending it was a regular day. Rosaleen said it looked like that farmer who’d driven us here had had a good crop of cantaloupes. I said it was amazing the mosquitoes weren’t out. When we came to a bridge with water running beneath, we decided we would pick our way down to the creek bed and rest for the night. It was a different universe down there, the water shining with flecks of moving light and kudzu vines draped between the pine trees like giant hammocks. It reminded me of a Grimm Brothers forest, drawing up the nervous feelings I used to get when I stepped into the pages of fairy tales where unthinkable things were likely—you just never knew. Rosaleen broke open the cantaloupes, pounding them against a creek stone. We ate them down to their skins, then scooped water into our hands and drank, not caring about algae or tadpoles or whether the cows used the creek for their toilet. Then we sat on the bank and looked at each other.
    ‘I just wanna know, of all the places on this earth, why you picked Tiburon,’ Rosaleen said.
    ‘I’ve never even heard of it.’
    Even though it was dark, I pulled the black Mary picture out of my bag and handed it to her.
    ‘It belonged to my mother. On the back it says Tiburon, South Carolina.’
    ‘Let me get this straight. You picked Tiburon ‘cause your mother had a picture with that town written on the back—that’s it?’
    ‘Well, think about it,’ I said.
    ‘She must have been there sometime in her life to have owned this picture. And if she was, a person might remember her, you never know.’
    Rosaleen held it up to the moonlight to see it better.
    ‘Who’s this supposed to be?’
    ‘The Virgin Mary,’ I said.
    ‘Well, if you ain’t noticed, she’s colored,’ said Rosaleen, and I could tell it was having an effect on her by the way she kept gaz- ing at it with her mouth parted. I could read her thought: If Jesus’ mother is black, how come we only know about the white Mary? This would be like women finding out Jesus had had a twin sister who’d gotten half God’s genes but none of the glory. She handed it back.
    ‘I guess I can go to my grave now, because I’ve seen it all.’
    I pushed the picture down in my pocket.
    ‘You know what T. Ray said about my mother?’ I asked, wanting finally to tell her what had happened.
    ‘He said she left me and him way before she died. That she’d just come back for her things the day the acci- dent happened.’
    I waited for Rosaleen to say how ridiculous that was, but she squinted straight ahead as if weighing the possibility.
    ‘Well, it’s not true,’ I said, my voice rising like something had seized it from below