The Secret Life of Bees

“‘You’ve got six brothers and sisters?’ I’d thought of her as alone in the world except for me.” 

Lily is responding to Rosaleen telling her about her family in this passage. This moment is important because it shows how little awareness Lily has of those around her. This self-centered understanding of others is a typical feature of childhood, and given that this is a coming-of-age story, the reader can anticipate that this moment of realization will be one of many. Lily, at this point in the story, only understands others as they relate to her, especially when it comes to Rosaleen. Lily’s implicit bias also appears in this passage as her limited understanding of Rosaleen is informed by Rosaleen’s being a Black domestic worker.

“My arms felt weak in their sockets. Franklin Posey was the man with the flashlight, and he was gonna kill Rosaleen. But then, hadn’t I known this inside even before T. Ray ever said it.”

T. Ray has just picked up Lily from the jail where they have left Rosaleen behind. T. Ray is criticizing Rosaleen for choosing to dump snuff on Franklin Posey, who T. Ray explains is one of the most racist men in town and probably wants to kill Rosaleen. Lily responds to this comment by saying that T. Ray doesn’t really mean Posey would kill Rosaleen. Instead of being reassured, T. Ray confirms his assertion. Lily’s reflection that she knew what T. Ray meant before he said it signifies a recurring theme in the novel for Lily, which is the willing choice to ignore or disbelieve what one feels and even knows to be true.

“I lay back and tried to invent a story about why my mother had owned a black Mary picture.”

Lily is studying the photo of the Black Madonna while Rosaleen sleeps on the riverbank. This moment symbolizes a lot of what Lily has done in her young life, or has been forced to do, which is fill in the gaps of her family history. Because Lily was never able to talk about her mother to T. Ray, she’s had to invent her own story about who she was. Lily’s journey is as much of a quest to find herself as it is to find her mother.

“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.”

This line is spoken by August during the Daughters of Mary service. August is telling the story of Our Lady of Chains for Lily and Rosaleen, even though most others in the congregation have heard it many times. This quote also speaks to a tension for Lily, which is the lack of stories about her mother. Lily has had to create a narrative for herself to understand her mother and also to understand herself. One of Lily’s main crises is not knowing who she is, and she doesn’t know who she is because she doesn’t have any stories.

“‘That’s fine with me,’ I said, a little annoyed. ‘I’ve just never heard of a Negro lawyer, that’s all. You’ve got to hear of these things before you can imagine them.’ ‘Bullshit. You gotta imagine what’s never been.’” 

In this conversation between Zach and Lily, they are discussing their dreams for the future. Zach tells Lily that he will be a lawyer someday, and Lily is disbelieving. Zach corrects Lily’s idea that one can only imagine themselves in the reality they live in. Zach shows Lily how limiting and untrue this belief is.

“But I hadn’t yet pressed my hand to the black Mary’s heart in the parlor, and I was too afraid to say all this without having done at least that. I leaned against August’s chest, pushing aside my secret wanting, too afraid she’d say, No, I never saw this woman in my life. And that would be that. Not knowing anything at all was better.”

There are two things keeping Lily from being honest with August about how she came to be at the sister’s house: Lily fears that she and Rosaleen will have to leave, that Rosaleen will be sent back to jail, and that August will see Lily for who she really is—a liar; and secondly, she is afraid that August will not actually have known Lily’s mother at all.

“She patted my knee like old times. She patted, and neither of us said anything. We could’ve been back in the policeman’s car riding to jail for how I felt. Like I would not exist without her patting my hand.”

Lily’s relationship with Rosaleen is complicated. Rosaleen was a “stand-in mother” for Lily in the sense that she took care of her, but they didn’t always have a strong emotional connection. Because Rosaleen is Black and worked for Lily’s father, Lily has a difficult time seeing Rosaleen as an autonomous human being who exists outside of Lily’s house. Rosaleen and Lily pull away from one another at the Boatwright sisters’ house but eventually start to come back together as Lily realizes how much she loves Rosaleen and also starts to see her as a woman who exists outside of taking care of Lily.

“I wish you could’ve seen the Daughters of Mary the first time they laid eyes on this table. You know why? Because when they looked at her, it occurred to them for the first time in their lives that what’s divine can come in dark skin. You see, everybody needs a God who looks like them, Lily.” 

August is telling Lily the origin story of the Black Madonna Honey label. August recognizes the importance of representation, which is why she uses this label for her honey and why she keeps the Our Lady of Chains statue in her living room. August’s view on spirituality is that everyone possesses the divine, and she explains to Lily that in order for one to see God or Mary inside of themselves, they need to see that this divine being looks like them.

“I was wishing I had a story like that one to live inside me with so much loudness you could pick it up on a stethoscope, and not the story I did have about ending my mother’s life and sort of ending my own at the same time.” 

August has just finished telling Lily how the Black Mary statue came to the family. August tells Lily of the time the sisters would spend at their grandmother’s house and how the story passed down from her. In this moment Lily is recognizing that she has one story that has ruled her whole life, the one she lives by, and it is that she is unwanted and unlovable.

“If I told you right now that I never wondered about that dream, never closed my eyes and pictured her with roach legs, never wondered why she came to me like that, with her worst nature exposed, I would be up to my old habit of lying. A roach is a creature no one can love, but you cannot kill it. It will go on and on and on. Just try to get rid of it.” 

Lily dreams of her mother the night after August tells her the truth about how Deborah came to Tiburon and her time at the pink house. Lily is angry when she goes to bed and dreams of her mother coming to her as part woman and part cockroach. The cockroach, while symbolizing a pest or infestation, also calls back to May teaching Lily’s mother how to lead cockroaches out of the house without killing them. Lily finally knows her mother’s story, and she needs to figure out how she can see all of her mother’s ugly truths and still lead her out of the house of her mind, instead of letting her stay or trying to kill her memory completely.

“I was suspended, waiting, caught in a terrible crevice between living my life and not living it.” 

Up until this summer, Lily’s entire life has been centered on mother’s death. As the summer goes on, as enjoyable as her time on the bee farm is, Lily’s secret is not only consuming her thoughts, it is inhibiting her from fully participating in the life in front of her. Lily finally realizes that as long as she holds on to her secret and her mother’s death, she will never stop living in the past.

“I think she was trying to put in Zach’s mind that she would never rest till he was back home with us. Zach listened with his eyes watery brown. He seemed relieved to keep the conversation on the level of bee swarms.” 

August takes Lily to visit Zach in jail, and when they get there, August immediately jumps into telling Zach how one of the hives swarmed and she spent the day and evening looking for the missing hive until she was able to bring it home. It is clear, at this point in the novel, that August uses storytelling to communicate things that are sometimes difficult to hear straight on.

“This is the thing they’d been waiting for half their lives without even realizing it.” 

Lily says this about August and June finding May’s body in the river the evening that she learns about Zach’s arrest. Lily makes a comment earlier in the novel about how much work it is just to keep life at bay. She is talking about herself and her own secrets when she first says this, but as the book goes on, Lily sees how much everyone else is doing to keep their own eventual heartbreak at bay as well. May’s suicide is an event that June and August have been warding off for years.

“August took Rosaleen’s hand and pulled her over, then went on holding it, the way she used to hold May’s sometimes, and it struck me that she loved Rosaleen. That she would like to change Rosaleen’s name to July and bring her into their sisterhood.” 

This is an important moment for Lily to witness. She is finally starting to see Rosaleen as a person who exists outside of her caretaking relationship for Lily. This passage also signifies Lily’s understanding that Rosaleen probably will be absorbed into this sisterhood in a way that Lily never will be.

“I was afraid, though, the blame would find a way to stick to them. That’s how blame was.” 

Lily says this as Zach and August are discussing May’s suicide. Zach says that if only he had said who had thrown the bottle he never would have been arrested and May wouldn’t have died. August responds to him by saying if that’s true, she could also say if she had only kept May away from the phone, then she also might still be here, but it was May who did it and neither of them should try to take the blame. Lily, who has spent her whole life either trying to absorb the blame for her mother’s death or placing it on T. Ray, knows how that kind of thinking can destroy people.

“June stared at Neil, and I could tell the struggle in her face. The surrender she had to make inside. Not just to Neil but to life.” 

August sees June’s persistent refusal of Neil as a way to protect herself from possible grief and disappointment, and she says that to June. Lily is able to recognize her own way of being stuck in her life by seeing what heartbreak has done to June. In saying yes to marrying Neil, June is reentering the life that she promised to protect herself from ever since she was left at the altar many years before.

“I glanced at poor, shackled Mary. I couldn’t bear seeing her like that. ‘It’s only a reenactment,’ August had said. ‘To help us remember. Remembering is everything.’ Still, the whole idea wrapped me in sadness. I hated remembering.” 

August knows the importance of remembering the stories that shape us, and this is why she holds the Our Lady of Chains reenactment. While Lily doesn’t like remembering what is painful to her, it is all she does. August, in holding the reenactment, is reminding the Daughters of Mary of the story that is part of their shared history, and she is also letting Lily know that there is freedom in remembering a story and seeing it to its truthful end.

“Because you weren’t ready to know about her. I didn’t want to risk you running away again. I wanted you to have a chance to get yourself on solid ground, get your heart bolstered up first. There’s a fullness of time for things, Lily. You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet, when to let things take their course.” 

August is explaining to Lily why she let Lily believe that she was keeping the secret about who she was from August all this time. August knew who Lily was as soon as she set foot in the pink house. August is showing Lily that she trusts the timing of things; she knew if she let Lily have time to feel comfortable and cared for, that Lily would come to her. August is behaving very much like a beekeeper in her relationship with Lily.

“Knowing can be a curse on a person’s life. I’d traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn’t know which one was heavier.” 

Lily says this after August tells her the story of her mother, as August knows it. Lily has been dreading this since she first got to Tiburon. Lily believes that her worst fears of her mother have been realized—that she was left behind, and that her mother didn’t want her and didn’t love her. The truth is, of course, more complicated than that, and once Lily gets past being so hurt, she will see that.

“In a weird way I must have loved my little collection of hurts and wounds.” 

Lily is free of her bee chores for about a week after August talks to Lily about her mother. August lets Lily use this time to process what she has just learned and gives her space and time to do so. Although Lily expressed the desire to forget about her mother completely, now she finds that it is impossible to do. In this obsessive thinking about her mother’s experience in the pink house, Lily comes to the realization that she has made her “hurts” her entire identity. Now that they are no longer a mystery, she needs to decide how to free herself from them, if she can.

“‘I’m gonna finish what I started,’ Rosaleen said, lifting her chin. ‘I’m gonna register to vote.’” 

The events of the novel are set in motion when Rosaleen and Lily go to town for Rosaleen to register to vote. Lily is often so consumed by her own suffering that it is difficult for her to see, much less understand, the suffering of others. The tensions of the south in 1964 get closer and closer to Lily and this story as she is finally able to see those around her a little more clearly. Rosaleen’s commitment to registering to vote is in direct opposition to the approach of avoiding life and its disappointments that Lily has both seen and participated in. Rosaleen has no reason to believe that this will go well for her, yet she does it anyway; she finishes what she started even if it might bring her more heartbreak.

“You have to find a mother inside of yourself. We all do. Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside.” 

There is a voice that Lily has been hearing inside since the beginning of the book. It’s the same voice that encouraged her to leave T. Ray the day that she did. In this scene August is telling Lily how important it is to see a mother—the divine, Mary—inside of herself. August understands how it will be important to Lily’s growth into an adult to be able to look inside herself for love, strength, and care. She knows Lily will need to be able to mother herself.

“He seemed crazy with anguish, reliving a pain he’d kept locked up all this time, and now that it was loose, it had overwhelmed him. I wondered how far he’d go to try and take Deborah back. For all I knew, he might kill her.” 

In this passage Lily is talking about her confrontation with T. Ray after he shows up at the Boatwright sisters’ house. Lily recognizes that T. Ray is not seeing her as herself anymore—he is trying to get her mother home. T. Ray is enacting the loss that he experienced 10 years ago in this moment. T. Ray is the physical embodiment of what happens when someone holds on to their grief and pain alone.