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by Toni Morrison

“Well, you not the first by a long shot. An integrated army is integrated misery. You all go fight, come back, they treat you like dogs. Change that. They treat dogs better.”

“How long a trip is it?”

“Don’t matter,” said Locke. “You’ll be grateful for every bite since you won’t be able to sit down at any bus stop counter.

you from Georgia and you been in a desegregated army and maybe you think up North is way different from down South. Don’t believe it and don’t count on it. Custom is jus...

through the fur of snow,

Great metaphor

But after a few hours of dreamlessness, he woke to the sound of a click like the squeeze of a trigger from a gun minus ammo. Frank sat up. Nothing stirred. Then he saw the outline of the small man, the one from the train, his wide-brimmed hat unmistakable in the frame of light at the window. Frank reached for the bedside lamp. Its glow revealed the same little man in the pale blue zoot suit. “Hey! Who the hell are you? What you want?” Frank rose from the bed and moved toward the figure. After three steps the zoot-suited man disappeared. Frank went back to bed, thinking that particular living dream was not all that bad compared to others he’d had. No dogs or birds eating the remains of his comrades, like the hallucination he’d had once while sitting on a bench in the city park’s rose

garden. This one was comic, in a way. He

Three or maybe four families had trucks or cars and loaded all they could. But remember, nobody could load their land, their crops, their stock. Is somebody going to feed the hogs or let them go wild? What about that patch behind the shed? It needs tilling in case it rains. Most families, like mine, walked for miles until Mr. Gardener came back for a few more of us after dropping his own people at the state line.

You don’t know what heat is until you cross the border from Texas to Louisiana in the summer. You can’t come up with words that catch it. Trees give up. Turtles cook in their shells. Describe that if you know how.

A mean grandmother is one of the worst things a girl could have.

Being born in the street—or the gutter, as she usually put it—was prelude to a sinful, worthless life.

So this is what they mean in those sad, sweet songs. “When I lost my baby, I almost lost my mind …” Except those songs were about lost love. What she felt was bigger than that. She was broken. Not broken up but broken down, down into her separate parts.

“What church affiliation? Any?” “There’s God’s Congregation in Lotus but, I don’t …” “They jump around?” “Ma’am?” “Never mind. Did you graduate from high school?”

No part of said property hereby conveyed shall ever be used or occupied by any Hebrew or by any person of the Ethiopian, Malay or Asiatic race excepting only employees in domestic service.

She smiled when she spoke. He did not return the smile, but his eyes had such a quiet, faraway look—like people who made their living staring at ocean waves—she relented.

“Like people who made their living staring at ocean waves” .. wow

When she questioned him about the future, what he wanted to do, he said, “Stay alive.” Oh, she thought. The war still haunted him. So, whether annoyed or alarmed, she forgave him much:

Their bed work, once so downright good to a young woman who had known no other, became a duty.

When she returned with a shopping bag full of emergency food and supplies the purse was still there, though covered in a fluff of snow. Lily didn’t look around. Casually she scooped it up and dropped it into the groceries. Later, spread out on the side of the bed where Frank had slept, the coins, cold and bright, seemed a perfectly fair trade. In Frank Money’s empty space real money glittered. Who could mistake a sign that clear? Not Lillian Florence Jones.

I don’t miss anything about that place except the stars.

Don’t paint me as some enthusiastic hero. I had to go but I dreaded it.

Now she had to be content with the company of the person she prized most of all—herself. Perhaps it was that partnership between Lenore and Lenore that caused the minor stroke she suffered on a sweltering night in July.

You can’t imagine it because you weren’t there. You can’t describe the bleak landscape because you never saw it. First let me tell you about cold. I mean cold. More than freezing, Korea cold hurts, clings like a kind of glue you can’t peel off.

The copper smell of blood no longer sickened him; it gave him appetite.

Sometimes, long after he’d been discharged, he would see Stuff’s profile in a car stopped in traffic until the heart jump of sorrow announced his mistake.

He was now convinced his attachment to her was medicinal, like swallowing aspirin.

Lily displaced his disorder, his rage and his shame. The displacements had convinced him the emotional wreckage no longer existed. In fact, it was biding its time.

Thank God. Exactly the way old folks said: not when you call Him; not when you want Him; only when you need Him and right on time.

Ida never said, “You my child. I dote on you. You wasn’t born in no gutter. You born into my arms. Come on over here and let me give you a hug.” If not her mother, somebody somewhere should have said those words and meant them.

Her garden was not Eden; it was so much more than that.

It’s like there’s a baby girl down here waiting to be born. She’s somewhere close by in the air, in this house, and she picked me to be born to. And now she has to find some other mother.” Cee

I can be miserable if I want to. You don’t need to try and make it go away. It shouldn’t go away. It’s just as sad as it ought to be and I’m not going to hide from what’s true just because it hurts.”

The old man was as regular in his habits as a crow. He perched on a friend’s porch at a certain time, flew off to Jeffrey on a certain day, and trusted neighbors to feed him snacks between meals. As always, after supper he settled among the flock on Fish Eye Anderson’s porch.