I started writing it the day after Sept. 11. I was living in New York City. We didnt have any phone service and we didnt have any mail. Like a lot of writers do, I started to write in a voice that I missed.
Lord, I never seen blue hair on a black woman before or since. Leroy say you look like a cracker from outer space.
Only three things them ladies talk about: they kids, they clothes, and they friends. I hear the word Kennedy, I know they ain’t discussing no politic. They talking about what Miss Jackie done wore on the tee-vee.
As children, we looked up to our maids and our nannies, who were playing in some ways the role of our mothers. They were paid to be nice to us, to look after us, teach us things and take time out of their day to be with us. As a child you think of these people as an extension of your mother.
Shame ain’t black, like dirt, like I always thought it was. Shame be the color of a new white uniform your mother ironed all night to pay for, white without a smudge or a speck a work-dirt on it.
They say it’s like true love, good help. You only get one in a lifetime.
Everyone knows how we white people feel, the glorified Mammy figure who dedicates her whole life to a white family. Margaret Mitchell covered that. But no one ever asked Mammy how she felt about it.
Her nose wrinkle up cause now she got to remember to say she Mae Mobley Three, when her whole life she can remember, she been telling people she Mae Mobley Two. When you little, you only get asked two questions, what’s your name and how old you is, so you better get em right.
Rich folk don’t try so hard.
Got to be the worst place in the world, inside a oven. You in here, you either cleaning or you getting cooked.
The day your child says she hates you, and every child will go through the phase, it kicks like a foot in the stomach.
Miss Leefolt sigh, hang up the phone like she just don’t know how her brain gone operate without Miss Hilly coming over to push the Think buttons.
I’ve become one of those people who prowl around at night in their cars. God, I am the town’s Boo Radley, just like in To Kill A Mockingbird.
I listened wide-eyed, stupid. Glowing by her voice in the dim light. If chocolate was a sound, it would’ve been Constantine’s voice singing. If singing was a color, it would’ve been the color of that chocolate.
I intend to stay on her like hair on soap.
It’s already 95 degrees outside. Mississippi got the most unorganized weather in the nation.
This woman talk like she from so deep in the country she got corn growing in her shoes.
I don’t know what to say to her. All I know is, I ain’t saying it. And I know she ain’t saying what she want a say either and it’s a strange thing happening here cause nobody saying nothing and we still managing to have us a conversation.
Babies like fat. Like to bury they face up in you armpit and go to sleep. They like big fat legs too. That I know.
When you little, you only get asked two questions, what’s your name and how old you is, so you better get em right.
With other people, Hilly hands out lies like the Presbyterians hand out guilt, but it’s our own silent agreement, this strict honesty, perhaps the one thing that has kept us friends.