“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”

“I worked for Miss Margaret thirty-eight years. She had her a baby girl with the colic and the only thing that stopped the hurting was to hold her. So I made me a wrap. I tied her up on my waist, toted her around all day with me for a entire year. That baby like to break my back. Put ice packs on it ever night and still do. But I loved that girl. And I loved Miss Margaret.Miss Margaret always made me put my hair up in a rag, say she know coloreds don't wash their hair. Counted ever piece a silver after I done the polishing. When Miss Margaret die of the lady problems thirty years later, I go to the funeral. Her husband hug me, cry on my shoulder. When it's over, he give me a envelope. Inside a letter from Miss Margaret reading, 'Thank you. For making my baby stop hurting. I never forgot it.'Callie takes off her black-rimmed glasses, wipes her eyes.If any white lady reads my story, that's what I want them to know. Saying thank you, when you really mean it, when you remember what someone done for you-she shakes her head, stares down at the scratched table-it's so good.”

“Her nose wrinkle up cause now she got to remember to say she Mae Mobley Three, when her whole life she can remember, she been telling people she Mae Mobley Two. When you little, you only get asked two questions, what's your name and how old you is, so you better get em right.”

“I look up at Eric,sniffing "I tried to...and..."I shake my head. "You tired to what?" asks Eric"Kiss me," says Tobias. "And I rejected her,and she went running off like a five-year-old. there's really nothing to blame her for but stupidity.”

“And if you can believe it…she slapped me again. “What the hell is wrong with you? Stop hitting me!” I finally looked up at her, but she was a blur. She hit me so hard my damn eyes were watering (I was not crying – eyes water. I think we all know I’m a badass and I don’t cry).”

“Once upon a time they was two girls," I say. "one girl had black skin, one girl had white."Mae Mobley look up at me. She listening."Little colored girl say to little white girl, 'How come your skin be so pale?' White girl say, 'I don't know. How come your skin be so black? What you think that mean?'"But neither one a them little girls knew. So little white girl say, 'Well, let's see. You got hair, I got hair.'"I gives Mae Mobley a little tousle on her head."Little colored girl say 'I got a nose, you got a nose.'"I gives her little snout a tweak. She got to reach up and do the same to me."Little white girl say, 'I got toes, you got toes.' And I do the little thing with her toes, but she can't get to mine cause I got my white work shoes on."'So we's the same. Just a different color', say that little colored girl. The little white girl she agreed and they was friends. The End."Baby Girl just look at me. Law, that was a sorry story if I ever heard one. Wasn't even no plot to it. But Mae Mobley, she smile and say, "Tell it again.”