“Babies like fat. Like to bury they face up in you armpit and go to sleep. They like big fat legs too. That I know.”

“Babies love fat.”

“Miss Celia stares down into the pot like she's looking for her future. "Are you happy, Minny?""Why you ask me funny questions like that?""But are you?""Course I's happy. You happy too. Big house, big yard, husband looking after you." I frown at Miss Celia and I make sure she can see it. Because ain't that white people for you, wondering if they are happy ENOUGH.”

“She's got so many azalea bushes, her yard's going to look like Gone With the Wind come spring. I don't like azaleas and I sure didn't like that movie, the way they made slavery look like a big happy tea party. If I'd played Mammy, I'd of told Scarlett to stick those green draperies up her white little pooper. Maker her own damn man-catching dress.”

“By the time she a year old Mae Mobley following me around everwhere I go….Miss Leefolt, she’d narrow up her eyes at me like I done something wrong, unhitch that crying baby off my foot. I reckon that’s the risk you run, letting somebody else raise you chilluns”

“Taking care a white babies, that’s what I do, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning.”

“Baby Girl,” I say. “I need you to remember everything I told you. Do you remember what I told you?”She still crying steady, but the hiccups is gone. “To wipe my bottom good when I’m done?”“No, baby, the other. About what you are.”I look deep into her rich brown eyes and she look into mine. Law, she got old-soul eyes, like she done lived a thousand years. And I swear I see, down inside, the woman she gone grow up to be. A flash from the future. She is tall and straight. She is proud. She got a better haircut. And she is remembering the words I put in her head. Remembering as a full grown woman.And then she say it, just like I need her to. “You is kind,” she say, “you is smart. You is important.”