Nuts

“No, I want to see the bee. Where’d it go?”

“Oh. There it is.” I pointed, seeing it in a clump of grass.

She squatted down next to it, studying it carefully. Leo came to stand by me, his eyes searching mine. I had so many questions, but right now, all I could feel was the hurt.

In my leg.

“It’s a bumblebee,” she said matter-of-factly. Suddenly she drew herself up straight and turned to me in horror. “You killed it.”

Surprised at being put onto the defensive by such a short person, I answered, “Yes, I did. So? Don’t bees die after they sting, anyway?” What the hell?

“Nuh-huh, only honeybees. There was no reason to kill it.”

“I had a reason,” I grumbled, and looked to Leo for help. Who was watching the two of us, fascinated.

Whether it was the sting, the surprise, or the fascination, my knees buckled and suddenly I was in the grass, next to a dead bumblebee, a disapproving child of indeterminate age, and a farmer with how many more surprises hiding behind his sweet face.

“Shit,” I muttered, then clapped my hand over my mouth.

Leo knelt down, patted me on the shoulder, and turned to his daughter. “Polly, this is my friend Roxie.”

“Hi,” she said, eyeing me up and down.

“Hah,” I said through my hands.

Leo smothered a laugh. “Oh boy, how ’bout we get you cleaned up?”

I nodded. Polly nodded. Leo tried to smother another laugh.

“Are you sure this is what you’re supposed to use? There’s not something else that actually came from the pharmacy? In a tube that says bee sting medicine?” I was sitting on the kitchen counter, next to a half-installed sink, with my leg perched on the back of a chair. I’d gotten stung on the inside of my leg right above my knee, and it was puffing up nicely.

“Baking soda and water is the best thing for a bee sting,” Leo soothed, mixing up the paste with his finger.

“Baking soda neutralizes the acid from bee stings, so it’s the best thing.” Polly tapped her finger against her lower lip. “Unless it’s a hornet sting—then you need vinegar. Did you know hornet and wasp venom is actually alkaline? The acid in vinegar counteracts the venom.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said, hissing as Leo’s finger dabbed the paste on my sting.

“Baking soda is good for lots of things around the house. You can use it to brush your teeth, and to clean pots and pans. Daddy uses it all the time. Especially on his hands when they’re really dirty,” Polly said, counting off the ways.

“It’s good for baking too,” I said. “Ever seen cake batter before it gets baked?”

She nodded. “My friend Hailey’s mom bakes all the time, and sometimes she lets me lick the beater.”

“Okay, so you know how it goes into the pan all gooey and flat?” I flinched as Leo patted another wad of paste on my leg. He mouthed “Sorry.”

“Yes,” Polly said.

“And after if comes out of the oven it’s taller, right?”

“Right.”

“That’s what baking soda does in a cake: it makes things rise and get fluffy. But its alkaline—you used that word earlier.”

“And I know what it means,” she said, rolling her eyes.

Wow. Tough crowd. I looked to Leo, unsure how to proceed with this one.

“Polly, what have I told you about rolling your eyes?”

“That it’s incredibly rude,” she sighed, looking in my direction. “Sorry I rolled my eyes, I just read a lot.” She studied me carefully. “If you say something else I already know, I won’t roll my eyes.”

Leo coughed. His shoulders were shaking a little too.

“Right, well, it’s alkaline and doesn’t taste very good. If you’ve brushed your teeth with it, you’ve probably noticed that. So if there’s baking soda in a recipe, the other ingredients have to counteract that—kind of like the way vinegar counteracts the alkalinity in hornet venom.”

After staring at me for a few moments, she said, “Dad, can I go play?”

“I’d like it if you’d unpack first,” he said.

She jumped down off the counter and started for the front door. “I did already.”

“And sorted the dirty laundry into piles?”

“Define piles,” she said, and this time it was me who smothered a laugh.

“Mounds of white clothes. Mountains of dark clothes. The definition of piles does not include shoving it all into the closet and covering it with a blanket.”

She headed for the stairs. “Right. On it.” As she ran up the stairs, her head popped back over the banister. “Sorry about your bee sting, Roxie.”

“Thanks, Polly.”

“But next time don’t kill the bee, okay? So goes the colony—”

“—so goes the earth. Yeah, yeah, I know,” I finished, rolling my eyes. Under my breath, I said, “They’re still assholes.”

She grinned, disappeared, and a few seconds later I heard a door slam shut.

Alone, finally, I turned to Leo, who was sitting there with an amused expression and a pasty finger.

“You can brush your teeth with that, you know,” I said, not meeting his eyes quite yet and leaning down to inspect his handiwork.

“I’ve been told.” He also leaned down. The skin around the sting was still puffy, but the fire had begun to cool under the baking soda paste. “How’re you feeling?”