Mama managed to get through the rest of Saturday—and the church service the next day—without saying anything too outlandish, even if she did seem quieter than normal, her face twisting itself into pinched-looking grimaces every now and again. I wasn’t sure if Daddy was pretending not to notice or really so distracted he didn’t see any of it, but either way, he didn’t say a thing about it to Mama or me.
We were all on our way out to the car after church when I caught sight of Miss Tabitha leaving the sanctuary.
“I gotta run to the bathroom,” I said, stopping as the rest of my family went through the doors to the outside.
“Can’t it wait till we get home?” Daddy asked, rubbing at his forehead.
“Uh-uh. I’ll be quick.”
Daddy sighed and waved me off toward the bathroom. I waited until the doors had closed behind them, and then stood up as straight as I could and marched up to Miss Tabitha, where she was standing talking to Mr. Anton Jones, jingling a little silver bell bracelet on her freckled white wrist every now and again. I hung back until Mr. Anton had nodded politely at Miss Tabitha and gone on out to the parking lot.
Before I could even open my mouth to say anything at all, Miss Tabitha turned to me, blue eyes bright.
“Why, Della Kelly,” she said. “It’s good to see you, shug. You need something?”
I nodded, but no matter how hard I tried, the words wouldn’t seem to come to my tongue. I thought of another Bee Story, this one about Miss Tabitha herself: how a few years back Wanda Ann Rosemond’s fiancé had jilted her right at the altar in this very church, and it had broke Wanda Ann’s heart into so many pieces that she couldn’t stop crying no matter how hard she tried.
Pretty soon she’d cried so many tears that she’d made her own little rainstorm, following her everywhere she went, weeping salty drops onto anyone who stood too close to her. She’d gone to Miss Tabitha for some honey, and just one taste had dried up everything around her and pulled those pieces of her heart back together, to boot.
Miss Tabitha was still looking at me, her eyebrows floating up just a bit.
“It’s my mama,” I said, the words so quiet she had to lean in closer to hear me. “She—well—”
“Yes?”
“Your honey.” Now I was whispering. “Have you got anything that might—”
“It isn’t a cold your mama’s had, is it?” the Bee Lady asked, her own voice nearly as quiet as mine. I shook my head. “I didn’t think so. But I won’t say anything about it, not if you and your daddy aren’t ready to talk yet.”
I wondered how many secrets the Bee Lady had locked up in her head—all those secrets of all those people who had come to her, for longer than I’d been alive, asking for her honey to be a little miracle they could take the lid off and hold in their hands.
“So do you? Have you got anything that might be able to . . . fix her?”
Miss Tabitha shook her head right away, and something in me twirled its way down to my toes. “No, ma’am. I’m sorry, Della. Nothing I’ve got can do more than her doctor’s already doing. She’s under the best care, shug. She’s got a good doctor, and she’s on the right medications.”
“But those pills aren’t enough! She needs something better. Something permanent. She didn’t even have schizophrenia till I was born, Miss Tabitha! If she didn’t always have it, surely that means there’s something out there that could make her stop having it.”
“Far as I know, there isn’t anything out there that can heal a person of what your mama’s got, not when the good Lord saw fit to make her that way.” Miss Tabitha’s eyes were so kind it hurt to look at them.
“But there has to be something! Your honey, it can do anything! It fixed Grandpa’s leg by the time the sun set that day—it healed Mrs. O’Connell’s black cloud of sadness—it patched up Wanda Ann’s heart so she wasn’t bringing the rain down anymore!”
There was more, too, more Bee Stories—like the little jar of creamy white honey that Miss Tabitha had given Mama a few months ago to help Mylie sleep better at night, or the way the Packards swore Miss Tabitha’s honey had healed their two-year-old’s pneumonia the moment the honey had touched baby George’s lips. Those Bee Stories felt like a part of me, a part of Maryville itself, woven into the history of every family in town.
But my tongue was frozen again, stuck inside my mouth like it had been glued there.
“I’m sorry, Della,” Miss Tabitha said again, and I could hear the regret threaded all the way through her voice like little dusts of pollen in golden honey, but it still didn’t stop the anger that was rising up in me.
“I don’t have anything that can heal your mama,” Miss Tabitha went on, her voice gentle and low. “But I’ve got something that could heal you, if you wanted.”
“Isn’t anything wrong with me,” I said, mad that she’d got my hopes up in the first place, even though she hadn’t said anything to me but to ask if I needed anything. People talked such great things about the Bee Lady, and yet here she was—not even able to figure out that it was Mama who needed fixing, not me.
“Still,” Miss Tabitha said. “You just let me know, Della. You just let me know.”
I was quiet all through the ride home, leaning my head up against the window of the truck and feeling the engine’s rumble all the way through to my clenched-together teeth.
There had to be a way to fix Mama, just had to be, no matter what Mama’s doctors said. Strong fingers reached in and squeezed at my heart until I could hardly breathe.
I’d been the one who had made Mama the way she was.
And I needed to be the one to fix it.
The new plan came to me that night. As I tossed and turned in my bed, playing back over the conversation with the Bee Lady and getting madder and madder every minute, something that Dr. DuBose had said last time Mama had been in the hospital came into my mind.
I’d been eight years old and in the hospital waiting room, not allowed to see Mama because I was too young, crying and angry and not old enough to even understand exactly what was going on. Dr. DuBose had come to sit down beside me, his mustache twitching as he’d smiled and put a gentle hand on mine.
“I know this is hard, Della,” he’d said, his voice deep and slow. “I know you miss your mama, and we’re working hard to get her back to you as soon as we can. But it’s best for her to be here for a while. Her brain needs a rest, so it can get better the way it needs to.”
Lying there in my bed, those remembered words slipped right into and through me. I’d only been eight then, but now I was twelve and could do lots more. I could help Mama’s brain get a rest. I’d do so much to help her around the house that she wouldn’t have to do anything at all, and with all that resting, her brain was bound to heal. And not just a temporary fix, like the few years of right thinking she’d gotten from her new medication. Real healing. Permanently. Fixed so perfectly that by the time Mylie and I were grown up, we’d all laugh to think that Mama had once had such trouble.
I thought about what Arden had seen the day before, and hoped just about as hard as I ever had that she’d made good on her promise and not said anything to her parents. I’d told Mama and Daddy I had a stomachache and begged out of going to my usual shift at the farm stand, and Miss Amanda had had to send Eli to stay with Arden instead. It had made all the grown-ups cranky, but I hadn’t been able to face Arden yet. I knew exactly how her eyes would’ve followed me, glaring until I’d spilled the whole truth. But now, maybe I could get Mama heading toward healthy before Arden—or anyone else—had time to do much worrying at all.
I settled deeper into my pillows and closed my eyes. Tomorrow.
Tomorrow was going to be the start of something a whole lot better.