An Excerpt from
In The Blood

The honeybees that live in the walls of our house never did seem to like my sister. When she was six, one flew into her right ear and left its stinger there. She’s been half afraid of them, half resentful ever since. It’s the smell, my Mama says. Some molecule or pheromone that’s stuck down in her skin that irritates them. Makes them think that she’s a threat. The hive has been here, in the walls, in the ceiling, between the floors of our worn out house since long before Pa and his Papa lived here. The bees are in the bones of the house. The house is in Mama’s bones and in my sister’s and in mine. The bees don’t bother me. I can stand next to them as they swarm, feel their humming in my ribs, watch as they fly from bud to bloom to home. I don’t get stung. They land in my hair, on my shoulders, on my scar. We must smell different, my sister and I, though the parts that made us are the same.

When I was younger I was convinced that I looked like no one else. I was all angles and elbows, taller than every girl in my class but one. I had big feet, skinny legs, big gums, small teeth: a patchwork of mismatched body parts. My cousins were flowers in a meadow: each face a variation on a theme. My sister looked like all of them and like Mama and like Daddy and like whoever happened to be standing close by her at the time. Some trick of genetics turned her into a chameleon, put pieces of our ancestors in her eyes, her smile, her hair. My sister and I look alike, Mama says, but only when we are sleeping.