The Wasps

In the alley behind Stella's house, chips and strippings of cheap particle wood furniture are frequently discarded. This late afternoon, she takes out the trash from her kitchen upstairs in the studio apartment. First, closing the door to her place, she takes the precaution of locking her front door. There are the neighbors in surrounding units. This is not to say that she does not always assume a natural goodness in everyone (out of a billowy inner feeling that makes her see every person as a potential moral champion). She hardly knows these other residents. Crumbles of speckly brown brick pervade the lawn that separates the garage-turned-efficiency apartment from its master house (Inside the master house the monthly rent is almost three times the amount that Stella pays for her apartment. In the middle of that lawn there is a tree. A fully developed mesquite tree covered in wasps. A sappy tree surrounded by brick crumbs.

Underneath the brick crumbles the grass is parched. This is most likely due to the Mesquite trees that make harsh competition for the water in the ground. When Stella is done climbing down the cement staircase onto the lawn, she is met by the crunch of the lawn. The brittle strands of grass hardly succeed in covering the lot in a way that is aesthetically pleasing to the passerby; however, this lawn does not meet a front curb of any well marked street. This lawn lies behind the masterhouse (rent there is just about three times what Stella pays for her own space) and, really, is only visible from the alley (strips of wood await there for Stella), so no one in this town is offended. Also (Stella reassures herself), this property is not worth the time and effort to make into beautiful gardens. There is just Stella right now with her garbage bag.

A wasp or two will fly dangerously close to her face. Stella wishes that the city or someone would take care of these pests. It is not safe. There was that one time when I came home to find a wasp hovering above my bed. Stella walks into the alley behind the lot and lifts the lid up from a city-issued, 100-gallon barrel garbage container. Then there was that other time when a wasp emerged from my bathtub while I was on the toilet (the wasp floated up toward the shower nozzle so delicately and yet so threateningly, inhabiting its space as a standoffish roommate in a sort of tiff might do while in her own bedroom). The wasps do not belong here. Stella does not own the property she walks across through any sort of legal contract, but she does possess it in a way that a wasp cannot. She consciously inhabits her space. She tosses the trash bag down into the over sized trash container and is greeted in return by disoriented flies and the smell of rotten potato juice and scrappings of fish fillets. There was that other time...Stella slams the lid shut quickly.

Stella looks down to the pile of trash that people have lazily left in the gravel. Torn up window screens, a musty rug, and wood. Today there is a wooden chair, almost fully intact. Also--panels of wood that have been stripped free of their paint! Stella becomes dreamy holding the previously unwanted wood in her arms. What unbound creativity she has now! She will ask her older friend, Joe, (middle-aged surly bank teller) to come over and help her nail together a little parlour table. There will be coffee for Joe as well, in case he feels dragged into another one of Stella's seemingly fun and promising (at first) text messages (Stella's words are almost always misleading). Just what I needed! And, maybe, MAYBE, Stella might allow for Joe to have intercourse with her after the project is complete. But is this enough wood?

Stella walks back to the cement steps around the little efficiency complex and sees the tree ablaze. Wasps, red and orange, swarming and fuming, feeding upon the nectar of the mesquite tree. The thorns that protrude from the limbs of the Mesquite tree are illuminated in the magma-esque glow that comes from the sun setting into the dusts of West Texas. The hanging bean pods twists in the warm air. Wasps fly at astounding speeds from the tree to the master house to Stella's apartment to her neighbor's apartments and back to the tree. The tree looks itchy underneath the wasp carpet. Its shaggy strips peel off of the trunk and fall to the base where there are a few empty Heineken bottles and cigarette butts. Stella takes in a lungful of fire and walks back up her steps to find refuge in her own possessed space. There is fire underneath everything.