Free A Place at the Table by Susan Rebecca White Page B

dumb luck. If I’m going to catch a bunch of them without a net, I need protection. I think of the rubber gloves Mama wears when she washes dishes by hand, so she won’t mess up her nails. She keeps a whole box of them underneath the sink in the kitchen.
    I put the firefly jar down on the floor and return everything else to its original box, its original space. I pick up the jar and walk back upstairs, turning off the light before I close the door at the top of the stairwell. I can still hear the sound of Mama’s hair dryer coming from the bedroom. I walk into the kitchen. Draped over the faucet is a pair of rubber gloves, drying from their last use.
    I snatch the gloves, but then pause, putting them back. Mama might notice if they’re missing. I look under the sink and find a box of them. I pull a pair out. As I stand I hear someone enter the kitchen. Startled, I turn around, holding the rubber gloves in my hand.
    It’s Hunter. He looks me up and down. “Planning to stick your hand up your ass?” he asks.
    I ignore him. The only other choice is to fight, to become a ball of bodies whirling around, blood and hair flinging from the fury. Mama would hear the commotion, and she would come and break us up, and this I will not allow. Never again will I let Mama get between us, now that I know whose side she is on.
    I carry the gloves and jar out of the kitchen, glancing back at Hunter to see if he’s still watching me. He’s at the refrigerator, pulling out bologna and mayonnaise, fixing himself a sandwich, I guess, though it’s five o’clock in the afternoon, only an hour before dinner. Hunter’s appetite is the butt of many Banks family jokes. Mama swears he has a tapeworm.
    I know there’s something nasty inside of him.
    •  •  •
    This is what I tell myself: that if I trip over a branch on my way out to the woods, or I cannot find the hive again, or I get stung—even once—while trying to steal the bees, I will know that God does not want me to do this. But I complete my bee-gathering mission easily and without any fuss. I return to the hive, put on the gloves, pull outone, then another, and finally a third, and deposit each into the jar. An arsenal for the war I’ve been fighting with my brother for years.
    •  •  •
    I have been lying in bed for over an hour, needing to know for certain that Hunter is asleep. He’s been snoring lightly for the last half hour. Before I rise, I say a silent prayer: God, if this is wrong, let the bees have died in their jar. Let one of them sting me when I try to release it. Do something to show me that this is not your way.
    I lean over and retrieve the flashlight hidden under my bunk. I tiptoe to the bedroom door, making sure it is soundly closed. I walk to the closet, pull the blanket off the jar, and shine the flashlight on it. The bees rest still and motionless on its bottom. My chest tightens at the realization that they are dead, at the realization that God has intervened, that he does not want me to do this.
    But when I pick the jar up they start buzzing again, angry, very much alive.
    I walk to the foot of our beds and, balancing the jar in one hand, climb up the railing of our bunks. The wooden railing creaks from the pressure of my weight. Really, we outgrew these bunks years ago. We outgrew sharing a room, too, but Mama insisted on turning Troy’s room into her sewing room after he moved out. Hunter groans and shifts but doesn’t wake up. My feet on the railing, I stand above his sleeping form. With my free hand, I untuck the sheet and the blanket from the foot of the bed. Slowly, slowly, I unscrew the jar until the lid is loose, ready to come off as soon as I lift it. I slide my hand, holding the jar, beneath the sheet.
    “Hunter,” I command. “Wake up.”
    He stirs but does not say anything. With my free hand I grab his foot, shake it hard. “Hunter.”
    “Huh?” His body jerks and he opens his eyes, but he still doesn’t seem to see