Before Grandpa Case died when I was eight, my mama was well enough to stay out of the hospital, but not always well enough to do much else. Sometimes she’d go all day long, sunup to sundown, without getting out of bed. Other times, she’d go for one or two or even three days in a row without ever sleeping more than a few hours at a time. Sometimes she heard voices talking to her that weren’t really there—voices of people we knew or voices of people who only existed in her own head.
But mostly she did all right up until her daddy died.
Afterward, once she’d gotten home from that month in the mental hospital in Alberta, she went years without a single day where she heard things that weren’t there or forgot how regular mamas were supposed to act. She was so healthy for so long I sometimes forgot that she’d ever been different from Arden’s mama, forgot that she’d ever lived in a hospital where they locked the doors and only let Daddy visit once a day from three to five.
But then she had Mylie. And then this summer had come along, and the drought, and the watermelon seeds . . . and now, looking at Mama sitting there scrubbing at the cabinets with hands already turning red from the bleach, I didn’t think that all the patience in the world would be enough to put things back to normal. This was so, so much worse than it ever had been before Grandpa Case died.
“Suzanne!” Daddy said again, the word cracking across the kitchen like a backfiring engine and making me jump, but Mama paid him no mind. She was in her own little world, a world of germs and voices nobody but her could hear. The rest of us might as well not have existed.
His jaw tight and hard, Daddy moved forward and picked Mylie up off the ground and washed the ketchup off her in the sink.
“Stop that,” he said when he’d finished, catching Mama’s hands and pulling her to her feet before prying the sponge away and tossing it into the sink. “You stop that right now, Suzanne. Listen to me. You hear me? You have got to pull yourself together!” He was holding Mama’s hands—both of them together in one of his bigger ones—holding her so tight his knuckles were turning white. “Pay attention to your daughter, Suzanne! How long has Mylie been screaming? She needs you!”
Even with her hands caught inside his, Mama didn’t look at Daddy. Her eyes were on the cabinet, like she could see those invisible germs dancing down them, undoing all her work.
“I gotta clean up, Miles,” she whispered, her eyes roving up and down the cabinet in front of her, following the invisible line of the ketchup she’d already cleaned off, following the dancing germs only she could see. “I gotta clean up so the girls don’t get sick. I gotta keep them safe, keep them from getting hurt.”
Daddy let go of Mama all at once, so fast Mama rocked back on her heels. “The only thing hurting the girls is you,” he said, and I wanted the heat to melt me right down into the floor, to fade out of existence and not have to feel the razor edge of Daddy’s voice anymore. In my whole life, I’d never seen him like this.
Mama started crying, silent tears that rolled down her cheeks like raindrops. “I gotta do it, Miles. My daddy told me to.”
Daddy spun around. “I can’t take this anymore.” His face was red, and I couldn’t tell if it was from the heat or the anger. “I gotta go fix that tractor belt before it gets dark. Della, take your sister.”
He pushed Mylie into my arms—she was heavy and so hot she might have had a fever. Her thumb was in her mouth now, the sobs quieting down but the tears still pooling in her eyes and sliding down her baby skin.
The screen door slammed shut as Daddy stomped out, and a minute later I heard the door of the pickup truck slam, too, as he got out the part he’d bought from Mr. Anton earlier that evening.
How could Daddy just go out like that, leave me here with Mylie and Mama, not even staying around to make sure we’d all be okay?
Mama sank down to the floor, still crying, like Daddy had been the only thing holding her up at all.
I smooshed my lips together and took a deep breath in through my nose. My eyes were prickling and I wanted to cry, but Mylie and Mama were already doing enough of that for all three of us. Somebody had to stay in control, and for once it sure wasn’t gonna be Daddy. I scooted Mylie over to my hip and stepped over to Mama, taking the spray bottle from the floor beside her and talking to her in a quiet, gentle voice, just like I’d used a few days ago to calm Mylie down.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” I said over and over again, but Mama didn’t act like she’d heard me at all. She just kept on crying, not making any noise, her eyes puffing up and turning as red as her hands. I clumsily unscrewed the spray bottle and dumped everything inside it down the sink, my own eyes watering—it smelled like straight-up bleach, not thinned out with anything at all.
“You gotta wash your hands, Mama,” I said, remembering what Mrs. Gregory had said last year in science lab about touching bleach, but Mama didn’t answer. I reached into the sink and grabbed a washcloth off the faucet, running it under water till it was as cold as the sink could get it, and then crouched down and wiped Mama’s hands off one at a time. It might not be enough to stop her hurting, but it was all I could do while still holding crying Mylie on my hip.
The heat of the kitchen pressed down hard on me, warming up that washcloth till holding it felt just like being wrapped up in the humid air. Mylie rubbed her face into my shoulder and whimpered, her arms holding tight onto my neck like she was afraid of what might happen if she let go.
“Stowy?” she whispered.
“Not now, Mylie.” I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready to tell another Bee Story again. Instead I just held Mylie and looked out the window over the sink and wished, more than ever, that the sky would just open up and cry all the tears I couldn’t.
That night I lay awake for hours, feeling the little trickles of air coming down from the ceiling fan and the bigger one from the box fan sitting in the open window, my thoughts louder than the cicadas outside. I had failed. I hadn’t been able to get Quigley honey for Mama, hadn’t been able to make her rest enough to heal, hadn’t been able to turn any of my grand plans into reality. I had failed to be what Mama needed me to be—what everyone needed me to be—and now Mama was getting worse, and fast.
My skin prickled, goose bumps breaking out all over my arms even in that stifling heat. The way Mama was tonight—the way she’d been Saturday—I hadn’t seen her like that since right after Grandpa Case died, when she was slipping away into a world where Daddy and I couldn’t follow, and I was finding out what it was like not to have a mama at all.
I thought about the Bee Lady Sunday in church, telling me I was the one who needed fixing, not my mama, and squeezed my teeth together hard. How could she think that? How could anyone, after they’d seen my mama?
How could she have not even been willing to try?
And how could Daddy be the same way? Why had he just left me alone with Mama and the bleach earlier? Daddy leaving like that almost hurt worse than Mama acting the way she had. Daddy didn’t have schizophrenia hammering at the doors of his mind; he didn’t have any explanation for that except plain old choice. The farm was important, I knew, especially without calm, orderly Grandpa Kelly to keep things going smoothly. I’d heard in the things he’d said to Mr. Ben, to Mama, how ashamed Daddy would be if he couldn’t keep Kelly Family Farm alive through this drought.
But how could the farm be more important than me and Mylie? How could it be more important than Mama?
I wished Arden was there. I wanted it so badly my stomach ached with it. On nights like these, I needed my best friend, needed somebody who had seen me and my family in good and bad for as long as I’d been alive, somebody who could tell me that things would all work out the way they had in times past.
But even if she had been here, would I be brave enough to tell her what I’d seen tonight?
Across the bedroom, Mylie stirred in her crib, whimpering a little in her sleep. I rolled over on my side, looking at her outline in the darkness, one hand curled around the crib bars, her head squeezed all the way into the corner of the crib. Only a baby could be comfortable like that.
I had no idea how I was going to do it, but as I lay there watching Mylie sleeping, so young she’d never remember what Mama was really like if I didn’t make things better right now, I knew I had to try again.