The Paper Wasp

by Lauren Acampora

  “Go into the water, if you see it,” Tello prompted.

  A tiny girl with black curls gestured to a chair and nodded. The children watched me as I came into the room and sat. The little girl opened her hands and flashed light into my eyes. I blinked and found Tello beaming in the chair, saw his black-marble irises.

  “That was an excellent session. You have a lot of potential, Abby.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve been doing this for a while. I can always tell.”

  Despite myself, I blushed. I thought of telling him that it wasn’t technically my first session, that I’d been following Perren’s program for years. But it was nicer to be seen as a prodigy, to feel the old valedictorian’s pride.

  “I hope to see you again for another session.” He presented me with a handsome leather journal with an embossed eye on the cover. “In the meantime, use this journal to capture rushes from the Spring: creative bursts, notable synchronicities and serendipities, or imagery from dreams.”

  I thanked him. I didn’t mention that he’d just described what I’d been doing my entire life.

  Back downstairs at the reception desk, I asked timidly for a tour, and within minutes a young ponytailed woman named Tasha was leading me back up the staircase. She launched without preamble into a description of the children’s camp and the daycare center.

  “I don’t know if you have kids yet, but even if you don’t, you should know about these programs. I’m a daycare provider here, so I’m partial.” She smiled with her strong white California teeth. “I can’t wait to have my own babies someday. I’m even more excited about it, knowing that there’s such wonderful child care here.”

  Tasha opened the door to a room arrayed with miniature tables and art supplies. “This is the art room for the day camp,” Tasha said. A woman was in the process of collecting watercolor paintings from a drying rack. The woman smiled at Tasha and held up one of the paintings, a blue-and-black swirl like a whirlpool with a vaguely human form in the center. “The kids have access to all kinds of materials, and they’re encouraged to draw and paint their dream imagery.”

  Tasha took the stack of paintings from the woman and handed them to me. They were flamboyant and crude: herds of red antelopes, plumes of confetti, jewel-toned anemones. Oddly marvelous, they yanked at my heart.

  “Aren’t they fabulous?” Tasha said. “Those are by the preschoolers. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all be like that? The kids who spend time here have a better chance of strengthening their connection to the Spring for the long term and becoming lifelong creators. Usually the older they get, the more they restrict and censor themselves, and the less interesting their creations become. That doesn’t really happen here.”

  Tasha took me down the hall to the daycare center.

  “Of course, with babies the connection to the Spring is still primal. Nothing has interfered with it yet.” She lowered her voice to a whisper as she opened the door to a room with rows of cribs. The walls were painted beige, and there were no decorations, no musical mobiles. “Their surroundings are kept simple on purpose, to cut down on distractions. This is where I work.”

  Together, we wound through the rows of cribs, each with a sleeping or quietly wiggling occupant. I said nothing, but felt an unexpected shift inside me, a kind of raw unfurling.

  “I wish my parents had brought me here when I was a baby. I’d be a totally different person,” Tasha sighed. “I’m an actress, but I feel like I’ve gotten a late start. So many of us adults are here because we’re trying to reaccess our childhood creativity. How much better if we’d never lost it to begin with? Anyway, the Rhizome is letting me work here in exchange for guided sessions. It’s a great arrangement, and I’m humbled to be part of such a high-quality operation. They evaluate everyone for creative talent. People have to include portfolios and screen tests with their applications, so everyone who works here is top-notch, and really, really cares. The full-timers are phenomenal. Some even work overnight shifts, so that people can leave their children for longer periods when they need to. I can’t imagine a better place to bring a child.”

  We’d stopped in front of a crib where a small infant lay splayed in a starfish shape. The name LINCOLN was engraved on the brass nameplate on the crib. Tasha gazed adoringly at the little figure. “Oh, I just love these babies so much,” she said. “I get so attached to them, and then when one of them stops coming, it breaks my heart.”

  She pushed back a tendril of blond hair, and in her mirrored eyes I saw a pinprick of maternal need, deep and consuming.

  Tasha led me through the corridor of private guide rooms and showed me the restaurant. Everywhere we went, I looked for Perren. It was possible that he was, at that moment, under this same roof. You’d told me that he visited every few months. It was possible.

  After the tour, I was free to explore the grounds on my own. I roamed the courtyard and over the paths of the garden, stocked with flowering trees and junipers. I passed the spa and found a little stone building that appeared to be a boutique. I scouted all the way to the periphery of the property, or what I guessed was the periphery. There were no fences delineating the border, just an erosion into the surrounding terrain. Once I’d seen everything, I spent some time in the hedge maze. I walked all of its circuits, doubling back, until I lost my sense of direction. After several attempts, like a lab mouse, I learned the correct route.

  At last, I lowered myself to a teak bench near the fountain and remained there in a kind of sublime oblivion as the minutes folded into each other. I closed my eyes and listened to the babble of the fountain, the crescendos of insects. I tried to picture Perren here. He could appear at any moment. He could come ambling down any of these paths, right toward me. I blurred my vision and waited for him to arrive. In my mind, I heard the rustle of leaves and the thud of steps approaching, saw the pale specter shimmering before me.

  Instead, it was you who appeared, your hand raised to visor your eyes in the sunlight. For a moment I was worried for you, unguarded in public, but your gait was relaxed. Fame wasn’t a liability in this place.

  I stood from the bench. “How was your session?”

  “Great. My guide thinks it was my best session yet. He said my dreams are deepening and I should pay special attention to their messages. He always tells me that dreams can be truer than life.”

  I pictured you with your guide, attempting to engage in active imagination, sitting quietly with your eyes closed. The idea struck me as preposterous. Even now, as you looked at me, your irises resembled gemstones, hard and impenetrable. They were meant not to mine but to be mined.

  “What about you?” you asked after a moment. “What did you think of your session?”

  “Oh, it was even better than I imagined.”

  You smiled broadly. “I’m so glad, Abby.” I waited for you to ask for more details, but you just lifted your hair off your neck and said, “God, why am I always so hot in this place. Let’s go swimming.”

  “I don’t have a bathing suit,” I said.

  “That’s all right. You can get one here.”

  “No, no,” I said. “You can swim. I’ll just watch.”

  “You’re going to make me swim alone?”

  You grasped my hand and took me over a path to the little stone boutique. Within moments you’d found a navy two-piece with sailor buttons and held it out to me. “This would be perfect on you. You’ll look like Bettie Page.”

  “I think a one-piece would be more my speed.”

  “No, no. You have to at least try it on.” You thrust the suit at me and parted the curtains to the dressing room. Helpless, I went in. I struggled out of my shirt, adhesive with sweat, and dropped my elasticized skirt to my feet. My breasts sprang out of their engineered bra, and I folded my underwear carefully to conceal the chalky smudge in the crotch. As I fought my way into the suit, I glanced at the price tag: $375. Perhaps there was a reason for the price, perhaps the designer was a magician, and
this suit would do something for me that a cheaper suit couldn’t.

  I pulled back the velvet curtain and peeked out tentatively. “There’s no mirror in here.”

  “Come out,” you said. “I’ll be your mirror.”

  I had no choice. I drew the curtain the whole way across and stood in front of you, with my pasty skin and dimpled thighs. I was thankful that at least I’d thought to shave my bikini line that morning. But until your eyes went to my midriff, I’d forgotten about my scar. I rarely even saw it anymore; it had become a familiar part of my body, stretching like an earthworm from sternum to pubic bone.

  You hesitated, then said with forced exuberance, “That’s adorable on you.”

  “Too bad about this hideous thing,” I muttered quickly, waving a hand in front of my belly.

  Your eyes struck mine, questioning. This would have been a chance to tell you about Ann Arbor, but I couldn’t bear to ruin the moment, the day. And there would be no benefit in your knowing the truth, I decided. It would only shock you. You lacked the sophistication to understand it as an incident within the context of a deeper, more complex story. You wouldn’t have been able to reconcile that kind of darkness with any person who was present in your life. Instead, I turned and went back behind the dressing room curtain. A throbbing had begun in my head, as if my heart had displaced my brain. I shivered in the air-conditioning, and my hands trembled at the buttons of the bathing suit.

  “Don’t change,” you called to me. “Let’s go straight into the water.”

  I came out still shivering, holding the bundle of clothes in front of me to cover the scar. If you asked, I decided I’d tell you the scar was from an appendectomy. Someday, maybe later, I’d tell you the real story, a gentle version of what happened, and I’d assure you that I felt much better now, thanks to you.

  You went into the dressing room next and emerged in a crocheted bikini. I stopped shivering when I saw you. With your flawless skin and warm hair feathering your shoulder blades, you were thoroughly, outrageously a movie star. I could understand, looking back on your girlhood, how you’d attracted all of us like iron filings. I was weak just looking at you.

  “Come,” you said and waved to the salesclerk as we left the store.

  “Don’t we have to pay?”

  “They’ll put it on my tab. Happy birthday.”

  We walked in our suits over a narrow path that led to a hidden garden. I’d found it earlier and had assumed it was a frog pond. Dragonflies darted over the water’s surface, a dark unchlorinated green. “It’s a natural swimming pool,” you explained as you dipped a toe in the water. “It blends with the environment and lets the plants do the filtering and cleaning, instead of chemicals.”

  The pool appeared deep enough to contain sea creatures. I imagined eels curled in a submerged forest, dusky fish with lidless eyes and needle teeth. You slipped a foot in, allowing your ankle to be swallowed, then your calf—and, with a shudder, you swung the other leg around and slid in completely. For a terrifying moment, your body plunged out of view, and I couldn’t breathe as I imagined an omnivorous tendril circling your ankle and pulling you down. I forgot about my bundle of clothing and let it drop from my stomach to the ground. But then your satin head bobbed back up, followed by gleaming white shoulders, and you smiled at me.

  VII.

  I’D ALWAYS been the one with promise. Top of my class, ticket to anywhere. Or that’s what they’d all assumed. It’s easy to predict a straight path for others, a flat run for those with conspicuous abilities. It’s easy to dismiss them that way. And it’s more telling of the class of people I come from than anything else—this notion that just by unlocking the door to a real college I’d forever be handed key after key.

  I shared this faith at first. I felt a burst of freedom as I left town, sailing east toward Ann Arbor in my loaded car. But in a clog of traffic around Lansing, the cars in front of me split and doubled. My lungs seemed to malfunction, the bottom halves suddenly defunct. I couldn’t catch my breath, and it felt as if my head would balloon away. This kind of panic had sometimes awoken me at night but had never come in the daytime before. I pulled off the highway to a Sunoco, locked myself in the restroom, sat on the toilet, and gripped the handicap bar. The blood rushed so violently in my ears that I barely heard the knocking on the door. “Just a minute,” I wheezed. I cranked paper towels from the dispenser, wiped the sweat from my face, splashed myself all over with water. I was red and blotched in the mirror, pupils dilated like a cornered animal’s. I slunk out, shouldering past the old woman waiting outside, and with a dollar in my wet hand bought beef jerky. I sat in the car, chewing, until I could finally drive again.

  The town dangled a welcome when I arrived that first day: the restaurants and shops gaily tailored to students, the giant football stadium so much like a womb. I would be all right, I told myself. I would let myself be hoisted by the collective pride of state and school, this institution’s blind faith in my ability. But as the days progressed, the other students struck me as smugly contemptuous. Few seemed to be from Michigan. They were from places foreign to me—Chicago, Indianapolis, Boston. They were the children of psychiatrists and businessmen, and possessed of a team spirit that I couldn’t understand, that seemed to be drawn from the ether.

  When the leaves flipped their colors that first September, it was a personal betrayal, sleight of hand. Rather than slowly fading into gold and umber, the trees burned red. They surrounded the quad in a satanic circle. I sat on the grass and tried to quietly read the newspaper. A terrorist siege in Russia, children taken hostage with their parents. I turned the page. The Janjaweed, burning up villages. Students threw Frisbees around me and laughed on their way to the dining hall. I splayed on the ground, holding this collection of pages, this story of doom. The wet grass soaked my jeans.

  I didn’t take any film production or art classes that first semester, but tried to fulfill requirements. There was no time for drawing. Courses whose descriptions had seemed alluringly dense turned out to be simply incomprehensible. Introduction to Critical Theory: We will examine core concepts of representation, aesthetics and identity, mimesis and the hegemony of political superstructures. There were printouts of Heidegger, Lyotard, Derrida. My first essay was on the concept of the rhizome, of “multiplicity without unity,” as put forth by Deleuze and Guattari. The authors insisted that the universe was to be understood in terms of dimensions without beginning or end, as growth and spillage from a kind of infinite milieu. They were hung up on the relationship between a certain type of orchid flower and wasp. This orchid grew a dark protuberance that mimicked the appearance of a wasp, luring other wasps into attempts at copulation, thus pollinating the orchid itself. This wasn’t trickery, the authors insisted, but an “aparallel evolution of two beings” that represented something much larger, more universal, rhizomatic. “A veritable becoming, a becoming-wasp of the orchid and a becoming-orchid of the wasp.”

  This behavior was in direct contradiction to what I’d learned in my biology class about the cooperative behavior of insects: worker wasps devoting themselves to the colony, slowly building the nest from wood pulp, collectively raising the brood. Only in rare instances did a worker revolt or a subservient female usurp a queen’s nest. For the most part, hierarchy equaled harmony, productivity. Still, I was transfixed by the image of a solitary wasp courting its orchid. I could envision the strange collision of the species; I could appreciate its sinister elegance. And, despite the dense theoretical text, the idea of the rhizome resonated with me. When I dreamed, I felt the truth of it. I knew, as I slipped away from consciousness, that I was abandoning finitude. In dreaming, I tapped into a perpetual multiplicity. Perhaps the unconscious mind was orchidlike, folded inward, multiform—and consciousness was the vulgar protuberance that jutted from it, intent on dissemination.

  I was excited by the thought, but awake at my desk I found it nearly impossible to express. I banged words together, but they slipped from me, and not
hing I wrote made sense. I feared that it was futile to wrangle language into such profundity, and I’d lose my sanity if I kept trying. Gilles Deleuze, I knew, had ultimately leaped from his apartment window in Paris. I turned the essay in, unfinished.

  When I met with my adviser in December, I was clammy with sweat. I’d chosen a brown cabled sweater, serious and modest, as if that would help. I sat in the visitor’s chair and delivered the preface I’d prepared. I’d carefully chosen words that would obscure the fact that I was a fraud who never should have been admitted to the university.

  “Lacan, Deleuze, the films of Perren, the dual nature of consciousness …”

  “But, Abigail, you haven’t completed a single paper in any of your classes.”

  I stammered to explain what was wrong.

  He interrupted. “You intend to major in screen arts and cultures?” I nodded, and he looked at me for a heavy beat. “You may consider taking time off. In fact, I insist you do. Reconsider your goals.” He leaned back in his chair ostentatiously, flaunting his leisure, his job security, and dismissed me with a Jedi koan: “Let the work find you.”

  My stomach plummeted, a feeling that persisted through my afternoon seminar, Cult Films of the 1960s and ‘70s, where my classmates sustained a slack discussion of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. I couldn’t listen. I could only gird myself against the sensation of falling through a trapdoor, my stomach dropping again and again.

  The darkness was coming; I could feel it. I scurried across campus, and in my dorm cell I attempted one more essay, on the topic of Lacan’s mirror stage: the tragic moment in a child’s life when she becomes aware of herself as a thing in the world. I wrote a five-page paragraph with no breaks, about self-consciousness as a cruel splitting, the end of animalistic innocence. Is the infant mortal before the mirror stage, or is the mirror stage fatal in itself? I was in tears by the end of it and didn’t print it out.

  There was a liquor store known for selling to minors, and that’s where I went in my parka to buy Jim Beam. While my roommate sat on the other side of the dorm room, face awash in the dead blue light of her laptop, I drank bourbon from my travel coffee mug in bed until I slumped into sleep, dreaming of fingers growing from the ground, trees with razor-blade leaves.