Mother-mother, Wasp-mother
June, always rain. Always ants after it rains. Always beetles smacking against the window and stink bugs polluting the air no matter the weather. Always fruit flies and regular flies buzzing and mosquitoes biting. Always water dripping in the bathroom. Always a man knocking at the door, trying to get in. Always yacht rock and classic rock on the radio and dancing silly in the kitchen and eating macaroni straight from the stove. You turn sixteen and instead of “Happy Birthday,” your mother sings Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young” at top volume while you blow out the candle on your cupcake. Your mother turns thirty-four a few days later and stays out all night with a different man than the one who is always knocking. For a new man, your mother always opens the front door, until she doesn’t. Your mother always makes her decisions about men while sitting on the toilet smoking and humming. Your mother always burns the edges of the bathroom sink with her cigarette. Your mother always ducks out the bathroom window when any man is hanging around too much. When she leaves, it smells like white musk body spray and nail polish and smoke. Always when she leaves, it’s baby, I love you, make sure I remembered to lock the door. Always baby, don’t tell anyone where I been. Always you going out the door to work at the truck station food counter, always you coming back in the night with the food you were supposed to throw away. You eat on the couch, saving half of everything for your mother. Then in the morning, only a wasp coming through the window.
July, less rain, different ants, more ants, more beetles and flies. Always the smell of something rotten that you can’t find. Always a man knocking and another flinging payment notices towards the door. Always wasps buzzing around the door. Always bracing before running out, always fumbling with the keys, always slamming the car door like Jesus fuck you’re going to get stung one of these days, but they never sting you. The single-wide whines tuneless and steady; the wasps are moving into the walls. Your mother hasn’t come back in through the window, humming “Is This Love” or any of her favorite songs. Your mother hasn’t been to work and she’s not welcome back if you do happen to see her. Always someone telling you she probably just ran off again. You know it’s still the two of you against everything though. You know your mother always comes back. You know your mother would threaten to kill you if you changed her radio station, so you sing along with “Free Fallin” and “More Than a Feeling” like they are incantations that will bring her home. Always leaving notes on the counter so she knows where you’ll be. Always keeping the window cracked open just in case. Always trying to summon your mother: you burn her cigarettes like incense on the edge of the bathroom sink. Always painting your nails her shade of Baby Girl pink and spraying white musk body spray and cranking up the Rod Stewart. Always checking the carton of cigarettes in the freezer and the stale open pack on the table, but the count never changes. Always eating macaroni by yourself and leaving half congealing on the stove. Still that man keeps knocking. Still him asking if you know where your mother is. Always him getting stung stung stung.
August, never rain. No rain, no ants, no garbage, no flies, still mosquitoes at night. No water to drip day and night. No power, so no lights, no fan, no stove. Only showering on the sly and eating truck station nachos and hot dogs at work. Only you getting home and ducking through the bathroom window. The trailer is papered with notices like a wasp nest, the door sealed by layers of paper and wasp spit. No one can enter but you. Never anyone knocking anymore. Never anyone looking for your mother anymore. Never listening to your mother’s music on the radio anymore, only changing the batteries so it plays your music too. “No Rain” is your favorite. The wasps like the music. They fill your mother’s jeans and T-shirts and now your wasp-mother hums “Forever Young.” Your wasp-mother is thousands of mothers wearing your mother-mother’s black high heels while they dance with you in the kitchen. Your wasp-mother comes in through the windows and the walls, your wasp-mother waits for your mother-mother with you. Your wasp-mother takes care of everything.
Ani King (they/them) (@aniking.bsky.social) is a queer writer, artist, and activist from Michigan. They are a 2023 Smokelong Grand Micro Finalist with work previously appearing in Strange Horizons, Pidgeonholes, and Jersey Devil Press. More about Ani and their work can be found at aniking.net.