Part Nine: Humble Bee
They say that the ability to see a mongoose is one of the privileges of adulthood. Every time an adult sees one oh there’s a mongoose again a child will rush to look and it will have disappeared. Aunt A had seen a few from the car, and like a child, every time I took my gaze off the horizon to search for him on the road he would be gone. The mongoose in Jamaica have chased away all the snakes, which is great, but now they live off chickens they poach from the houses, which is not so great.
After lunch we went for a walk along the beach. There are funny little water balloons that wash up along the shoreline with the seaweed after the weather has been stormy. They look like they could be jellyfish the size of marbles and deflate when they are left in the sun. Aunt A burst one with a stick in an effort to work out what they were and whether they would sting, but the pop was inconclusive. As we walked I’m sure I landed my heel on one and felt no pain (it was instead quite an enjoyable sensation, like popping bubblewrap) so I continued with out worrying. We reached a public stretch of beach where some local families were splashing in the waves, and further still to where a few Rastas were selling their handicrafts from stalls they had erected along the fence line. I was about to wave and say no thank you when I felt a sudden pain in my toe. I lifted it swiftly to investigate but it was too sandy for me to see anything and I dipped it again in a wave. It felt just like a sting and A looked at me quizzically as I danced around on one leg trying to see where the pain was coming from. There, on the third toe in from the baby, was a thorn-like sting. I brushed it off, and wined like an injured cat. The Rasta who had been sitting on the fence behind us came up to me and I told him I had been stung, and asked if there were bees on the beach. Not on de beach no, but sometime de honey bee they fall in the waves and drown, and he found just along from me a little bee in the sand, its fur all wet from the waves.
A continued down the beach and I turned to go back to the house walking on the heel of the offended foot. A big black lady sitting in the shade called me up to her, and I went to show her my wound. She took my foot in her hand, her broad thumbs dwarfing my toes, and tried to press some of the venom out. Just walk in di water. It’s better eh, she said.
As I walked slowly in the waves I forgave the little bee. A bee’s sting is its only weapon and to use it is suicide, though I am sure my bee had already drowned. I wonder why he had come so close to the sea looking for nectar. Did you know that a bee will only make a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its whole lifetime? Well, this little bee he don’t give me no honey but as I watch my toe puff up like a bumble I forgave him.