Цитаты из книги Recitatif

“Did I tell you, my mother, she never did stop dancing.”

I know I didn’t do that, I couldn’t do that. But I was puzzled by her telling me Maggie was black. When I thought about it I actually couldn’t be certain. She wasn’t pitch-black, I knew, or I would have remembered that. What I remember was the kiddie hat, and the semicircle legs.

Maggie couldn’t talk. The kids said she had her tongue cut out, but I think she was just born that way: mute. She was old and sandy colored and she worked in the kitchen. I don’t know if she was nice or not. I just remember her legs like parentheses and how she rocked when she walked.

“Are you sure about Maggie?” “Of course I’m sure. You’ve blocked it, Twyla. It happened. Those girls had behavior problems, you know.”

Once, twelve years ago, we passed like strangers. A black girl and a white girl meeting in a Howard Johnson’s on the road and having nothing to say. One in a blue and white triangle waitress hat—the other on her way to see Hendrix. Now we were behaving like sisters separated for much too long.

To tell the truth I forgot about Roberta. Mary and I got in line for the traipse into chapel and I was feeling proud because she looked so beautiful even in those ugly green slacks that made her behind stick out. A pretty mother on earth is better than a beautiful dead one in the sky even if she did leave you all alone to go dancing.

The minute I walked in and the Big Bozo introduced us, I got sick to my stomach. It was one thing to be taken out of your own bed early in the morning—it was something else to be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other race.

Each of his five children lived in Newburgh and he acted as though he had five extra homes.

Roberta looked at me out of some refrigerator behind her eyes.

I knew I was supposed to feel something strong, but I didn't know what.

Half the population of Newburgh is on welfare now, but to my husband's family it was still some upstate paradise of a time long past.

His grandmother is a porch swing older than his father and when they talk about streets and avenues and buildings they call them names they no longer have.

James is as comfortable as a house slipper.

Lady Esther. Apple blossoms. I still go soft when I smell one or the other.

Mary was still grinning because she's not too swift when it comes to what's really going on. Then this light bulb goes off in her head and she says "That bitch!" really loud and us almost in the chapel now.