Some readers tell me, 'We always treated our maid like she was a member of the family.' You know, that's interesting, but I wonder what your maid's perspective was on that.

Got to be the worst place in the world, inside a oven. You in here, you either cleaning or you getting cooked.

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

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 intend to stay on her like hair on soap.

Im a Southerner - I never take satisfaction in touching a nerve.

I wash my hands, wonder how an awful day could turn even worse. It seems like at some point you'd just run out of awful.