The Secret Life of Bees Read Online Free PDF

missiles.
    â€œNo, the bomb hasn’t gone off,” she said. “Just come here and see if you can fix the TV.” Her fists were burrowed so deep into her hips they seemed to disappear.
    I twisted tin foil around the antennae. Things cleared up enough to make out President Johnson taking his seat at a desk, people all around. I didn’t care much for the president because of the way he held his beagles by the ears. I did admire his wife, Lady Bird, though, who always looked like she wanted nothing more than to sprout wings and fly away.
    Rosaleen dragged the footstool in front of the set and sat down, so the whole thing vanished under her. She leaned toward the set, holding a piece of her skirt and winding it around in her hands.
    â€œWhat is going on?” I said, but she was so caught up in whatever was happening she didn’t even answer me. On the screen the president signed his name on a piece of paper, using about ten ink pens to get it done.
    â€œRosaleen—”
    â€œShhh,” she said, waving her hand.
    I had to get the news from the TV man. “Today, July second, 1964,” he said, “the president of the United States signed the Civil Rights Act into law in the East Room of the White House….”
    I looked over at Rosaleen, who sat there shaking her head, mumbling, “Lord have mercy,” just looking so disbelieving and happy, like people on television when they answered the 64,000 Question.
    I didn’t know whether to be excited for her or worried. All people ever talked about after church were the Negroes and whether they’d get their civil rights. Who was winning—the white people’s team or the colored people’s team? Like it was a do-or-die contest. When that minister from Alabama, Reverend Martin Luther King, got arrested last month in Florida for wanting to eat in a restaurant, the men at church acted like the white people’s team had won the pennant race. I knew they would not take this news lying down, not in one million years.
    â€œHallelujah, Jesus,” Rosaleen was saying over there on her stool. Oblivious.
    Â 
    Rosaleen had left dinner on the stove top, her famous smothered chicken. As I fixed T. Ray’s plate, I considered how to bring up the delicate matter of my birthday, something T. Ray had never paid attention to in all the years of my life, but every year, like a dope, I got my hopes up thinking this year would be the one.
    I had the same birthday as the country, which made it even harder to get noticed. When I was little, I thought people were sending up rockets and cherry bombs because of me—hurray, Lily was born! Then reality set in, like it always did.
    I wanted to tell T. Ray that any girl would love a silver charm bracelet, that in fact last year I’d been the only girl at Sylvan Junior High without one, that the whole point of lunchtime was to stand in the cafeteria line jangling your wrist, giving people a guided tour of your charm collection.
    â€œSo,” I said, sliding his plate in front of him, “my birthday is this Saturday.”
    I watched him pull the chicken meat from around the bone with his fork.
    â€œI was just thinking I would love to have one of those silver charm bracelets they have down at the mercantile.”
    The house creaked like it did once in a while. Outside the door Snout gave a low bark, and then the air grew so quiet I could hear the food being ground up in T. Ray’s mouth.
    He ate his chicken breast and started on the thigh, looking at me now and then in his hard way.
    I started to say, So then, what about the bracelet? but I could see he’d already given his answer, and it caused a kind of sorrow to rise in me that felt fresh and tender and had nothing, really, to do with the bracelet. I think now it was sorrow for the sound of his fork scraping the plate, the way it swelled in the distance between us, how I was not even in the room.
    Â 
    That night I