The Professional Lover
I walked toward Ernest Floyd, our undertaker, who handed me a small broom with which to sweep the violets from Aster’s body into the baskets the Indians make and sell on market day. Several professional lovers took up charge of the baskets and left to scatter the flowers to the four corners of Green City. Ernest met my gaze. When he nodded, I touched the flame of my candle to the bed of leaves beneath the branches beneath her body. We watched as the flames contorted and slowly devoured. Her veil caught first, and I was grateful to Helen who agreed with me that Aster should be burned in it, that she should be covered the way she always covered herself before going out to face the world. We held our burning candles and protected the flames as if their flickering was symbolic. It was not symbolic. It was windy. The smoke turned black and bloomed into the night, the white stars. All of it, of course, was projected on the JumboTron that some idiot tourist from the Sony Corporation had decided to donate, “in honor,” The Green City Times reported, “of this herstoric day.”
#
This was how I came to find her: I woke in the darkness, a sudden sharp pain in the palm of my left hand. I lit a match and waited for the wick to take, staring at my palm, searching for a stinger, and when I found it I pinched and pulled with my nails. On my blanket the bee was still, curled tightly into itself. I picked it up by its wings and cradled it in my closed fingers, and then, suddenly, I knew. I swung my legs from beneath my covers and hurried downstairs, robe flapping against my calves.
“Aster?” She hovered two feet over her bed, shrouded in bees. Her window was wide open. “Aster!” At my voice, they darted from her body to the bamboo ceiling fan twirling in the breeze and back to her body moving slowly toward the window. I dropped the dead bee into my pocket and ran at them, pummeling my arms, and then I grabbed hold of Aster’s ankle. Their small, hard bodies brushed against my face as the swarm fell apart. She plopped gently onto the bed, and then the bees were gone, silhouetted by the sun just rising beyond the bases of the farthest trees. I shut the window, locked it, and pulled Aster’s blanket over her body. She smelled like clay and fresh-tilled earth. She looked like some beautiful, sleeping witch. Her eyelids shimmered opalescent, and I wanted her to open them. I wanted her to grin, curse, clamp her hand on mine, anything. When she didn’t, I climbed onto her bed and lay beside her with my robe open and enclosed around us, trying to give her some of my warmth.
I hadn’t thought of him in such a long time, but suddenly I missed Frank.
#
In 1943 when I first came to work for Aster I was thirty-seven, a number that makes me an old womban now—not as old as Aster, who made it to 102, but darn near. When my son died, in Helen’s arms, the House of Love welcomed me with open doors, which was how I eventually came to stand alone beside Aster’s glowing ashes, watching her smolder, waiting for the moment when I could sweep her up and take her home again. I could sue Helen now for all she’s worth, accuse her of murder, but his death was an accident. She had more reason to want the baby alive than I; she was his grandmother, after all, and the only grandchild Frank would ever give her.