Excerpt
Bees Sting
A Nonfiction Story by Amber Lea Starfire, ©2005
It was there, on the aggregate concrete patio of our Eichler Highlands home, that I found out about bees. The patio was a large expanse of small, colored rocks stuck tightly in a froth of light-grey concrete. I wondered how they placed all those rocks, just so, and made them stick together; it must have taken a very long time. Here, I rode my tricycle, played with my dolls, and twirled until I fell, breathless. Beyond the patio, there was a thin, kidney-shaped border of green lawn and from there the hill sloped down quickly, too steep for my small, three-year-old legs to explore. The hill was occupied by dry grass, so tall I was afraid I could lose myself in it. Or get so stuck with burrs I'd look like a porcupine. Or lose my footing and roll all the way down to the bottom, which was much further than I could see. It might continue on and on, forever!
Snakes lived in the grass on the hill. Periodically, my mother would shout for us all to go indoors because the rattlesnakes had come for a visit. Rattlesnakes like climbing to the tops of hills. They like warming themselves on rocks, concrete, or asphalt in the late afternoons. And there we were, serving a delicious dish of concrete right at the top of a tall hill. It was like offering ice-cream to milk addicts, and they came often. The snakes were fascinating, terrifying, and completely mysterious to me.
On this particular day, it was warm – a clear-skied California afternoon – and I was wandering about the patio wondering what to do next. My brother, Michael, watched me from his crib-pretending-to-be-a-playpen, perched on the side of the patio, a portable jail. He stood, gripping the vertical wooden bars tightly, holding himself up and occasionally bouncing up and down, shaking himself instead of the bars. Most of the time, I ignored him, because he couldn't play yet. Sometimes, I pretended to take care of him, as if he was one of my dolls, but he was not nearly as cooperative as they were. When I wanted to dress him up or make him do things, he complained or struggled. So I ignored him. In this moment, his antics had captured my attention.
As I watched him, a small, loudly buzzing creature flew close to my ear, then landed on his leg. I came close to look at it. It was small with yellow and black stripes. The yellow stripes looked like tiny gold highways through the black, furry stripes. Suddenly, Michael began crying. Not just crying – yowling! ...