Its June, I am ten years old, nothing too bad has happened to me yet. We are in the blue truck. Normally on a drive like this I become a scientist, crawling around the backseat deciding which window whips the wind faster. Letting the air pin my elbow to the frame of Dad’s truck. In the time it takes me to go from side to side, I lose the comparison and have to start all over again. Sometimes, I imagine myself as Gumby, with stretchy arms so I can feel both sides at once.
Eventually I would end up in the front seat, trying to find a radio station playing something Dad will sing along to, leaning forward, reaching for the knobs, knocking the ashtray out of the cupholder with my knees. I give Dad a half smile, a shrug of my shoulder that apologizes for me. But this isn’t a normal drive. They haven’t gotten around to paving this road yet, so Dad tells me to buckle up, even though it’s only a ten-minute ride.
If he senses the rumblings of a whine coming from my throat, he starts his rant about government interference in small towns and “how things used to just get done without delay. Everyone would lend a hand, and it is embarrassing that things go to shit like this”. I don’t like the shape his face makes when he gets angry. So, I don’t argue when he tells me to wear my seatbelt.
“That brain of yours works overtime as it is, no sense in denting my roof to make it work any harder”. Dad uses his whole body to say this, lifting his hands on and off the steering wheel, the truck veering side to side. Not looking to either of us for approval, that isn’t what he’s after.
Mom lets out what sounds like a laugh but sadder and gets quiet. Her painted toes out the window, feet crossed at the ankle and, a cigarette pasted to her bottom lip. We both know that he is being mean, but I am too young to know that he is calling me stupid. Our family dog Harli stamps her overgrown nails into my thighs, using them as leverage to stick her face out the back window and makes a kite with her jowls. I scratch the base of her tail, and smile watching her throw her head back. Jealousy of her bliss, and her separation from the tension in the truck bubbles in my stomach.
When we pull into the farm stand, we are greeted by the grey-haired woman in open toed shoes. While my parents weigh produce, my fingers explore the shelves. I swat the flies from my arms; my flip flop and toenails catch the concrete when I kick a peach pit. The noise makes me shiver. My eyes catch onto the glow of the honey jars. I wonder how they put the sun into little sticky vessels. I decide not to ask and I feel small instead. The grey-haired woman bends down to my eye level. I stare too long at her cracked heels inching closer to my exposed toes. She offers to show me how they “bottle the golden magic”. I look to Mom; she gives a careful nod. I am too old to believe in magic but, too young to understand how they get honey from bees, so I follow.
When we walk over to the wooden crates, I wipe my sticky hands on the sides of my pink corduroy shorts. When I bring my palms back up, they are still tackey but now covered in a thin layer of pink lint. I offer them up to Harli, one lick per hand, then back to wiping them on my shorts.
“This is where the bees live.” The grey-haired woman explains.
She starts pulling out wooden slats like she is a magician pulling a rabbit from a top hat. But the wood is not to be mistaken for a home, it’s more of a holding cell. I think about what it must have felt like when those bees were taken away from their parents. I wonder if they had moms and dads like mine. Sometimes I wish I could be whisked away and saved too. But I don’t like the grey-haired woman. I’d rather stay with Dad and his predictable anger. I know his face, the way it twists, I know when it tells me to be quiet. I don’t know how the grey-haired woman could twist. The thought of learning this flips my stomach; a wave of pain starts to burn in my belly.
I tug on the hem of Mom’s shorts to tell her that my stomach hurts and I want to go home. She ignores me, careful not to break her cemented focus and nods at the grey-haired woman as she explains the special gas that puts the bees to sleep.
My knees start to buckle when I realize they can’t fight back. My senses start to shut off so fast I can’t tell the order in which I lose them. Her lesson mutes itself, she becomes a blob swallowed by her colors, blue skirt, bluer tank top, brow freckled in from her sandals, and she swirls in my mind until her grey boils into TV static in my hands. The channels keep changing until all I hear is the buzzing of the honeybees. So loud they are inside my head with me. I feel their chaotic desperation rattling around in my teeth so violently that I grip my jaw to keep my fillings in place. I cover my ears, creating a suction cup with my sticky palms. I close my eyes so I can focus but, I start choking on the mid-day heat instead.
The next thing I know, I am being buckled into “the bitch seat” of Dad’s truck. He only calls it that because it belonged to Harli first. I don’t know if she is a bitch because she is a dog or because she’s a girl, like me. Maybe she is a bitch because she is the only one brave enough to bark back at Dad when he yells. Sometimes, Dad makes me feel like a dog.
My mouth waters while Dad buckles me in. Between gulps for air, I empty my stomach onto the front of my butterfly shirt. We had picked cherries that morning from the tree in our backyard. Mom had told me not to eat any; we needed all we could get for her to sell at the farm stand. When she wasn’t looking, I popped a few in my mouth. Now the evidence of my crime was all over me. I wait for Dad to start drawing around it with chalk like he’s outlining a body, but he just starts yelling instead.
“Jesus fucking Christ Maddie, its all over me!” he spits.
Flicking my vomit off his hands, wiping himself clean on my shirt. I start to grieve it, Mom isn’t good at getting stains out of things, and cherry can be unforgiving on white.
I hear broken pieces of apologizes made on my behalf. Mom saying I am just tired, but I know I am not tired, something is wrong. Mom later tells me I need to apologize to the grey-haired woman. I guess I screamed so loud at her to stop that she cried. I don’t know how to apologize for something my mind wasn’t even present for.
“So I guess that’s the first time I heard them, the bees.” I squint my eyes and I’m starting to make out the shape of Amelia. My hand finds the arm of the chair, and I let it pull me back into the room, but only a little.
“Maddie, that’s the first time you’ve directly named your dad’s anger. How does it feel sharing that with me?”
“I wasn’t talking about my dad; I was talking about bees”. It comes out more defensive than I mean, but I can salvage that. I can course correct. She sighs, not a disappointed one, but one that makes me feel pathetic anyway. We have been doing this for a year now, I dance around it, she calls me on it, I change the subject and eventually she lets it go.
“I am envious of those bees.” I admit. My deflection works; she cocks her head to the side and puts her pen down.
I swallow, planning my next move carefully. Say enough to feel heard. Only let her see what I think she can handle, what won’t leave me feeling guilty for exceeding the weight that $140 an hour can hold. I am careful to not make a $200 confession that will have Amelia needing to see her own shrink. As if a week for now I’d receive an invoice for “harm done”.
“When someone takes something from them, they are given the courtesy of being put the fuck to sleep first,” I offer carefully.
Amelia puts her clipboard down and swallows hard. I watch the gears behind her eyes turn, forming her next question carefully. The air hangs stale between us. I will her to get it over with in my mind. I already know what is coming.
“What’s been taken from you Maddie?” she forms it as less of a question something closer to permission; permission to tell. She knows better than to spook me with that, knows the bees won’t let me. So, she is careful,
But they buzz around the word taken anyway. Not inside my head but, around my face like a spiral around a cartoon character after getting hit by a falling anvil. A distraction, but they let me stay in the room a moment long.
“Look,” I start, but the word collapses in my throat, the bees placed back inside my head without permission.
I hear faint whispers of Amelia’s assurances that she will be there when I am ready to come back to my body, to take my time, there is no rush. But I don’t hear her from the chair, I hear it out the window, my mind is already a mile down the street. The bees and I are flying in our own cluster, no one bothers us aside from the odd swat, no one wants to get stung, so they leave me alone in my buzzing.
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