Phyllis’s Reviews > The Beet Queen > Status Update
Phyllis
is on page 58 of 368
When her fingers released the card into the mail slot she thought that she felt nothing..as she was falling asleep to Aunt Fritzie's adding machine, she imagined she saw the postcard alight in her mother's hands. Adelaide stared down and examined each detail of the picture, butshe could not see her daughter, who was too small to tell of, looking directly through her, not dead but securely hidden in the aerial view.
— Apr 02, 2026 03:09PM
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Phyllis
is on page 68 of 368
When Fritzie came home she stopped smoking for good. … After a few tobaccoless, idle months, her face bloomed from acid yellow, to peach, to rose. She gained weight and let her hair grow from the peroxide bleach to brown. She had been hard, one track, always someone to reckon with, but now she softened. Overnight she became a stout woman of no particular menace.
— Apr 02, 2026 03:27PM
Phyllis
is on page 67 of 368
The shop was my perfect home…floors were cast of concrete with hot-water pipes running through them for warmth. The thick walls were finished off with stucco, painted a smooth glossy white. Because the doorways were rounded, the place seemed like a cave carved out of a hillside. The light fell green and watery through thick glass window-blocks except in the kitchen where the screen door let through a blast of sun.
— Apr 02, 2026 03:22PM
Phyllis
is on page 16 of 368
My mind hardened, faceted and gleaming like a magic stone, and I saw my mother clearly.
…
All night she fell through the awful cold. Her coat flapped open and her black dress wrapped tightly around her legs. Her red hair flowed straight upward like a flame. She was a candle that gave no warmth. My heart froze. I had no love for her. That is why, by morning, I allowed her to hit the earth.
— Apr 02, 2026 03:17PM
…
All night she fell through the awful cold. Her coat flapped open and her black dress wrapped tightly around her legs. Her red hair flowed straight upward like a flame. She was a candle that gave no warmth. My heart froze. I had no love for her. That is why, by morning, I allowed her to hit the earth.
Phyllis
is on page 49 of 368
…Fleur Pillager proceeded to knead, mold, and tap the floating splinters of my bones back into the shape of ankles, feeling her own from time to time to get the shape right. The packets I thought were flour were really plaster of Paris. Out of it she made my casts and shaped them with carved splinters from the only branch within a mile of the railroad rack, the apple branch, torn from an Argus tree...
— Apr 01, 2026 06:55PM
Phyllis
is starting
On a cold spring morning in 1932 the train brought both an addition and a subtraction. They came by freight. By the time they reached Argus their lips were violet and their feet were so numb that, when they jumped out of the boxcar, they stumbled and scraped their palms and knees through the cinders.
— Mar 31, 2026 01:40PM
