“Try not to take it personally if the mother criticizes you or tells you to stop doing something that you expected to be helpful. Just say, “Sorry,” and stop doing it. Don’t try to explain why you did it or express frustration with her. She is really saying that labor is so difficult right now that nothing helps. You are the safest person for her to lash out at. Later, she will probably apologize.”

“She is my friend, and there is nothing you can say or do that can stop me from helping her.”

“If you really want to do something, no one can stop you. But if you really don’t want to do something, no one can help you”

“What the hell do you want from me?” “What are you trying to do to me?”“Stop! Just stop!” he spits.“Why? What else needs to be said? I think you’ve told me enough lies for a lifetime.”“No more lies,” he says angrily. “I don’t even want to talk to you anymore. I just want to hear you tell me that you don’t feel anything for me. That you want me to leave you alone and never come back. Then I’ll go. If that’s what you really want, I’ll go.”“Don’t. Please don’t say it.”“Why?”“Because I don’t want you to. I need you to come back to me. Not to help me. Or to help my father. I’m done with that. I don’t want your help. It all boils down to you. I just want you.”“I just want you.”“Okay.”

“I do not know why we are indulging in a fit of psychosis right now, but so help me, I will throw your crackbrained ass out the window if you don’t stop right there.”

“FIRST TIME I LAID eyes on Laura McAllan she was out of her head with mama worry. When that mama worry takes ahold of a woman you can’t expect no sense from her. She’ll do or say anything at all and you just better hope you ain’t in her way. That’s the Lord’s doing right there. He made mothers to be like that on account of children need protecting and the men ain’t around to do it most of the time. Something bad happen to a child, you can be sure his daddy gone be off somewhere else. Helping that child be up to the mama. But God never gives us a task without giving us the means to see it through. That mama worry come straight from Him, it make it so she can’t help but look after that child. Every once in awhile you see a mother who ain’t got it, who just don’t care for her own baby that came out of her own body. And you try and get her to hold that baby and feed that baby but she won’t have none of it. She just staring off, letting that baby lay there and cry, letting other people do for it. And you know that poor child gone grow up wrong-headed, if it grows up at all.”