The
Massacre of Bees
Hilarie
Shanley
I am allergic to spider bites and mold and Wisconsin.
When I travel, I have to make sure not to get too cavalier while
driving west.
My mother is teaching me how to cook tomato sauce.
It is a ten-week course. We are in the center. I have recently
learned to mince garlic. The course is taught via telephone.
She lives at home and I live in a swamp.
She tells me to find a suitor by dropping my keys
into a sewer grate. Tears will get you everywhere, she says.
But where will I cook or sleep? I sputter.
I’d rather just find someone who likes old
maps. In modern maps, streets disappear and pretty soon you
don’t have little stray capillaries anymore. You’ve
got fat vein streets. I’d like this boy to play bad piano,
I tell her. She shakes her head into the phone and tells me
I am too good for sharp notes.
My mother drove me to art lessons where I artfully
learned to paste glitter onto lunch sacks. She drove me to soccer
where we dug mini trenches with our cleats.
When I find myself near an insect, I do a jig.
It is a dance of misconstrued fear. Some bugs, the ones found
in steam pocket states like Georgia, can actually maim or kill
an elephant. I do not associate with such bugs. The bugs I know
are harmless. They are round and quick as dimes.
When I used to see bugs, my stomach would churn
a batter of acid over my guts. I would stumble over my feet
and chastise my body for having such clumsy reflexes. I would
run into my house and pretend to be Sleeping Beauty. To be legit,
I would prick my finger on the record player needle. I would
hide in my mom's ribcage and she wouldn't mind until we had
spent hours like that.
My mom once whacked me for catapulting off the
porch. It didn't seem like the most persuasive punishment and
I told her so. She made me kiss a boy, Edgar who smelled like
a ditch, Edgar who smelled like a boy. He left a scar the size
of Tallahassee on my cheek.
My mother is inspired by her pasta sauce course.
She worries that the recipe is mindless. Paste, garlic, tomato
chunks, stir. She wonders if she should teach me a holiday variation.
She wonders about using onions to symbolize snowflakes. Please
don't, I tell her. I like learning it the way it's supposed
to be.
I have never made cider. I have imploded potatoes
in the microwave. Poor child, people tell me. You must make
your mother's eyeliner run and run. I picture her mascara in
a race.
There was the great bee scare of 1985. I was home
from ballet or soccer or violin. My mother made me play with
the Sycamore because I was the only neighborhood kid. Getting
you ready for social interaction, she would later tell me. We
couldn't have you chattering to yourself all the time.
I played with the Sycamore. I had recently read
about bees. I read about their personalities in a pastel book.
The book claimed they were happy and diligent. They were the
toast of the insect world.
I found the mailbox honeycomb. A trifecta of bees
attacked my chin, earlobe, and left kneecap. I knelt, stunned,
from the ambush. My joints swelled like teeming underground
grapes.
My mother, pasta sauce hero, looked at me and
said: Oh my baby. They’ve got you good. For the next few
minutes, we took turns using the garden hose on the honeycomb.
We were the calmest execution squad. In their last moments,
the bees watched a lady of grace and her stumpy kid through
their mosaic eyes.
....
Hilarie Shanley prefers
bourbon over fire. She likes to steal snap peas from the grocery
store. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
