She finds a paper bag of her mother's things in the attic: a photo gloves and a wooden picture of Mary, mother of Jesus, with (surprisingly) a black face. Strangely, Deborah was also adamant about saving bugs instead of killing them. Her mother was from Virginia and is buried there. Now, at fourteen, Lily begins a systematic search for information about her dead mother. Lily picked it up, and she still remembers an explosion. Ray knocked it out of her hand and it fell on the floor near Lily.

Ray arrived and argued with Deborah, who reached up on the closet shelf for a gun. Lily was only four, but she remembers her mother hurriedly packing a suitcase. Deborah, her mother, died on December 3, 1954, after a heated argument with T. Lily has a horrific memory that haunts her. Like the thrashing bee she traps in a jar, Lily struggles to be like everyone else. No boys are attracted to her, especially since she wears 'Pentecostal dresses.' No girls invite her to sleepovers.

Her cruel father mostly ignores or punishes Lily, denying her the opportunities and accoutrements that are so important to teenagers trying to fit in. 3,100), a town of peach stands and Baptist churches. (Terrence) Ray, and Rosaleen in Sylvan, South Carolina (pop. It was the first time the bees came swarming in her bedroom, a sure sign of death according to the black housekeeper, Rosaleen.Īt that time, Lily lives with her father, T. Looking back at the summer of 1964, Lily, the fourteen-year-old narrator, realizes everything changed that year.

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