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Carol Pearce-Worthington

Beauty Queen

Our beautiful cousin who looks like a Christmas tree angel lives at St. Rose, a nowhere place where a county lane meets the highway. When men whizzing by see her cornsilk hair, her cornflower blue eyes, they turn around, they offer rides—and she takes them—to anywhere, everywhere, showing up eventually in far towns, on fast roads, or in gas stations. Over the years, the infants she births are taken from her. One surgeon leaving the OR announces loudly enough for our family to hear across the country: “I hated touching that pig.” Her last daughter, grown up and dazzling at age 16, drives a red convertible fast and hard, her blonde hair flying.

all I have to say
the fly
flies away