Written for Violet’s Literary Quote Challenge.
I have combined two quotes into one piece;
They are shown below. This is my story.
The summer Twyla came back from the city, she brought three things: a leather suitcase with brass clasps, a new way of holding her chin, and an accent that didn’t quite belong to her.
Mama noticed first, the way mothers do.
“That girl,” she said to no one in particular, stirring beans she’d been stirring since before Twyla was born, “is gonna work herself down to the bone and call it living.”
But Twyla was twenty-three and luminous, and she didn’t listen to women who stirred beans. She had been to lectures. She had opinions about architecture. She pronounced paella correctly now, in the Spanish way, and corrected people who didn’t.
Old Enoch Hollis, who had known Twyla since she was six and chasing fireflies in bare feet, watched her hold court at the church social and said nothing until she’d gone inside for lemonade.
“Acting like you’re better than you know you are,” he told the porch rail, “puts a terrible strain on a body.”
Nobody heard him …. or perhaps they heard and didn’t say.
It was Twyla’s younger brother, Asa, who eventually got through to her …. though not with argument, not with logic. Asa was seventeen and constitutionally incapable of cruelty, which made his devastating and irresistible at the same time.
It was mid-afternoon; Twyla had spent the morning correcting their father’s grammar at the breakfast table until their father went quiet and ate the rest of his eggs looking at the wall. Asa found her afterward on the porch steps, polishing her city shoes with city polish from a city tin.
He sat beside her and was quiet for a long while.
“You know what you put me in mind of?” he finally said.
“I expect you’ll tell me whether I want you to or not.”
“You’re like a sharp bright piece broken from a star.” He squinted like he was looking at something far away. “Too sharp, too bright, sometimes, for your own good.”
Twyla opened her mouth. Closed it.
The shoes sat unpolished in her lap.
She thought about the way her father had looked at the wall. She thought about the accent she’d practiced in a bathroom mirror, in a city where nobody cared about her at all, where she’d been nobody, utterly nobody, and had come home and tried to make that nobody into something worth the distance.
It was a lot to carry.
It was, she supposed, a terrible strain.
She put down the tin and pushed it aside.
“Asa,” she said.
“Hmm.”
She held out the polishing cloth. “Spit …. and make it a good one.”
They sat on the steps together until the light changed.
NAR©2026
Violet’s Literary Quotes:
“… acting like you’re better than you know you are put a terrible strain on a body.” – from The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride.
“You’re like a sharp bright piece, broken from a star. Too sharp, too bright, sometimes, for your own good.” – from Hild by Nicola Griffiths.
This is “The Stranger” by Billy Joel
Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, except where otherwise indicated. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.
The Elephant's Trunk 