Queen Bee

       Sometimes in life we have to jump. If we do not jump we will never know what it feels like to fly and soar through the sky. We are so afraid to jump because we are scared, and don't want to hit the rocks on the way down. When we jump, our wings do not appear right away, so we just want to linger around and play it safe, so we don't get scratched up. Now, while we are lingering around and playing it safe, we see people soaring by and begin to feel trapped. Then, we have to make the decision, are we going to jump and fly?
         Fourteen year old Lily has to make the decision to soar, or not. The bees serve as an extended metaphor throughout this novel. In the first chapter we learn that Lily's room is filled with bees, literally. She can hear them buzzing in the walls, and they come out at night to swarm around her room. One night, she ran and got her dad: "I don't hear any buzzing, I guess they flew out of that cuckoo clock you call a brain. You wake me up again, Lily, and I'll get out the Martha whites, you hear me?"(5). She called him T.Ray and says, "Daddy" never fit him. (2).  Martha whites were an unspoken form of punishment, So Lily decided to trap the bees in a jar to prove to her father she was telling the truth. To her surprise the bees lingered around on the edge of the jar, when she let them go. She said she, "even laid the jar on the side, but those crazy bees stayed put."(28). Later, Lily has to make the decision to leave her home with nothing, or linger on the edge.
       She only has one memory of her mother and it was her first and last one. Lily was four years old and there was a suitcase, a gun, and her mother and father were fighting. She has this picture of black Mary with Tiburon, SC on the back of it. It was her mother's, so someone has to know something about her mother from there. After a fight, her father tells Lily, "The truth is, your sorry mother ran off and left you. The day she died, she'd come back to get her things, that's all. You can hate me all you want, but she's the one who left you." (39). Completely petrified, Lily plays these words over and over in her head. It is in that moment, she heard a voice say, "Lily Melissa Owens, your jar is open" (41). She writes, "In a matter of seconds, I knew exactly what I had to do--leave. I had to get away from T.Ray, who was probably on his way back this minute to do Lord-knows-what to me"(41).
The Bees had finally left the jar, and it was her time to as well.
       She runs away with her maid, Roselynn, to Tiburon and meets three sisters that are bee keepers. August reminded her that, "the world was really one big bee yard, and the same rules worked fine in both places: Don't be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to bee wants to sting you. Still, don't be an idiot; wear long sleeves and long pants. . .Act like you know what your'e doing, even if you don't Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved." (92). The sister refer to their selves as the "daughters of Mary", they call Mary the Lady of chains, not because she wore chains, but because she broke them. She jumped, and flew.  Throughout Lily's jump, Lily and Roselynn get scratched up and encounter feelings and situations they never have before; however, they sprout their wings and fly away from T.Ray. This novel focuses on feminism. After all, when we think of bees, we have to think about the Queen.