It started when a friend posted on social media that she was looking for easy reads for her classroom. It was a cause to thin the wall of bookshelves in an underused room upstairs. I pulled a bag full and paused. The Secret Life of Bees. It had been awhile since I opened that one. In fact I couldn't remember much at all. Ok, anything. I set it aside. That and a couple of others. 

 

It describes a young girl named Lily stuck at her father's roadside stand trying to peddle peaches. Ripe ones, that attract bees. She lives in Carolina in the sixties, and the blacks that labor around her are still thigh deep in the mud of prejudice. Circumstances converge such that Lily chooses to lie, steal, and hitch hike her way out of jail and far across the state to look for signs of her deceased mother. Rosaleen, the black woman who is escaping with her, is plenty banged up by the upstanding citizens of their town, and Lily is hell bent on keeping her safe. 

 

But this is not so much a book review as it is a reflection. Lily, whose very name suggests innocence, is weighed down by the seriousness of her own actions. While I might find a slew of ways to justify her choices, she lugged guilt like a bag of sand. This is in sharp contrast to the bigoted white men who persecute black folk for sport. 

 

A chance would have it I recently read an article by a woman who gives tours on a southern plantation. It seems that a chunk of the visitors want to downplay slavery. 

 

"Aw, it wasn't so bad. Food and a bed. I bet some of them were grateful."

 

It sounded like ratiocinations I have heard about recent events. Given a choice between freedom and a sandwich I know what I'd pick.

 

Lily, who is I admit fictional, and yet lives in the hearts of everyone who is moved by oppression, is more aware of her failings than smoke breathing people who wave away wrongdoings like so many bees. 

 

Sometimes I wonder if the cleaver between those whose eternity takes place in the orchards of heaven, and those who rot in chains is less about mistakes we have made and more about the depth of our regret. 

 

I am only on chapter eight, so I cannot tell you how it ends. But then again, the same is true of my life.