When we got into the car, my grandmother turned to me and said, “You can call us Grandmama and Grandpapa.” Then she turned around and stared out the front window. Every so often she dabbed her cheek with a linen handkerchief, and Grandpapa reached over and touched her arm.
The streets were a blur of lights, black asphalt and noise. We turned onto the street that I remembered seeing from the subway with my mother. There were carved pumpkins on porches and straw men wearing funny hats. The houses were bigger than any I’d ever seen. Some of them looked like hotels.
We stopped in front of a tall red-brick house. Grandmama got out of the car and went in a side door. Grandpapa stared after her for a moment, then rested his head on his hands, which were clutching the steering wheel. I thought about running away and taking the subway back to my apartment. I checked on the ten-dollar bill I always had hidden in my backpack. My father had taught me that: Never leave home without enough money to make a phone call or take a subway. Maybe he should have added: Leave a number where you can be reached to his list of rules to live by.
I sniffed and ran my hand under my nose. Without turning around, my grandfather passed a white handkerchief into the backseat.
“Don’t wipe your nose on your sleeve,” he said.
The handkerchief had little white initials embroidered in the corner. I blew. After a moment, he turned to study me. “My father was right,” he said. “You don’t look anything like our Alice.”
“You don’t look like her either,” I said. “She looks more like her.” I nodded in the direction of the house. A light had come on in the kitchen, and Grandmama stood looking out the window.
“Colette,” Grandpapa said. “Why did she name you that?”
“She thought it was a pretty name, I guess.” I figured that it wasn’t his business that she had looked into my baby eyes and seen that I was going to be a writer.
“Do you like school?” Grandpapa asked.
“Some of it.”
“I was like that,” he said. “I hated math.”
“Me too.”
“See,” he said, “we do have something in common.”
My grandmother rapped on the kitchen window.
“We’d better go,” he said. He took my backpack as I stepped out onto the quiet driveway. In my neighborhood there are lots of sounds: cars, people talking, sirens wailing, horns honking. Here, the only noise was the rustling of the leaves.
Grandpapa started up the sidewalk, then stopped and waited until I followed him. My grandmother had disappeared, but there was a glass of milk on the table and a plate of cookies.
“Want something to eat?” Grandpapa asked.
I shook my head. He took the glass of milk and put it in the fridge, slid the cookies into a tin and put the plate in the sink. The kitchen was as big as our whole apartment. Every surface glittered.
“This way,” Grandpapa said. He walked through the kitchen and into a large hall, where a staircase curved away into the darkness. He flicked a switch, and a giant light with hundreds of bulbs shaped like tiny candles shone down on us. “Your room’s up here.”
He led the way up the stairs and past a landing that seemed as big as a basketball court. Here the stairs branched in two directions. There was a tiny sliver of light showing under a door at the top of the stairs on the right-hand side. “That’s where your grandmother and I sleep,” he said, pointing at the closed door. “You’ll be in this wing too.”
My grandfather opened a door to a room that was painted red. “This room was your mother’s right up until she left home,” he said. His voice cracked. “As you can see, she always loved the color red.”
He put my backpack on a high bed that had a little stepladder beside it. “There’s a bathroom in there,” he said, pointing at a closed door opposite the bed. “And here’s your closet.” He cleared his throat. “Do you have everything you need?”
“When can I go and see my mom?” I asked.
My grandfather ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Why not?”
“She’s unconscious. She wouldn’t know you were there. Maybe you should wait until she wakes up.”
“No!” I yelled. “I want to see her!”
“I’ll speak to your grandmother,” he said.
“No!” I yelled again, looking up into his face to make sure he could tell I was serious. “I want you to promise me now. Promise you’ll take me to see her. Tomorrow!”
“You are a determined girl. Just like your mother. That’s something all three of you have in common.”
“Three of us?”
“Your grandmother, your mother and you.” He harrumphed and shook his head. “Try and get some sleep. Before I go, though, I want to tell you that I am glad to know you, Colette. I am saddened it took a tragedy to bring us together, but it is something I have wanted for a long time.” He stood up and walked to the door. It clicked shut behind him.
It’s only for tonight, I told myself. Tomorrow I’ll make them take me to see her. I would scream and yell and kick until they did what I wanted.
Remember the honeybees, my mother’s voice said in my ear.
“Mom? Are you there?” I whispered.
The voice came again. You catch more bees with honey than you do with lemons, it said. How could I hear my mother’s voice? She was lying unconscious in a hospital at the other end of the city. But I was sure I’d heard something, and if I could hear her, maybe my father could too. Maybe he was feeling the same horrible ache in his heart that I felt. I sent him a message. Come home, Dad, I begged. We need you.