ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: The Writer, His Wife, and their Afterlife

Book One, Part Two, Chapter 62: Buzz

Yesterday a wasp, his long legs hanging low, circled my living room. Today he’s back.

“Not you again,” I say.

When he lands on a window, I smash him against the glass with a roll of tissue paper. He falls to the floor, writhing. I smash him again, then unroll a bit of tissue and wrap his body in it.

Through the thin tissue I feel a buzz, a vibration, an electricity. Shocked, I throw the tissue, with the tiny, thready body inside, across the room. Then I go to it, pick it up, take it to the bathroom, and flush it away.

Was the wasp angry? Is that what his buzz was about? Or hurt?

Of course he was hurt. And angry. And SCARED. Someone was after him, smashed him, and took his life from him. All because she was scared of a little wasp.

When Ernie was a boy, he got a BB gun for Christmas. He took it outside, aimed at a robin, and pulled the trigger. The robin fell to the ground.

Ernie couldn’t believe it. He went to the robin, flapped its wings, tried to bring life back to it.

“I felt so bad,” he said, “I never wanted to hurt another living thing.”