Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds

Author:Sheri Reynolds
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I sat on the doorsteps next to Mamma, pulling the silks from corn. At the bottom of the steps, Daddy leaned over a bushel basket, shucking one ear after the other, yanking off the green husks and passing the naked corn to us to clean.

Mamma could pull off a silk without even breaking it, but I always pulled too hard, from the wrong angle, and ended up having to dig out the silks with my fingernail.

As I worked, I thought about what James had said, and I fumed. I wasn’t the Devil. The Devil wasn’t inside me. I was almost sure.

Daddy tossed husks to the ground and with them, the crown of silks curled up and darkened like little-girl hair turned brown.

I always thought of corn as female before it was shucked. Undressed, it turned hard and regular, the kernels lined up like soldiers. Underneath, it didn’t look the way I always thought it should.

I didn’t think I was the Devil, but I wondered if beneath my skin, I was so different I wouldn’t even recognize myself.

I hated James that night. Nobody had ever said anything so cruel to me before.

And if what we’d done was a sin, then it’d come from inside us both. Not just me. And not because I was the woman.

I studied Daddy’s hands as he passed ears to me. The silks hung from his fingers like temptations that wouldn’t fall away no matter how hard he shook them.

I looked at Mamma’s hands as she coaxed the shiny threads from between kernels, determined to remove every last clinging menace.

I left silks on my ears on purpose—little secret ones that wouldn’t be noticed right away. And I must have been the Devil, at least a tiny bit, because I was on fire from the inside, hot and smoldering and thinking terrible things about James.

I handled the corn so hard I punctured kernels with my fingers. I thought being the Devil wouldn’t be so bad if I could just burn James up.

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