“It's so hot, Mister Dunn's rooster walks in my door and squats his red self right in front of my kitchen fan. I come in to find him looking at me like 'I ain't moving nowhere, lady”

“He moves closer and leans down so I will look at him. And I feel sick, literally nauseated by the smell of bourbon on his breath. And yet I still want to fold myself up and put my entire body in his arms. I am loving him and hating him at the same time.”

“I looked after that Dudley family for too long, over six years. His daddy would take him to the garage and whip him with a rubber hose-pipe trying to beat the girl out a that boy until I couldn't stand it no more.... I wish to God I'd told John Green Dudley he ain't going to hell. That he ain't no sideshow freak cause he like boys. I wish to God I'd filled his ears with good things like I'm trying to do with Mae Mobley. Instead, I just sat in the kitchen, waiting to put the salve on them hose-pipe welts.”

“Today I'm on tell you bout a man from outer space." She just loves hearing about peoples from outer space. Her favorite show on the tee-vee is My Favorite Martian, I pull on my antennae hats I shaped last night out a tin foil, fasten em on our heads. One for her and one for me. We look like we a couple a crazy people in them things."One day, a wise Martian come down to Earth to teach us people a thing or two," I say."Martian? How big?""oh, he about six-two.""What's his name?""Martian Luther King."She take a deep breath and lean her head down on my shoulder. I feel her three-year-old heart racing against mine, flapping like butterflies on my white uniform."He was a real nice Martian, Mister King. Looked just like us, nose, mouth, hair up on his head, but sometime people looked at him funny and sometime, well, I guess sometime people was just downright mean."I coul get in a lot a trouble telling her these little stories, especially with Mister Leefolt. But Mae Mobley know these our "secret stories"."Why Aibee? Why was they so mean to him?" she ask."Cause he was green.”

“I haven’t had the chance to look at too many men’s faces up close. And I noticed how his skin was thicker than mine, and a gorgeous shade of toast. The stiff blond hairs on his cheeks and chin seemed to be growing before my eyes. He smelled like starch. Like pine. His nose wasn’t so pointy afterall. …And out of the blue, he kissed me. Right in the middle of the Robert E. Lee Hotel Restaurant, he kissed me so slowly with an open mouth and every single thing in my body-my skin, my collarbone, the hollow backs of my knees, everything inside of me filled up with light.”

“I wait on white ladies who walk right out the bedroom wearing nothing but they personality...”

“I want to yell so loud that Baby Girl can hear me that dirty ain't a color, disease ain't the Negro side a town. I want to stop that moment from coming - and it come in ever white child's life - when they start to think that colored folks ain't as good as whites. ... I pray that wasn't her moment, Pray I still got time.”