I’m not making trouble, Stuart. The trouble is already here.
The sound of the ice cream churning outside sounds like bones crunching.
I think about how no one in the car would come out and say it. We all know about these laws, we live here, but we don’t talk about them. This is the first time I’ve ever seen them written down.
Remembering can be almost as good as what actually happens.
Sanitation Initiative,” Miss Hilly say. “As a disease-preventative measure.” I’m surprised by how.
You don’t cook pumpkins in the summer, you don’t cook peaches in the fall.
I’m starting to hate the whiny teenage songs about love and nothing.
Truth. It feels cool, like water washing over my sticky-hot body. Cooling a heat that’s been burning me up all my life.
Grady’s Gift”: There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism.
That was the day my whole world went black. Air look black, sun look black. I laid up in bed and stared at the black walls a my house.
So instead of feeling sorry for myself every minute of the day, I work. I type. I sweat. Who knew heartbreak would be so goddamn hot.
I look in their smiling faces, at their hope for me. It’s not like Mother’s meddling, but a clean hope, without strings or hurt.
Ugly live up on the inside.
Dreams told the future.
Lines between black and white ain’t there neither. Some folks just made those up, long time ago. And that go for the white trash and the so-ciety ladies too.” Thinking.
And she is remembering the words I put in her head... “You is kind,” she say, “you is smart. You is important.
Mother’s attention. I have to.
Cuando empiezas a preguntarte por lo que hace la gente en la cama, terminas metiendo las narices donde no te llaman antes de que te des cuenta.
And then I realize what I’ve known all night. He is looking at me but he is thinking about... her.
Go ahead, Mother,” I finally mutter. “Say what you want to say.” “Don’t you let him cheapen you.” I look back at her, eye her suspiciously, even though she is so frail under the wool blanket. Sorry is the fool who ever underestimates my mother. “If Stuart doesn’t know how intelligent and kind I raised you to be, he can march straight on back to State Street.” She narrows her eyes out at the winter land. “Frankly, I don’t care much for Stuart. He doesn’t know how lucky he was to have you.