Mud Nest
Senior knocked on the mud wall of my nest and I said, I’m not home, and Senior said, Junior, this is ridiculous, and I said, What is ridiculous? and he said, This cocooning that you’re doing, and I said, It’s not a cocoon, it’s a mud nest, and he said, Well, who else is in there with you? and I said, There are wasps in here with me and they are feeding me and tending to my eggs, and Senior said, How many times do I have to tell you, you are a mammal? and I said, Tell that to my larvae, and if you don’t move away from my nest, I’m sending out the soldiers.
Senior came back with a spray can of insecticide, and I knew this wasn’t good and he said, Hold your breath Junior, and he sprayed and sprayed and the buzzing that had surrounded me for days grew silent, and Senior cracked my mud nest open with a stick and extracted me.
Larva
What Senior didn’t know then was that I kept one of my larva tight inside my mouth.
And when Senior sent me to my room, I got out my pottery wheel and reconfigured some salvaged pieces from my cracked nest into a small pot, and I spit my larva into it, and I put the pot on my dresser where I could keep an eye on it.
Emergence
After a few days, I heard a buzzing, and the buzzing got louder, and it vibrated the pot until it fissured and then the buzzing vibrations opened the fissures wider until the pot was a crumble at the feet of the newly emergent Wasplet.
You’re not what I expected, I told the Wasplet.
I had to keep the Wasplet quiet, or else Senior would hear, and he would be mad that, once again, I had born an animal that was not a mammal.
I reconfigured the broken pot into a bowl and snipped a circle out of an old gray sock and tucked the Wasplet into bed, and then hid the bed deep within my sock drawer.
Drab
The Wasplet woke up one morning and told me, I haven’t been sleeping well, and I saw that there were indeed dark circles under its many faceted eyes.
The problem is my bed, said the Wasplet, it is far too drab, and I said, What kind of bed would you like? and the Wasplet flew over to one of my interior design catalogs and landed near a picture of a canopy bed draped with lurid pink snapdragon fabric, and pointing with a nascent proboscis that I hadn’t noticed before said, This one.
Floral Canopy
I found a box of matches in the cupboard among the jugs of moonshine and vials of antivenom and bottles of sleeping pills and beakers of sky and canisters of milk and the spray cans of insecticide and jars of berry preserves. From the matches, I constructed a platform to sit the box bottom on. I glued a matchstick to each of the four corners of the box and at their tops attached a rectangle-scrap of fabric patterned with bright snapdragons. I took a fuzzy magenta sock from the sock drawer and snipped out a plush mattress.
A remnant of blushed linen, soft as a tongue, served as a blanket.
I led the Wasplet to the sock drawer, shielding its many-faceted eyes and then said, Surprise! The Wasplet looked in the drawer, its many facets twinkling and dewy, and proclaimed, I love it! And I felt an upsurge of fulfillment blossom around the tiny nut that loosely rattled in my chest.
Buzz
There had always been a pervasive buzz around our home, even before the Wasplet, but I never could locate the source, and I wouldn’t notice it until we left the house for a few days and then, upon return, I’d vibrate with the resounding buzz.
I yelled over the din to Senior, What’s responsible for the buzz? And he yelled back, Something in our family tree, and gestured towards the old pine glittering in bone and ash that twisted in the yard. I yelled, Is it one of our relatives? and he yelled, No, it’s a wasp society, and then he yelled, I’m going to destroy it.
That’s when I took him to my room to meet the Wasplet.
Real Wasp
I was the Wasplet’s mother, and I suspected that Anger was the Wasplet’s father, so I was prepared for the Wasplet to be more than half mean because I reasoned maybe Anger might have the dominant genes, but the Wasplet was not even half mean. In fact, I’d never known it to hurt a fly.
Senior thought the Wasplet was meek and wanted to teach it to be a real wasp and not just fly around as benign as a butterfly, but all of the Wasplet’s best friends were butterflies and the Wasplet had definitely taken on some of their characteristics, even going so far as to suck nectar from its rather facile proboscis.
Senior said to the Wasplet, You’re supposed to paralyze spiders with your stinger and collect them in your mud pot, not unfurl that repulsive tube into flowers, and the Wasplet said, I long ago stopped sleeping in my mud pot; Now I sleep under a floral canopy, and when Senior heard this, he stormed over to me.
Where is this floral canopy you’ve been hiding? he demanded, and I refused to show him, so he ransacked my room and finally found it in my sock drawer, and he took it outside and put a match to it.
Tablespoon of Ash
When the Wasplet saw its beautiful canopy bed reduced to a tablespoon of ash, it couldn’t be consoled, and a torrent of tears streaked the many facets of its eyes and even though I said I would make another bed for it, the Wasplet sobbed that it wouldn’t be the same, and the Wasplet went to its drab bowl-bed, wept into it, and then reconstructed the mud pot that it had been born in and the Wasplet stopped hanging out with the butterflies and dipping its now-glorious tongue into flowers, and one day I came into the bedroom and there was a huge, hovering wasp flexing its proboscis-less mandibles and quivering its ferocious stinger and the formidable wasp buzzed, Where’s Senior?
Formidable Wasp
The Formidable Wasp found Senior and stung him repeatedly and instead of Senior being mad, he was quite pleased, and he said, This is how a real wasp behaves.
And this frustrated the Formidable Wasp because it really wanted to hurt Senior back for all the hurt Senior had done to it, and it jabbed and jabbed at Senior until Senior was paralyzed, and then it carried the thoroughly numbed Senior into its large mud pot.
I knocked on the mud pot and said, Formidable Wasp, could you please release Senior? and the Formidable Wasp said, No, I will not release Senior until he atones, and I said, Senior is not the atoning type, and the Formidable Wasp said, Then I guess I’ll start extracting his life force.
Ferocious Wasp
The Ferocious Wasp continued to hold Senior and slowly suck the life force from him.
I looked into the pot and saw that Senior was very sallow and weak and I said, Senior, are you okay? And Senior gave me a listless wave.
I looked at the Ferocious Wasp and said, You are like a stranger to me, and the Ferocious Wasp said, But you are my mother, and I said, Yes, and Senior is your grandfather, and the Ferocious Wasp said, Okay, I guess I’ll revive Senior with my antimicrobial spit.
Also, while I’m healing him, could you make me a new floral canopy?
Every Year or So
Senior emerged from the mud pot sticky with wasp-spit and newly invigorated and he said, I’m proud of you, Ferocious Wasp, and the Ferocious Wasp said, Thanks, but I’d like to go back to being Wasplet and I’d like to sleep under my snapdragon canopy, and Senior said, I guess so, but every so often, could you be the Ferocious Wasp?
And from then on, at the eve of every summer solstice, the Wasplet would leave its floral canopy and sleep all night in the mud pot. Then, come morning, it would emerge as the Ferocious Wasp and jab Senior repeatedly until, by sunset, the many stings became one interconnected wound and Senior was transformed to a moaning and pulsating welt whom I submerged in a baking soda bath.
Back in my sock drawer, the Wasplet was tucked in its bed, reading quietly under the snapdragon canopy.
Leave a Reply