The Queen Bee

It was a warm afternoon; the air hung heavily, a perfumed curtain of honeysuckle and rose and freshly cut grass. The sun was still high and contemplating its evening plunge into the nether, but the season was Summer, and it still had many hours to wile under the domed sky before its perfervid bedding behind the horizon.

Little dewdrops glistened on the child’s brow as she strolled down the sidewalk in a careless amble. If she was overheated, she took no notice. Her hands absentmindedly tugged and crumpled her white cotton skirt’s hem, leaving light marks of dirt and oil behind. Her feet moved slowly and methodically, one lazy step at a time, and her eyes squinted and trained upon the strip of lawn beside her. The grass glowed a brilliant green in the sun, the nooks and crannies exposed within each clump of grass. This particular stretch of lawn was blemished with crabgrass and clover. While not the prettiest bit of green earth, for her, it was ideal. She stopped abruptly and knelt down.

Her little thin hands grazed the blades of grass and clover, probing here and there in an earnest search that would have even the conquistadors of yore garner her respect in her thoroughness. Her face was so close to the ground her shadow partially obscured the light, and she frowned at this dilemma. Still her hands searched amongst the weeds and grass, through the chickweed and crabgrass and clover until finally – ah! – her full lips curled ever so slightly at the edges. Her thumb and forefinger plucked her discovery from the safety of its roots and she raised the stem of the clover up to her face for a closer inspection.

Yes. All four leaves were present, despite a split in one of the lower quadrant leaves. A sense of accomplishment washed over her like a cold spring shower and she stood up, her knees dimpled with the imprint of the sidewalk’s concrete. She looked first up, then down the sidewalk for any witnesses, and assured of her solitude, raised her hand up to the sky, to the sun, and watched the beams of light stream between the four petals like white hot rivers. The sun christened the clover with a halo, and she smiled, its first and only convert.
She had looked for this clover her whole life.

With luck in hand, she strode confidently down the sidewalk, unable to contain herself. Her smile was a rainbow, her eyes were stars. But soon, past the chalk hopscotch grid drawn in yellow and orange, past the overlapping ridge in the sidewalk caused by an massive oak root bursting forth, past the purple and white house with the gingerbread shutters in which a nice old lady passed the time tending her garden and her Bible, past the mailbox, her eyes are cast downward and once again the nagging urge overcame her. She looked at her clover, its stem already bruised from her fingers clutching it too hard. She wondered if her good fortune could beget more good fortune.

Her grubby left hand still clutching the clover, she knelt next to a small patch of unkempt grass on the easement of an equally unkempt house of dirty white clapboard and overgrown dogwoods surrounding its stoop. Her right hand lifted up a large wad of chickweed to reveal a struggling patch of clover, some of which was yellowed from the lack of sunlight. An old and ragged bit of clover caught her eye, and with surgical precision she pinched its head clean off its mother stem and looked it over. One of its leaves looked as if a very tiny cat had clawed the edges many years ago, leaving dried tatters behind. But despite the bedraggled leaf, the other three were quite sound. She gasped aloud.

She jumped up and giddily spun in place, her skirt lifting and pin wheeling around her. She drew both pregnant hands together and tucked them under her chin and cawed to the sky. The world tipped and reeled around her and she caught air as she fell backward onto the easement, padded by the ample chickweed and moss. Quite unhurt, she giggled to herself as she clasped her clovers like two jewel encrusted scepters, one for each hand.

She lay there for a time, motionless, listening to the birds coo and twitter, feeling a bead of perspiration drip from the pool in the curve of her throat around to the back of her neck before slithering into the nest of green beneath her. Several strands of hair stuck to her forehead and the heat seemed to beat upon her little body with intensity, but she gave no care. Her lazy smile drizzled itself across her dirt stained cheeks, her skin browned by the sun and the humid earth, interrupted only by the flush of health under her deeply fringed eyes. A lace of daisies crowned her dirty summer hair, each thick tendril entangled with the moss encircling her head. She was a Queen, Queen of the earth, of the summer haze, Queen of the dust and the ants and the flowers and the trees, Queen of the cracked sidewalks, the ones that broke the backs of so many mothers. Anointed with the dappling sunbeams that jittered and pranced about her, she arose at last, ordained.

She walked slowly, carefully, her gaze focused on the treasures set firmly in her two tiny fists. She did not trip, did not stumble; she knew this sidewalk almost as keenly as her own mother, had traveled its broken and worn causeway her whole life, every day, from the moment she could totter and teeter on her two clumsy feet. She walked as if she was carrying a pyramid of eggs, yet her heart was not tense with worry but light and carefree. She passed under yet another old oak tree – several dotted the easements, providing a canopy of green shade – and as she emerged from its webbed and mottled shade, she heard a familiar buzzing sound in her right ear. Unafraid of flying insects, she paused and sought out the owner of the beating wings, and watched with delight as a graceful golden striped honeybee lit upon her right hand, just below her thumb and under the umbrella of clover. It tapped her skin with its black legs as if it were divining for a water well, and spun slowly in a circle. She watched with curiosity as it traveled down to her wrist, carefully feeling its way with its quivering antennae. It paused, lifted its head as if to gaze at her, then in one swift movement it plunged its abdominal spike deep into her skin, barbing her with its hollow stinger. She startled.

As the venom pumped rhythmically into her veins, the bee raised its wings and beat them viciously into the air, pulling away from her skin, simultaneously tearing apart its own body as the stinger held firm upon the swelling of her wound. It departed as mysteriously as it appeared to her, and she dropped the clover, the clawed-up one, from her left hand as the shock of attack left her and the biting pain dug in. Although she had never been stung, she had seen her mother carefully scrape the stinger off her younger sister’s leg last summer, never flinching as her sister wiggled and howled in terror and agony. Now it was her turn to nurse the wound, and to scrape away the pumping sack and its stabbing lance from her wrist, leaving behind a tiny red pinprick set upon a raised lump of white, angry flesh. She mused to herself the tragedy and senselessness of the act. She briefly wondered where the bee had gone to, if it had made for the safety of its hive, tasting the airways it traveled homeward bound, to beat and crawl its way back into the nest, carried by its comrades as it buzzed and twittered its last farewell. She could not fathom why such a gentle creature as a honeybee would attack her without provocation, her mind too young and inexperienced to come up with as convincing a list as the world weary soul could muster. She was fortunate; eagerly does one drink the wine of experience, to know all there is to know, only to find it brings one nothing but suffering. She was still ignorant, a child.

She gasped: her clover! She looked anxiously about her, but it did not lie upon the gray cement. The easement near her feet was riddled with grass clippings and shadow, and she felt the strangling pressure of alarm building within her chest and she knelt down and grazed her fingers across the tips of the grass blades. Green upon green, it was quite impossible to see such a tiny, unassuming little clover, and she could practically taste the salty tears riding up into her eyes and eyelids. Had she been a less determined child, she should have sat herself on the bumpy cement and cried for herself. Instead, she dashed the waterworks from her eyes with her free, uninjured hand and leaned deep and squinted hard.

She drilled her vision into the earth, and it paid off in time. Her eye caught sight of the tattered leaf belonging to her clover as it perched quite comfortably upon a dandelion leaf, itself the victim of a push mower blade. Gingerly she grasped its bruised and limp stem, slowly exhaling as she did, her heart still pounced and beating itself upon her ribs with great impetus. She raised herself back upon her two feet, looking at her treasures with relief, the sting almost a thing of the past despite the undeniable swelling pronounced against the wrist bone. All was not lost.

Her smile now recovered, she continued her journey upon the cement brook that would lead her to a hive of her own, shuttered by yellow painted shingles and peeling white window trim. She had a pressing book, a gift from an elderly aunt, half its pages filled with bluebells and honeysuckle and the furry yellow dandelion heads from the lawnmower clippings she liked to sift through in the compost bin. She had a special page, a page still empty, right in the middle of her book, for her two jewels. She had waited a long time to add to this page, and she sucked on her lower lip in anticipation. It was Coronation Day, and there was much to be done for this special occasion. Dollies and bears were to be brushed and lined up according to size and rank. Lemonade was to be served in pink plastic teacups. The duvet cover was to be spread and smoothed, and Mommy was to be summoned for this occasion, for it was best if the moment were shared with another.

She daydreamed of what dress she should wear: the yellow one with the pinafore, or the green one with polka dots? She did not notice the light tickle upon her skin, the sweet touch like the curious fingers of a sylphic breeze, until it went from a light caress to a stabbing pain and she cried aloud. Another honeybee, perhaps the sister of the first, had landed upon her left wrist and violently plunged her stinger deep into the skin, a cascade of venom and pain following. The child’s urge was to wave her hand about wildly, tossing the bee this way and that until it was flung up into the ether, but instead, she raised her wrist to her eyes. The bee was still lodged into her skin, stumbling this way and that in an effort to dislodge itself, no doubt signing its own death warrant in the process.

Acting quickly, she placed her other clover into her left hand, leaving her right hand free to perform an emergency rescue towards her assailant. With the steeled nerves of a surgeon, she carefully slid her pinky finger under the belly of the bee, it responding by biting her fingertip with its slender mandibles. Using her nail she gingerly pushed against the pierced flesh, lifting upwards to unhook the little insect. It took a few tries before it finally extricated itself from the whitening wound, and with several anxious flutters the bee flew off, intact, saved by a compassion it could never understand.

The pain thundered through her, drawing moisture to her eye, but she was tough as radishes and held back the torrent of tears with the perseverance of a wooden-shod girl sealing a crumbling dike with her one finger. She looked at her two identical wounds, fresh and ripe as they were with nerve-wracked venom. Her hands shook with the adrenalin, her own body’s antivenom, her hand still clutching the clovers. She opened her skirt pocket with her fingers and watched the two clovers tumble inside, and only when she was assured their safekeeping did she let go of her pocket and clasp her hands together and to her breast. She could feel them throbbing against her warm wet skin where her collar was unbuttoned. She suddenly became aware of the heat, of the sweat, of the heavy air and the limpness of everything around her.  She looked about her for a moment, and with the exception of the crickets whirring, it was still and quiet. She smirked coyly herself, an explanation unfurling its banner within her mind and quenching her spirit with its draught like a cold honey mead.
A Queen does not like another Queen in her midst…