Phoenix Jackson Quotes

“She carried a thin, small cane made from an umbrella, and with this she kept tapping the frozen earth in front of her. This made a grave and persistent noise in the still air that seemed meditative, like the chirping of a solitary little bird.”

“At the foot of this hill was the place where a log was laid across the creek. ‘Now comes the trial,’ said Phoenix. Putting her right foot out, she mounted the log and shut her eyes. Lifting her skirt, leveling her cane fiercely before her like a festival figure in some parade, she began to march across. Then she opened her eyes and she was safe on the other side.

″‘Glad this not the season for bulls,’ she said, looking sideways, ‘and the good Lord made his snakes to curl up and sleep in the winter. A pleasure I don’t see no two-headed snake coming around that tree, where it come once. It took a while to get by him, back in the summer.‘”

“Her fingers were busy and intent, but her skirts were full and long, so that before she could pull them free in one place they were caught in another. It was not possible to allow the dress to tear. ‘I in the thorny bush,’ she said. ‘Thorns, you doing your appointed work. Never want to let folks pass—no, sir. Old eyes thought you was a pretty little green bush.‘”

″‘Throat never heals, does it?’ said the nurse speaking in a loud, sure voice to Old Phoenix […] ‘Yes. Swallowed lye. When was it?—January—two—three years ago—‘”

“No, missy, he not dead, he just the same. Every little while his throat begin to close up again, and he not able swallow. He not get his breath. He not able to help himself. So the time come around, and I go on another trip for the soothing-medicine.”

“Up above her was a tree in a pearly cloud of mistletoe. She did not dare to close her eyes, and when a little boy brought her a plate with a slice of marble-cake on it she spoke to him. ‘That would be acceptable,’ she said. But when she went to take it there was just her own hand in the air.”

“There was something tall, black, and skinny there, moving before her. At first she took it for a man. It could have been a man dancing in the field. But she stood still and listened, and it did not make a sound. It was as silent as a ghost. ‘Ghost,’ she said sharply, ‘who be you the ghost of? For I have heard of nary death close by.‘”

“She lifted her free hand, gave a little nod, turned around, and walked out of the doctor’s office. Then her slow step began on the stairs, going down.”

“Out of my way, all you foxes, owls, beetles, jack rabbits, coons and wild animals!… Keep out from under these feet, little bob-whites… Keep the big wild hogs out of my path. Don’t let none of those come running my direction. I got a long way.”

“He suffer and it don’t seem to put him back at all.”

“I know you old colored people! Wouldn’t miss going to town to see Santa Claus!”

“I never did go to school—I was too old at the Surrender,” she said in a soft voice.

“I ought to be shut up for good,” she said with laughter. “My senses is gone. I too old. I the oldest people I ever know. Dance, old scarecrow,” she said, “while I dancing with you.”

“In the paved city it was Christmas time. There were red and green electric lights strung crisscrossed everywhere, and all turned on in the daytime. Old Phoenix would have been lost if she had not distrusted her eyesight and depended on her feet to know where to take her.”

″‘Seem like there is chains about my feet, time I get this far,’ she said.”

“On she went. The woods were deep and still. The sun made the pine needles almost too bright to look at, up where the wind rocked. The cones dropped as light as feathers.”

“I’m an old woman without an education. It was my memory fail me.”

“She was very old and small and she walked slowly in the dark pine shadows, moving a little from side to side in her steps, with the balanced heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a grandfather clock.”