The Hive

She crawled over the rows of cabbages planted firmly in the dirt like little green severed heads--

On the porch, before her, a massive black woman with a white rag tied about her head like she was a mambo from the islands raised her huge arms while, beneath her yellow skirt, something seemed to be crawling--

And then that was when she heard the buzzing hum, and the wind from nowhere raised the folds beneath so that she could see as a carpet of fur a million, million yellow jackets crawling across the heavy legs as if the skin were an alive thing that could creep from the muscle and bone and across the face of the porch--

And in each hand a yellow-jacket buzzing and, my God, there must have been a thousand, thousand stings in each calloused palm; but the woman was Pandora to the world and every single flying horror she unleashed was a judgment from her ledger--