Belinda Bee

Belinda Bee Prologue

Belinda Stern Sheller

CARNEGIE PUBLIC LIBRARY

ROSEVILLE, INDIANA

2020

For most people, the nebulous memories of infancy lie backstage behind a psychological curtain, shrouded in darkness, but I lost my chance to be most people the summer I turned seventeen. Or maybe it was the summer I turned five. Those two summers, twelve years apart, have somehow merged into one in my adult mind - curling scent of honeysuckle, army of hungry mosquitos, burning tips of cigarettes glowing like fireflies down by the barn. As if the intervening years never happened, it's just one long summer of Bee.

Bee is what they called me when I was "little". My dad says it was a nickname for Belinda, but my mom says it was because of my fuzzy blonde hair and honey-colored eyes. In any event, for the first five years of my life, I was Bee.

Most people refer to their childhood as "when I was little" but for me, early childhood was when I was big – when my unfettered spirit poured out in all the directions, named and unnamed.

When I was big, I loved my pink rattle because it made the same sound as the cornfield that the wind and I played in at night. I would move out past the cage of my ribs and the bars of my crib and wander in the indigo sky, making a joyful noise with the wind while all the little people slept in their beds, trapped in their cages of devotion and bones.

People say there is no way I can remember all the way back to my infancy, which is funny, because some of them are the same people who once begged and bribed and bullied me to remember. Well, I'm sorry, but once I finally started remembering, I accidentally went too far. Memory lane was a rocky road but being from Schaden Way, I was accustomed to being bounced and jarred, and by the time I reached the beginning, I was mostly glad I had survived the trip.

My very first memory, or at least the first one I can access, is of sitting on a flat, hard surface, perhaps, a table. I am surrounded by four women wearing long dresses which button up the front and have stiff collars. The dresses are varying shades of sepia, as if they came from an old photograph, or maybe it is just that I cannot see in color yet. The faces are gentle and blurred. I am the center of their attention. They are talking to me softly, brushing my hair, tying my shoes, fussing with my clothing.

Apparently, I am being groomed for something special, possibly an event, but it feels more like a mission. (An event happens after you have spent a long time preparing the setting. A mission happens after you spend a long time preparing yourself.)

I am unafraid and curious.

The women keep talking softly, whispering at times. I cannot remember any of the words, but I remember the cadence of their voices, instructing, coaxing, comforting, encouraging.

As Belinda, I think this is probably a distorted memory of my mother and perhaps my aunts getting me ready for some social event when I was very young, but Bee knows this memory comes from a time before I was born. These women are my ancestresses hailing from different centuries, uniting here in this unborn moment to groom me for a journey that I cannot even begin to imagine.

When I look into their eyes, tiny tragedies loom and miniscule triumphs glisten, trapped in time. Maybe these are previews of my coming journey, or maybe they are the memories of their own journeys through life in the physical realm. However, these four are beyond tears and terror now. There is no aura of sadness, fear, or joy here, there is only this quietly meandering murmur of loving voices, blending and separating, braiding me into being.

Peace, only peace at this table.

The fear, the sorrow and the joy are yet to come.

Since I was ushered into life by four women, you can imagine my surprise when I arrived in the world and found a man in charge of the house. Later, of course, I would find that men were also in charge of the church, the tavern, the diner, the grocery store, the post office, and my childhood world at large.

Thankfully, I would find a woman in charge of the one place that mattered most in my childhood, which was the library. My childhood librarian, Miss Alice, did not have a husband but she always smelled like men's aftershave. She had a pageboy haircut and snapping blue eyes. She wore tweed skirts and blazers and bright red lipstick. She was small and slim, but when she walked across the room to fetch a book, her shiny black shoes made an exciting staccato sound that still echoes in my mind. It was a sound like wild horses galloping. When I followed that sound, it led to wild, unchartered territory inside the minds of people I would never meet but would somehow come to know intimately.

You must have followed it too since you are here now.

One day far into the future when Miss Alice is a vibrant old lady, she will be brutally murdered by a man with an axe, but that day is in the adult section, so let's not go there, not yet. Let's go to a place where our minds can dance as naked and safe as dust motes in sunlight.

Let's go to the children's section.

Clackety, clackety, clackety-clack.

Shhh!