Deacon King Kong

by James McBride

“Oh, you’ve seen him running around here,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Trying to make fast money like the rest of these young people. Bigger. Better. Faster. More. That’s all they want. Always in a hurry. Never takes time for things.

Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. The lies they tell each other sound better to them than the truth does when it comes out of our mouths.

“Isn’t it something,” Hettie said softly, “what ol’ New York really is? We come here to be free and find life’s worse here than back home. The white folks here just color it different. They don’t mind you sitting next to ’em on the subway, or riding the bus in the front seat, but if you asks for the same pay, or wants to live next door, or get so beat down you don’t wanna stand up and sing about how great America is, they’ll bust down on you so hard pus’ll come out your ears.”

“Our cheap death shows make me sick,” she said calmly. “Why don’t folks in church talk about life? They hardly ever talk about the birth of Jesus Christ in church. But they never get tired of singing and reveling in Jesus’s death. Death is just one part of life. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, all day long, the death of Jesus.”

You know an oak tree doesn’t produce acorns until they’re over fifty years old?”

You is like most white men. You believes you is entitled to something you ain’t got no hand in. Everything in the world got a price, mister.

Like most mens, he don’t feel he got to explain nothing to a woman, including his own wife,

I been around the sun one hundred four whole times and nobody’s explained nothing to me. I read the book on not being explained to. That’s called being an old colored woman, sir.