Free The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd Page A

coldness cut sharp circles around my calves. I didn’t want to be on the same planet with her, much less the same side of the creek.
    â€œYou find your own way from now on!” I yelled over my shoulder.
    On the opposite side I plopped onto the mossy dirt. We stared across the water at each other. In the dark she looked like a boulder shaped by five hundred years of storms. I lay back and closed my eyes.
    In my dream I was back on the peach farm, sitting out behind the tractor shed, and even though it was broad daylight, I could see a huge, round moon in the sky. It looked so perfect up there. I gazed at it awhile, then leaned against the shed and closed my eyes. Next I heard a sound like ice breaking, and, looking up, I saw the moon crack apart and start to fall. I had to run for my life.
    I woke with my chest hurting. I searched for the moon and found it all in one piece, still spilling light over the creek. I looked across the water for Rosaleen. She was gone.
    My heart did flip-flops.
    Please, God. I didn’t mean to treat her like a pet dog. I was trying to save her. That’s all.
    Fumbling to get my shoes on, I felt the same old grief I’d known in church every single Mother’s Day. Mother, forgive.
    Rosaleen, where are you? I gathered up my bag and ran along the creek toward the bridge, hardly aware I was crying. Tripping over a dead limb, I sprawled through the darkness and didn’t bother to get up. I could picture Rosaleen miles from here, tearing down the highway, mumbling, Shitbucket, damn fool girl.
    Looking up, I noticed that the tree I’d fallen beneath was practically bald. Only little bits of green here and there, and lots of gray moss dangling to the ground. Even in the dark I could see that it was dying, and doing it alone in the middle of all these unconcerned pines. That was the absolute way of things. Loss takes up inside of everything sooner or later and eats right through it.
    Humming drifted out of the night. It wasn’t a gospel tune exactly, but it carried all the personality of one. I followed the sound and found Rosaleen in the middle of the creek, not a stitch of clothes on her body. Water beaded across her shoulders, shining like drops of milk, and her breasts swayed in the currents. It was the kind of vision you never really get over. I couldn’t help it, I wanted to go and lick the milk beads from her shoulders.
    I opened my mouth. I wanted something. Something, I didn’t know what. Mother, forgive. That’s all I could feel. That old longing spread under me like a great lap, holding me tight.
    Off came my shoes, my shorts, my top. I hesitated with my underpants, then worked them off, too.
    The water felt like a glacier melting against my legs. I must have gasped at the iciness, because Rosaleen looked up and seeing me come naked through the water, started to laugh. “Look at you strutting out here. Jiggle-tit and all.”
    I eased down beside her, suspending my breath at the water’s sting. “I’m sorry,” I said.
    â€œI know,” she said. “Me, too.” She reached over and patted the roundness of my knee like it was biscuit dough.
    Thanks to the moon, I could see clear down to the creek bottom, all the way to a carpet of pebbles. I picked one up—reddish, round, a smooth water heart. I popped it into my mouth, sucking for whatever marrow was inside it.
    Leaning back on my elbows, I slid down till the water sealed over my head. I held my breath and listened to the scratch of river against my ears, sinking as far as I could into that shimmering, dark world. But I was thinking about a suitcase on the floor, about a face I could never quite see, about the sweet smell of cold cream.

New beekeepers are told that the way to find the elusive queen is by first locating her circle of attendants.
    â€”The Queen Must Die: And Other Affairs of Bees and Men
Chapter Three
    N ext to Shakespeare I love Thoreau best. Mrs. Henry