Demon Copperhead

by Barbara Kingsolver

Keeping secrets from young ears only plants seeds in between them,

She stops short of Lorena Bobbiting him (which was maybe not invented yet), but she does enough.

The slow leak of women that mop up after guys have torn each other’s soft parts out of their sockets.

I was pretty upset about it. Getting used to all new everything was screwing with my head. Clothes, people, house. The one thing I could still count on was being an idiot.

It’s football. Take that out of high school, it’s church with no Jesus. Who would even go?

No credit given for all the extra miles that take you nowhere.

This is what I would say if I could, to all smart people of the world with their dumb hillbilly jokes: We are right here in the stall. We can actually hear you.

“Certain pitiful souls around here see whiteness as their last asset that hasn’t been totaled or repossessed.”

“I’m saying you wake up and you’re still yourself, every day. I’m not like that, I give in. I change my recipe, to suit people.”

The wonder is that you could start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between.