Lily walks a huge, shaggy bumblebee on a clover leash, treating it like a pet Saint Bernard. Onlookers, described as “whirling dervishes out shopping for accessories,” want to touch its soft coat, but the bee is terribly delicate. The speaker’s tone is calmly conspiratorial, as if reporting a familiar, private miracle. When Lily winks, it’s not flirtatious—it transmits a shared, wordless knowing that reaches right down to a butterfly-wing fragment stuck in her eye. This immediate connection somehow soothes a looming threat, “the potential for a cataclysm” that’s always just brushed aside. The mood hovers between whimsical and tense, as if the bee’s fragility holds the world’s balance. It trudges on, carrying “its little bundle of shaved nerves” like a sacred burden from a young, unsteady god. The whole scene feels like a moment of surreal domestic magic, where intimacy and strangeness prevent everything from shattering.
Head of a White Woman Winking — Summary
She has one good bumblebee which she leads about town on a leash of clover. It's as big as a Saint Bernard but also extremely fragile. People want to pet its long, shaggy coat. These would be mostly whirling dervishes out shopping for accessories. When Lily winks they understand everything, right down to the particle of a butterfly's wing lodged in her last good eye, so the situation is avoided, the potential for a cataclysm is narrowly averted, and the bumblebee lugs its little bundle of shaved nerves forward, on a mission from some sick, young godhead.