Lily’s Dad seems to be a tormenter towards Lily, and she doesn’t really seem too bothered about it.
“He did not care that I wore clothes I made for myself in home economics class, cotton print shirtwaists with crooked zippers and skirts hanging below my knees, outfits only the Pentecostal girls wore.”
Lily gets an awful lot of sympathy at the start of the novel because the write is introducing her and there is an awful lot to tell about her, at this point of the novel we sympathise so much because she is coming across as being poor and helpless when owning a peach orchid you would think that the family were pretty well off so this makes you feel that no one cares about Lily.
Rosaleen is Lily’s life and soul she is with her every day of every week; they get into some trouble together but are mostly safe and sound. They have got into some trouble at a gas station with a drug dealer really they are at the wrong place at the wrong time and saying the wrong things that got heard by someone else, and the problem just gets blown up totally out of proportion.
“The jail cells smelled with the breath of drunk people. He put us is the first cell in the first row, where somebody had scratched the words ‘Shit Throne’ across a bench attached to one wall. Nothing seemed quite real. We’re in jail, I thought. We’re in jail.”
This key incident led me to a greater awareness of the character. She described her experience of jail as: “Nothing seemed quite real” makes me think that she is shocked about the whole situation and that she can’t quite get her head around it, which of course is understandable. Then she goes on to talk about the words written under the bench and the fact that she describes what it says makes me feel that she finds something in the situation funny which is totally out of the ordinary.
T-Ray, Lily’s father comes to collect Lily but leaves Rosaleen in the cell; alone to be with her thoughts and come to terms with what has actually just happened.
“‘You’re lucky I got you out’ he yelled.
‘But she can’t stay there’ –
‘She dumped sniff juice on three white men! What the hell was she thinking?”
Lily is grateful for her father coming and getting her out of jail, but is upset that Rosaleen has been left behind. But Rosaleen has to learn her lesson and that is the impression that the reader gets from her father, “you’re lucky I got you out’” tells us that he might have even left his own daughter in the jail cell for longer than he did, I think that Rosaleen and Lily had no real reason to be in jail in the first place the way the writer describes the incident is that Rosaleen was paying back the man for deeds he had done in the past that severely damaged her family.
There is a great turning point to this novel, when Rosaleen and Lily run away together. They went to South Carolina and found a house that they seemed very interested in. Lily wants to run away because the situation with her father is getting too much for her and she also wants to find much more about her mother.
“The woman moved along a row of white boxes that bordered the woods beside the pink house, a house so pink it remained a scorched shock on the back of my eyelids... She looked like an African bride.”
This was when they first seen the house and where watching the beekeeper go about her duties, which was amazing to them. Lily has a connection towards bees and this is what brought her and Rosaleen towards this house, as if the bees were calling her and showing her the right path in her life. As they watch this woman they feel as if they are getting to know her more and more just by watching her go about her duties.
At this house they meet three black calendar sisters: May, June and August, August is the beekeeper who tells Lily the secrets of the Black Madonna – mother to thousands. It’s from August that Lily unexpectedly receives the keys to her mother’s mystery and learns the secrets of beekeeping.
“‘This is where I spent my summers,’ she said... Big Mama kept bees; too, right out there in the same spot they’re in today... She liked to tell everyone that women made the best beekeepers.” This felt like home to Lily the girls were almost her sisters she never had and August was like that special mother that she had always wanted, Rosaleen took on that figure but was more like a best friend than a mother to Lily. As the turning point develops Lily does think back to what life at home was like and whether her Dad is ok, but she knows there will be trouble down the line and will see her father again.
Towards the end of the novel Lily starts to realise how important real family is and what they are there to do. Looking back to the old days Lily realises how much she really misses her mother and once told stories of her by August is reminded of her charming nature.
“August telling Lily the stories of her mother really does trig her memory of having great fun with this special person and makes her look back with Rosaleen at those great days everyone enjoyed with her and how great she really was.
Lily loved her mother very much and still does she is reminded of this as she reflects back onto her childhood past and thinks of all the great times the family had together.
When T.Ray finds Lily it is an unfortunate yet tragic event at the same time, she wants to see him but doesn’t feel love for him.
“This is the autumn of wonders, yet every day, every single day, I go back to that burned afternoon in August when T.Ray left.... and there they were. All these mothers. I have more mothers than any eight girls off the street. They are the moons shining over me.”
This is when Lily realises although she cannot remember meeting her biological mother she has many other mother figures in her life that will almost fill those shoes until she grows up. I also think that her father leaving her is a very stupid and selfish thing of him to do. Lily goes from having so much sympathy from me to being a young woman who can understand that once something so tragic as your mother dying has happened there really is nothing that you can do about it and all you can do is look for new or replacement mothers for the time being.
Lily I feel is a very heroic child dealing with what she does as a main character she develops dramatically changing from very vulnerable to extremely strong and courageous. This is evident through her relationship with her father and Rosaleen.
