Character Letter (Character's Perspective) February 19, 2009

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Dear Book Club,
Hi, my name is Rosaleen and I am a character in The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, a story about how a black woman ended up running away with a 14 year old white girl named Lily Owens. I am that woman. The novel takes place in the 60’s, a time when racism storms through the South. Lily’s cruel and hateful father has just told her that she was responsible for her mother’s death eight years prior. The mystery of this nightmare and her longing for a mother is how we find ourselves fugitives on a beekeeper’s farm in Tiburon, South Carolina. Lily is so good at making up stories that it is easy for her to convince our African American hostesses that we are “just on our way to see relatives”.

Lily is thin and tall for her age with curly hair that stands up in 11 different directions. She has pale skin with beads of sweat resting on her forehead; she works like a devil in the Southern heat. Lily has guts. She is not afraid to take a risk and if she were to gamble, she would gamble everything she owned. Maybe that’s because of her hopeful side. She is always looking at the sunny side of the street. Even when the odds of her succeeding are one in a million, she still believes that she will be the lucky one.

You may think that running away was risky but that was nothing compared to what Lily did for me last month. I was put in jail for spitting on a white man’s shoes. He deserved it, and you would have done the same. Anyhow, she basically broke me out of jail, saying that I would die if I did not run away too. You can’t believe what she did. I was in the hospital because they had beaten me so badly and there was a police officer on watch. Lily walked over to the white’s hospital and used the phone there, pretending to be the wife of the sheriff and said that they needed to send the police officer to the station right away. As soon as he left, we high tailed it out of there and started to walk out of town. I am alive today because of Lily’s risky behavior.

Now as far as Lily being hopeful, you have to understand that the only thing that took us to Tiburon in the first place was a honey label with a Black Mary on it which was in her mother’s box of treasures. It did have the name Tiburon on the back, but that was all it said. Lily was hoping to find information about her mother from that small clue. It wasn’t much but amazingly her mother had been there and Lily got to know her from the three sisters we stayed with. One day Lily even tried to believe that her father might have become a better person and had changed enough to want to love her. Lily snuck into a store and used their phone. No matter how hopeful she was that phone call turned out to be a disaster, with T. Ray screaming at her and making threats. Her hope has gotten us in trouble but it still got us to the farm where we felt closer to Lily’s mother. Life was real good there in fact.

Risk and hope define my friend Lily. Without that I wouldn’t have anything to tell. She saved my life and found a place for us where we might have a chance at happiness. Although she scares me to death at times with her taking chances, there is nothing not to like about Lily. Her hopefulness even scares me because I am afraid she will be disappointed many times in her life. All in all these are great and useful qualities for Lily and for the two main themes in this book. Like I said, without both of these there would be nothing to tell and I might not even be here to tell it.

Rosaleen

Cheers,
Cody Leeds (8th grade)