More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Negroes always love our hometowns,” he said. “Even though we’re always from the worst places. Only white folks got the freedom to hate home.”
“White folks kill you if you want too much, kill you if you want too little.” Willie Lee shook his head, packing tobacco into his pipe. “You gotta follow they rules but they change ’em when they feel. Devilish, you ask me.” In
“What you expect, boy?” he said. “Don’t you know what you is around here? You a nigger’s nigger.”
THEY CALLED HER TAR BABY. Midnight. Darky. Mudpie. Said, Smile, we can’t see you. Said, You so dark you blend into the chalkboard. Said, Bet you could show up naked to a funeral. Bet lightning bugs follow you in the daytime. Bet when you swim it look like oil. They made up lots of jokes, and once, well into her forties, she would recite a litany of them at a dinner party in San Francisco. Bet cockroaches call you cousin. Bet you can’t find your own shadow. She was amazed by how well she remembered. At that party, she forced herself to laugh, even though she’d found nothing funny at the time.
...more
A black dot in the school pictures, a dark speck on the pews at Sunday Mass, a shadow lingering on the riverbank while the other children swam. So black that you could see nothing but her. A fly in milk, contaminating everything.
People thought that being one of a kind made you special. No, it just made you lonely. What was special was belonging with someone else.
She couldn’t imagine living like this—hanging on a cliff, exposed by glass. But maybe the rich didn’t feel a need to hide. Maybe wealth was the freedom to reveal yourself.
She’d walked in a colored girl and left a white one. She had become white only because everyone thought she was.
She had rung the bell, and all her life, the note would hang in the air.
Eventually remembering turned into imagining. How slight the difference was between the two.
She felt too young to be washed up, but then again, she had ridden an improbable string of luck. Her whole life, in fact, had been a gift of good fortune—she had been given whiteness. Blonde hair, a pretty face, a nice figure, a rich father. She’d sobbed out of speeding tickets, flirted her way to endless second chances. Her whole life, a bounty of gifts she hadn’t deserved.
