Fact check: What short story features a woman who peels potatoes and is asked 'what is under your feet'?

Executive summary — Clear mismatch between the claim and available short‑story evidence

The claim that a specific short story “features a woman who peels potatoes and is asked ‘what is under your feet’” is not corroborated by the provided analyses: none of the six source analyses identifies a story containing that exact scene or line. The sources describe different potato‑related tales and a separate story about peeling, but they disagree on plot details and do not reproduce the quoted question, leaving the original claim unverified by the supplied evidence ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]}.

1. Conflicting accounts about ‘potato’ stories — what each source actually reports

The supplied analyses describe three distinct narratives that involve potatoes or peeling but reach different conclusions about the scene in question. One source summarizes a tale called “The Potatoes,” in which potatoes proliferate from a compost pile and take over a house; that analysis explicitly states it does not contain a scene of a woman being asked “what is under your feet” while peeling ^[1]. Another source calls its piece “The Potato Man,” a ghostly, murderous story tied to potatoes, and likewise reports no peeling‑woman question appears ^[2]. A third source identifies “Potatoes” by Spencer Wise, set on an Indian Reservation about a boy selling potatoes, and denies the presence of the quoted line as well ^[3]. Each of these three pieces thus addresses potato imagery but rejects the exact quoted exchange.

2. Separate references to peeling and a possible candidate story — but still no match

A second cluster of analyses mentions a short story where a woman peels something and the tone becomes tense, and another names “The Peeler” (attributed to Flannery O’Connor in one analysis) as a story that deals with a peeler figure and religious interaction. One analysis explicitly notes a woman peeling potatoes in a domestic scene but says the story doesn’t explicitly include the question “what is under your feet” ^[4]. The Peeler summary frames a narrative involving a blind man and a young girl distributing tracts, with religious themes rather than the domestic potato question ^[5]. A separate, more contemporary piece mentions peeling a musk melon and introspection, again without the under‑your‑feet line ^[6]. These accounts introduce peeling imagery and potential candidates but still fail to reproduce that specific exchange.

3. Chronology and source diversity — what dates and types of work we have

The analyses come from sources dated between 2006 and 2024 and include literary summaries, web fiction pages, and journal entries. The oldest cited analysis is dated May 8, 2006, describing a peeling scene labeled “Once in a Lifetime” ^[4]. Other pieces appear in 2021 and 2023 for potato‑themed stories ^{[2] [3]}, and a 2024 piece references a contemporary short story peeling scene ^[6]. The date spread shows recurring potato/peeling motifs across nearly two decades of short‑fiction commentary, but the temporal spread does not converge on a single text containing the exact quoted question. This diversity suggests the claim may conflate elements from multiple stories or misremember a line.

4. Interpreting disagreement — possible reasons the quoted question is absent

The absence of the exact phrase “what is under your feet” across these analyses can be explained by several factual possibilities supported by the materials: the line may belong to a different, unreferenced story; the line could be a misremembered paraphrase of dialogue from one of the listed works; or the scene may appear in a translation or variant edition not covered by the summaries. The provided analyses themselves acknowledge gaps: one explicitly denies the question’s presence despite describing peeling, and others highlight Halloween‑ish or ghostly potato imagery without domestic conversation ^{[1] [2] [4]}. These are factual scenarios consistent with the evidence at hand.

5. Where to go next to resolve the question definitively

To establish the provenance of the quoted line, the verifiable next steps are clear and evidence‑driven: search full texts and authoritative editions of the candidate stories (“The Potatoes,” “The Potato Man,” Spencer Wise’s “Potatoes,” “Once in a Lifetime,” and works titled “The Peeler”) and perform a phrase search for “what is under your feet” and permutations thereof. None of the supplied analytic summaries reproduces the line, so only primary‑text checks will confirm or refute the claim. The supplied analyses provide starting points and show no current source among them attributes that exact question to a short story ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]}.