I can feel her cool blue eyes on my face as I struggle to pull her pressure stockings over her clawed feet, her shriveled calves.
“You’re not very pretty, are you?” she says.
I should have seen that coming, but I hesitate before replying.
“No,” I say. “I’m not.”
She leans all her weight on me as I help her transfer from the bed to the wheelchair.
“You never really were, you know,” she says.
“I know Mom,” I say and kneel to adjust the footrests, position one foot, then the other.
“Although,” she says, drawing out the word, “when you were young, there was something about you . . . something . . . ”
And I cannot keep my eyes from lifting first to her knees, then her belly, her breasts, her face.
Her cool blue eyes have been waiting for me.
“It’s gone now,” she says.
Penny-Anne Beaudoin has worked as a freelance writer for religion and spirituality journals and has had several of her articles published in Canada and the United States. She was nominated for the Canadian Church Press Award in 2000. Her poetry has appeared in The Windsor Review, On Spec Magazine, and Room of One’s Own, and her fiction has been published in Lorraine and James, Writers On Line, Quantum Muse, Ascent Aspirations, Flash Me, FreeFall, and The Canadian Writers’ Journal. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2005.
Have comments you'd like to send the author?
Please e-mail
Penny-Anne
The Face of a Woman Carved in Old Weathered Stone courtesy of Art.com
