When you little, you only get asked two questions, what’s your name and how old you is, so you better get em right.

Womens, they ain't like men. A woman ain't gone beat you with a stick. Miss Hilly wouldn't pull no pistol on me. Miss Leefolt wouldn't come burn my house down. No, white womens like to keep they hands clean. They got a shiny little set of tools they use, sharp as witches' fingernails, tidy and laid out neat, like the picks on a dentist tray. They gone take they time with em.

I reckon that’s the risk you run, letting somebody else raise you chilluns.

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.

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.

The day your child says she hates you, and every child will go through the phase, it kicks like a foot in the stomach.

It weren’t too loo long before I seen something in me, had changed. A bitter seed was planted inside of me. And I just didn’t feel so, accepting, anymore.