“She’s my daughter, Rose. My own flesh and blood. I can’t deny her no more than I can deny them boys. . . . You and them boys is my family. You and them and this child is all I got in the world. So I guess what I’m saying is . . . I’d appreciate it if you’d help me take care of her.”
“Why, Troy? After all these years to come dragging this in to me now. It don’t make no sense at your age. I could have expected this ten or fifteen years ago, but not now. . . . I done tried to be everything a wife should be. Everything a wife could be. Been married eighteen years.”
“I gave everything I had to try and erase the doubt that you wasn’t the finest man in the world. And wherever you was going . . . I wanted to be there with you. Because you was my husband. Cause that’s the only way I was gonna survive as your wife.”
“I took onto Raynell like she was all them babies I had wanted and never had. . . . Like I’d been blessed to relive a part of my life. And if the lord see fit to keep up my strength . . . I’m gonna do her just like your daddy did you . . . I’m gonna give her the best of what’s in me.”
“Got up here and found out . . . not only couldn’t you get a job . . . you couldn’t find no place to live. I thought I was in freedom. Shhh. Colored folks living down there on the riverbanks in whatever kind of shelter they could find for themselves.”
“You can’t be nobody but who you are, Cory. That shadow wasn’t nothing but you growing into yourself. You either got to grow into it or cut it down to fit you. But that’s all you got to make a life with. That’s all you got to measure yourself against the world out there.”
“But . . . you born with two strikes on you before you come to the plate. You got to guard it closely . . . always looking for the curve-ball on the inside corner. You can’t afford to let none get past you. You can’t afford a call strike. If you going down . . . you going down swinging.”
“Sometimes I wish I hadn’t known my daddy. . . . But I’ll say this for him . . . he felt a responsibility toward us. Maybe he ain’t treated us the way I felt he should have . . . but without that responsibility he could have walked off and left us.”
“I married your daddy and settled down to cooking his supper and keeping clean sheets on the bed. When your daddy walked through the house he was so big he filled it up. That was my first mistake. Not to make him leave some room for me. . . . But at that time I wanted that.”
“Now I thought he was mad cause I ain’t done my work. But I see where he was chasing me off so he could have the gal for himself. When I see what the matter of it was, I lost all fear of my daddy. Right there is where I became a man . . . at fourteen years of age.”
“It’s my responsibility! You understand that? A man got to take care of his family. You live in my house . . . sleep you behind on my bedclothes . . . fill you belly up with my food . . . cause you my son. You my flesh and blood. Not cause I like you! Cause it’s my duty to take care of you!”
“Whatever was between you and your daddy . . . the time has come to put it aside. Just take it and set it over there on the shelf and forget about it. Disrespecting your daddy ain’t going to make you a man, Cory. You got to find a way to come to that on your own.”
“aOh, I see . . . I don’t count here no more. You ain’t got to say excuse me to your daddy. All of a sudden you done got so grown that your daddy don’t count around here no more. . . . You done got so grown to where you gonna take over. . . . You gonna wear my pants.”
“Alright . . . Mr. Death. See now . . . I’m gonna tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna take and build me a fence around this yard. See? I’m gonna build me a fence around what belongs to me. And then I want you to stay on the other side. See?”
“The colored guy got to be twice as good before he get on the team. That’s why I don’t want you to get all tied up in them sports. Man on the team and what it get him? They got colored on the team and don’t use them. Same as not having them. All them teams the same.”