Mad Honey

by Jodi Picoult

apiarist by hobby, as was his father before him, and so on, all the way back

On the day of my father’s funeral, and years later, on the day of my mother’s, I told the bees. It’s an old tradition to inform them of a death in the family; if a beekeeper dies, and the bees aren’t asked to stay on with their new master, they’ll leave. In New Hampshire, the custom is to sing, and the news has to rhyme. So I draped each colony with black crepe, knocked softly, crooned the truth. My beekeeping net became a funeral veil. The hive might well have been a coffin.

We are so lucky to have our children, even for a little while, but we take them for granted. We make the stupid assumption that as long as we are here, they will be, too, though that’s never been part of the contract.

I tear my eyes away. I look down at myself and, for the first time in my life, I am able to see what Asher sees. Yes, I think, a miracle. That’s what I am.

People always talk about how their love for you is unconditional. Then you reveal your most private self to them, and you find out how many conditions there are in unconditional love.

I don’t think it’s an invisible chromosome, or the inability to get pregnant, or anything else, that makes people so cruel to transgender folks. I think what they hate is difference. What they hate is that the world is complicated in ways they can’t understand.

Being in court this morning has already taught me that Ava Campanello is a better mother than I am. She had a child turn out to be someone she didn’t expect, and for all intents and purposes, she not only supported her but had her back against the judgment of the rest of the world. On the other hand, I now have a child who may turn out to be someone I didn’t expect him to be, and all I want to do is reverse the clock to the moment before I doubted him.

The cheese has been melted in a little copper tin and then laid on top of the crust with a spatula. It is a little bit sweaty, and very gooey, and frankly, sort of nasty. But surprise: it’s ridiculously good. It’s hot and tart and sharp.

“There’s a difference between sex and gender. A person’s sex is the body’s biology—what’s between your legs and in your DNA. A person’s gender refers to what’s between your ears. Your own psychological sense of self—who you know yourself to be—is called your gender identity. If your gender identity doesn’t dovetail with your biological sex, you are transgender.” “How does someone know if they’re transgender?” “I like to think about it in terms of handedness,” Dr. Powers explains. “If I asked you to sign your name with your nondominant hand, it would feel weird. If I asked you to describe it to me, you’d probably say things like the pen doesn’t fit comfortably in my hand; or it’s awkward; or I have to try hard to make legible something that I can do with my other hand effortlessly. It feels forced. Even a kindergartner can tell you if they’re a righty or a lefty, even if they don’t have the words for it. It’s also true that while most people are righties, and a smaller sliver of the population are lefties, there are some people who can use either hand with equal facility. Years ago, if you were a lefty, teachers tried to break you into being right-handed. Eventually, someone realized that it’s perfectly okay to be left-handed. Right-handed people who don’t write with their left hand can still understand that some people might…even if they never do it themselves.”

Is it so wrong to want to fit in, and to be left alone? Do I really have to spend the rest of my life as the emblematic trans girl?

“I thought you’d want to know that the prosecutor isn’t bringing charges against Maya,” Mike says. Something flickers in Asher’s eyes—relief, but also confusion about why she’d been absolved, while he was put through the wringer.