Demon Copperhead

by Barbara Kingsolver

After Aunt June put her foot down on the murder-baby talk, Emmy needed somebody else to talk to. She picked me. It started a couple of nights after we got there. All the shit I had to think about had turned me into not the greatest sleeper, so I was awake, flopped on the sofa cushions with Maggot sawing logs. He slept like a dead person, only louder. Emmy, being too grown up now for sleeping with boy cousins, was bunking with Aunt June, while Mr. and Mrs. Peggot shacked up in her room with the Backstreet Boys. Quiet as a cat, she slipped into the living room. Came and stood over me in the dark, little skinny thing in her white gown, like she’d crumple and leave dust on your fingers if you touched her. Where was Miss Salute-My-Shorts now? Was daytime Emmy a fake, I wondered, and this little moth-wing girl the real person? Was I supposed to say something? She sat down on the floor and started crying. Really quiet except for little gasps, like getting surprised over and over.