Lily Owens recalls the summer of 1964, when she turned fourteen. She starts by describing how she would wait in her bedroom each night for the arrival of bees. Although these bees are imaginary, Lily's strong emotional connection to them makes the reader question their reality. Lily's caretaker, Rosaleen, has mentioned that swarming bees are a sign of death. Lily is fixated on death, as her mother, Deborah, passed away when she was just four years old. She frequently thinks about the day her mother died and shares the incident, along with her own feelings of guilt, with the reader. She remembers sitting on the closet floor while her mother frantically packed a suitcase. She recalls her father, T. Ray, coming home and the ensuing argument between her parents. T. Ray shoved Lily, and her mother grabbed a gun from the closet shelf. The gun ended up in T. Ray's hands, then on the floor, and finally in Lily's hands. Lily remembers the sound of the gunshot. Her mother was dead.

Unpopular at school and unloved by her father, Lily relies solely on Rosaleen. She cherishes a few items connected to her mother: a photograph of Deborah, a pair of white gloves, and a picture of a dark-skinned Virgin Mary mounted on wood, with "Tiburon, S.C." written on the back. She keeps these items buried in a tin box in her father's peach orchard, occasionally digging them up and imagining what her mother was like. Lily recalls that the day before she started first grade, T. Ray told her she had accidentally killed her mother.

On July 2, 1964, Rosaleen is thrilled to hear that President Lyndon Johnson has signed the Civil Rights Act into law. That night, seeking a sense of closeness, Lily heads to the orchard to dig up her tin box. T. Ray catches her outside, assuming she is meeting a boy. He punishes her in a way Lily particularly despises: by making her kneel on the kitchen floor in a pile of Martha White grits, small grains that painfully dig into her knees.

Lily goes with Rosaleen to a Fourth of July voter-registration rally in Sylvan. Before Rosaleen can register, she catches the attention of a group of men playing cards. They provoke her with racial slurs, and she responds by pouring tobacco juice on their shoes. A confrontation ensues, leading to Rosaleen's arrest for assault.