The Keepers of the House Quotes

“And you remember how warm bourbon tasted, in a paper cup with water dipped out of the lake at your feet. How the nights were so unbearably, hauntingly beautiful that you wanted to cry. How every patch of light and shadow from the moon seemed deep and lovely. Calm or storm, it didn't matter. It was exquisite and mysterious, just because it was night. I wonder now how I lost it, the mysteriousness, the wonder. It faded steadily until one day it was entirely gone, and night became just dark, and the moon was only something that waxed and waned and heralded a changing in the weather. And rain just washed out graveled roads. The glitter was gone. And the worst part was that you didn't know exactly at what point it disappeared. There was nothing you could point to and say: now, there. One day you saw that it was missing and had been missing for a long time. It wasn't even anything to grieve over, it had been such a long time passing. The glitter and hush-breath quality just slipped away...there isn't even a scene--not for me, nothing so definite--just the seepage, the worms of time...I look at my children now and I think: how long before they slip away, before I am disappointed in them.”
― Shirley Ann Grau, The Keepers of the House

“How every patch of light and shadow from the moon seemed deep and lovely. Calm or storm, it didn’t matter. It was exquisite and mysterious, just because it was night. I wonder now how I lost it, the mysteriousness, the wonder. It faded steadily until one day it was entirely gone, and night became just dark, and the moon was only something that waxed and waned and heralded a changing in the weather. And rain just washed out graveled roads. The glitter was gone.”
― Grau, Shirley Ann, The Keepers of the House

“It's like this, when you live in a place you've always lived in, where your family has always lived. You get to see things not only in space but in time too.”
― Shirley Ann Grau, The Keepers of the House

“And isn't it funny, she thought, that it takes two generations to kill off a man? ... First him, and then his memory. . . .”
― Shirley Ann Grau, The Keepers of the House

“They are dead, all of them. I am caught and tangled around by their doings. It is as if their lives left a weaving of invisible threads in the air of this house, of this town, of this county. And I stumbled and fell into them.”
― Shirley Ann Grau, The Keepers of the House

“At first glance you would not have thought he had any Negro blood. But if you looked sharper—and if you were used to looking—you could see the signs. It was the planes of the face mostly, the way the skin sloped from cheekbone to jaw. It was also the way the eyelids fell. You had to look close, yes. But southern women do. It was a thing they prided themselves on, this ability to tell Negro blood. And to detect pregnancies before a formal announcement, and to guess the exact length of gestation. Blood and birth—these were their two concerns.”
― Shirley Ann Grau, The Keepers of the House

“Once a possum was cooked in the house, people said, twenty years later you could smell it….”
― Shirley Ann Grau, The Keepers of the House

“On those pieces of paper there was just the word “Free” and a scrawl that looked like “Jack.” So these new freemen and their children for all the years after were called Freejacks.”
― Shirley Ann Grau, The Keepers of the House

“The army went home heroes, and even the slaves felt pretty good. There were quite a few of them—Andrew Jackson had taken them along when he marched south, nervous and worried, not knowing the kind of British army he’d be facing. Those slaves went down with the army, served with it, and came back with it. As each man left, he got a bit of paper signed by Andrew Jackson giving him his freedom. Now, the General had a poor hand and he signed carelessly, with only the first four letters of his name showing clearly. On those pieces of paper there was just the word “Free” and a scrawl that looked like “Jack.” So these new freemen and their children for all the years after were called Freejacks.”
― Shirley Ann Grau, The Keepers of the House

“British army he’d be facing. Those slaves went down with the army, served with it, and came back with it. As each man left, he got a bit of paper signed by Andrew Jackson giving him his freedom. Now, the General had a poor hand and he signed carelessly, with only the first four letters of his name showing clearly. On those pieces of paper there was just the word “Free” and a scrawl that looked like “Jack.” So these new freemen and their children for all the years after were called Freejacks.”
― Shirley Ann Grau, The Keepers of the House

“As I stand there in the immaculate evening I do not find it strange to be fighting an entire town, a whole county. I am alone, yes, of course I am, but I am not particularly afraid. The house was empty and lonely before—I just did not realize it—it’s no worse now. I know that I shall hurt as much as I have been hurt. I shall destroy as much as I have lost.”
― Shirley Ann Grau, The Keepers of the House

“That’s the way it is with me. I don’t just see things as they are today. I see them as they were. I see them all around in time. And this is bad. Because it makes you think you know a place. Because it makes you think you know the people in it.”
― Shirley Ann Grau, The Keepers of the House

“I wonder now what it was like living for four years, not wanting to, only waiting for your hold to weaken so you could finish up and leave.”
― Shirley Ann Grau, The Keepers of the House

“There was only one thing that did, as far as I remember. That was underwear. Everybody in that house always had new or almost-new and very fancy underwear. She kept careful check. “Now, honey,” she explained to me, “if you were walking downtown and you were run over by a truck and they took you to the hospital and they saw that your panties were all torn and ragged and your slip was pinned at the shoulder by a safety, you’d be so ashamed you’d have to die.” “And just think how people would talk after,” I tried to joke with her. She didn’t see it. “And think of that,” she said seriously. “Yes, indeed.”
― Shirley Ann Grau, The Keepers of the House

“He wondered if she’d been waiting all these nights to come because she hadn’t had a nightgown. He started to ask her. But there was something—she had her hair pinned back and she was studying her own hands—that changed his mind. She seemed small and fragile again, and for the first time in his life he wanted to hit a woman. It was the bend of the neck that did it. It was so exposed and patient.”
― Shirley Ann Grau, The Keepers of the House

“And isn’t it funny, she thought, that it takes two generations to kill off a man? … First him, and then his memory. …”
― Shirley Ann Grau, The Keepers of the House

“I’ll never be put in a box and lowered into the earth. I’ll never grow old and watch the veins on my hands begin to work their way out of my skin. … It was funny, now, the way all the inner workings of old people moved to the outside. Their muscles and their sinews got hard and ropy and hung on the outside of their skins. Their veins rose up, so where you hadn’t been able to see them before you could see them now. There were little blue ones that appeared on the forehead, jagged like a saw blade, where the skin had once been smooth. There were others like cords wrapping their way across the backs of hands, and along legs. And pulses turned up where they never had been before. The throat one now, you didn’t even know it was there, until one day you saw it, naked and exposed, pumping your blood for everybody to see. … I won’t be like that, Margaret thought. I won’t ever get old and I won’t ever die. I couldn’t. …”
― Shirley Ann Grau, The Keepers of the House

“Our children grow old and elbow us into the grave.”
― Shirley Ann Grau, The Keepers of the House

“Well,” her husband said, “seems he don’t agree.” Years—many years—later when he took his granddaughter for a picnic in the cemetery with a Negro gardener or two along to clean up, William Howland talked about his wife Lorena. “There was such a light to her,” he said, “all over her. I used to think”
― Shirley Ann Grau, The Keepers of the House