The Honey Bus

Sally is Meredith’s mother and the primary antagonist of The Honey Bus. She is described as large and extremely concerned with her appearance. Sally is characterized by her failures as a mother, her distance from reality, and her own history of childhood abuse. Although Meredith has happy memories of her early childhood in Rhode Island, her relationship with Sally changes dramatically after moving to California. In California, Sally becomes “more like an older sister [to Meredith and Matthew] tolerating [them] when she had to” rather than actively parenting them (215). Sally is absent for Meredith’s major milestones, such as her first day of school, her first period, and her college applications. May believes that her mother lacks any maternal feeling, explaining that “our mother simply wasn’t” (288). Paradoxically characterizing her mother with a lack of characteristics highlights their distance from one another. Throughout the memoir, May is unambiguous about her mother’s failures, depicting her grandparents as her parental figures.

Sally struggles throughout the memoir to maintain a grip on the reality of her life. May describes her mother as “a dreamer without a plan” who feels certain that her life was on the verge of changing (33). As years pass “without her Cinderella transformation, she felt more and more cheated out of the grandeur she was entitled to” (33), and she becomes increasingly angry and distant. Meredith attributes Sally’s difficulties with reality to her difficult childhood with an abusive father, explaining that “she had been groomed into victimhood; knocked down so many times it was safer to just stop trying” (295). The revelation of this abuse in the book’s final chapters brings Sally closer to her daughter.

Grandpa is the name Meredith uses for her grandfather, Franklin Peace. Although not related by blood—he is her mother’s stepfather—Grandpa is Meredith’s closest family member and parental figure. He is in his mid-sixties when Meredith comes to live with him. He is described as having “Einstein hair sticking out every which way, as if electricity had zapped through it, and a round face tanned to a chestnut color that settled into an expression of bemusement with life” (41). His looks reflect his vibrant personality. Grandpa is characterized by his patient, loving attitude toward Meredith and his fervent belief in The Interconnectedness of Plant, Animal, and Human Lives.

While Meredith’s grandmother is a strict disciplinarian, Grandpa “was the softie” in their household (49). While teaching Meredith to work with the hives and extract honey, “Grandpa waited patiently” when Meredith made mistakes (162). Rather than allowing her to give up, Grandpa pushes Meredith to push herself. Throughout her childhood, Grandpa treats Meredith “as if [she] was his equal” (164), honestly answering her questions about her mother’s mental health condition. When Meredith leaves her grandparents’ home, she knows that “Grandpa’s hive lessons would never end” (305), and she carries his beekeeping and life lessons with her.

The most important belief that Grandpa passes to Meredith is his assertion that “all creatures were sacred, with their own inner emotional lives” (67). May argues that Grandpa keeps bees because he cares about biodiversity and the health of the environment. The impact of these lessons on May’s thinking is evident throughout the memoir.

Granny is the name that Meredith uses for her maternal grandmother, Ruth Peace. Like Grandpa, Granny takes the role of surrogate parent for Meredith and Matthew, stepping in “to fill the void” left behind by Sally’s failures as a mother (268). Granny is described as “an exclamation point of perfect posture” whose hair was “salon-sculpted into frozen waves” (35). She is characterized by her strict, conservative nature and her willingness to indulge Sally’s moodiness and allow her to regress into childhood.

While Grandpa has wild hair, Granny’s hair reflects her strict, conservative nature. Meredith’s first impression of Granny at the Monterey airport is of her “jutting above the glut of less-mannered travelers fragrantly kissing their relatives in public” (35), refusing to comfort a weeping Sally until they are in private. Although Granny supports Meredith financially and in her college applications, she is not a source of emotional support.

Granny’s most important emotional relationship is with her daughter, Sally. May writes that Granny is “emotionally inseparable” from Sally and attributes it to their shared trauma at the hands of Granny’s first husband. May believes that Granny’s guilt about not protecting Sally led her to baby her daughter in adulthood: “Granny took Mom in again and pampered her, trying to erase her guilt with a second chance at motherhood” (298). Granny acts as a mother to both Sally and Meredith.

David is Meredith and Matthew’s father and Sally’s ex-husband. He remains in Rhode Island when Sally, Meredith, and Matthew move to California to live with Grandpa and Granny. Meredith and Matthew see David once a year, during the summer. After her parents’ separation, Meredith remembers him as having “dramatic widow’s peak and smoky eyes” (21). When she sees him for the next time, nearly two years later, his most memorable features are “a bowl haircut and a bushy moustache” (175). Post-divorce, David’s appearance becomes “shaggy, more like a hitchhiker or one of the Monkees” than the restrained man he had been while married to Sally (176). This indirectly characterizes his new sense of freedom.

David is characterized by his passive nature, which offers a stark contrast to Sally’s anger and aggression. May writes that her father “was raised never to speak unless spoken to” (21), and this passivity makes him vulnerable to Sally’s aggressive emotional outbursts. When Sally lashed out, David would “unfold his long body from the chair, disappear into the living room and crank the Beatles so loud that he couldn’t hear her” (19). The fact that David removes himself from the situation, rather than responding to Sally directly, suggests that he is more passive than his wife. The memoir suggests that May resents her father for not standing up to Sally and for letting Sally take Matthew and Meredith to California.

Matthew is Meredith’s younger brother and closest friend. He is two years younger than Meredith. Meredith describes Matthew as a “boy who assumed goodness in everyone” with a “calm and trusting” soul (29). Although Matthew is not a major actor in the events of The Honey Bus, he is essential to Meredith’s emotional development across the memoir. He is characterized by his dedication to Meredith and his perceived vulnerability in Meredith’s eyes, which makes her desperate to protect him.

May writes that, as a child, Matthew “followed [her] everywhere, plucking words out of [her] mouth and parroting them like [her] own personal backup singer” (29). Matthew’s devotion to Meredith extends beyond their childhoods: When Granny forces Matthew to move into his own room at age 10, Matthew is initially unable to sleep without being in the same room as his sister.

As a result of her brother’s dedication, Meredith becomes intensely protective over Matthew. May’s depiction of Matthew as vulnerable and in need of protection reflects her own vulnerability, as she describes Matthew as “the only person on the planet who could truly relate” to her own childhood (302).