The Conjure Woman quotes

This business activity was not immediately apparent to my unaccustomed eyes.

Indeed, when I first saw the town, there brooded over it a calm that seemed almost sabbatic in its restfulness, though I learned later on that underneath its somnolent exterior the deeper currents of life⁠—love and hatred, joy and despair, ambition and avarice, faith and friendship⁠—flowed not less steadily than in livelier latitudes.

We found the weather delightful at that season, the end of summer, and were hospitably entertained.

“Now, ef dey’s an’thing a nigger lub, nex’ ter possum, en chick’n, en watermillyums, it’s scuppernon’s.

Dey ain’ nuffin dat kin stan’ up side’n de scuppernon’ fer sweetness; sugar ain’t a suckumstance ter scuppernon’.

W’en de season is nigh ’bout ober, en de grapes begin ter swivel up des a little wid de wrinkles er ole age—w’en de skin git sof’ en brown—den de scuppernon’ make you smack yo’ lip en roll yo’ eye en wush fer mo’;

“ ‘

No, eve’ybody’s skeered er a wolf, en I doan want nobody ter be skeered er me.

’

“

But dey ain’ no tellin’ w’at’s gwine ter happen in dis worl’.

Tenie had got de night sot fer her en Sandy ter run away, w’en dat ve’y day one er Mars Marrabo’s sons rid up ter de big house in his buggy, en say his wife wuz monst’us sick, en he want his mammy ter len’ …

“Oh,” replied Annie, “

Uncle Julius says that ghosts never disturb religious worship, but that if Sandy’s spirit should happen to stray into meeting by mistake, no doubt the preaching would do it good.

”

“I’m sure he ought to be,” exclaimed my wife indignantly. “

I think there is no worse sin and no more disgraceful thing than cruelty.

”

“Fac’ is,” continued the old man, in a serious tone, “I doan lack ter dribe a mule.

I’s alluz afeared I mought be imposin’ on some human creetur; eve’y time I cuts a mule wid a hick’ry, ’pears ter me mos’ lackly I’s cuttin’ some er my own relations, er somebody e’se w’at can’t he’p deyse’ves.

”

Hit was fence’ off fum de corn-fiel’ on one side, but on de yuther side’n de pastur’ was a terbacker-patch w’at wa’n’t fence’ off, ’ca’se de beastisses doan none un ’em eat terbacker. Dey doan know w’at’s good!

Terbacker is lack religion, de good Lawd made it fer people, en dey ain’ no yuther creetur w’at kin ’preciate it.

De darkies notice’ dat de fus’ thing de new mule done, w’en he was turnt inter de pastur’, wuz ter make fer de terbacker-patch.

Co’se I didn’ see de cunjuh man tu’n ’im back, fer I wuzn’ dere; but I be’n hearin’ de tale fer twenty-five yeahs, en I ain’ got no ’casion fer ter ’spute it.

Dey’s so many things a body knows is lies, dat dey ain’ no use gwine roun’ findin’ fault wid tales dat mought des ez well be so ez not.

F’ instance, dey’s a young nigger gwine ter school in town, en he come out heah de yuther day en ’lowed dat de sun stood still en de yeath turnt roun’ eve’y day on a kinder axletree.

“Julius,” I observed, half to him and half to my wife, “your people will never rise in the world until they throw off these childish superstitions and learn to live by the light of reason and common sense.

How absurd to imagine that the forefoot of a poor dead rabbit, with which he timorously felt his way along through a life surrounded by snares and pitfalls, beset by enemies on every hand, can promote happiness or success, or ward off failure or misfortune!

”

“ ’Ca’se I ain’ had no bad luck sence I had it, suh, en I’s had dis rabbit foot fer fo’ty yeahs.

I had a good marster befo’ de wah, en I wa’n’t sol’ erway, en I wuz sot free; en dat ’uz all good luck.

”

I closed my book with a sigh.

I had never been able to interest my wife in the study of philosophy, even when presented in the simplest and most lucid form.

Someone was coming up the lane; at least, a huge faded cotton umbrella was making progress toward the house, and beneath it a pair of nether extremities in trousers was discernible.

“

I hate you and despise you! I wish never to see you or speak to you again!

”

Eve’y night er so somebody ’ud steal a side er bacon, er a ham, er a shoulder, er sump’n, fum one er de smoke-’ouses. De smoke-’ouses wuz lock’, but somebody had a key, en manage’ ter git in some way er ’nudder.

Dey’s mo’ ways ’n one ter skin a cat, en dey’s mo’ d’n one way ter git in a smoke-’ouse⁠—leastways dat’s w’at I hearn say.

Folks w’at had bacon fer ter sell didn’ hab no trouble ’bout gittin’ rid un it. Hit wuz ’g’in’ de law fer ter buy things fum slabes; but Lawd! dat law didn’ ’mount ter a hill er peas.

… ter dis yer plantation one day wid a bundle er cotton-sacks fer Mars Dugal’, an’ wiles he wuz ober yere, de ole Debbil sent a’ ’oman w’at had cas’ her eyes on ’im an’ knowed his weakness, fer ter temp’ po’ Ben wid some licker.

Mars Whiskey wuz right dere an’ Mars Marrabo wuz a mile erway, an’ so Ben minded Mars Whiskey an’ fergot ’bout Mars Marrabo.

W’en he got back home he couldn’ skasely tell Mars Marrabo de message w’at Mars Dugal’ had sent back ter ’im.

“Well, po’ Ben didn’ know w’at ter do.

He had be’n lonesome ernuff befo’, but now he didn’ eben hab his own se’f ter ’so’ciate wid, fer he felt mo’ lak a stranger ’n he did lak Ben.

In a day er so mo’ he ’mence ter wonder whuther he wuz libbin’ er not.

“I think it unkind, John,” returned my wife, “to charge upon a whole race the sins of one worthless individual.

There are thieves wherever there is portable property, and I don’t imagine colored people like chicken better than other people.

”

If the day had perchance been rainy, the volume of noise would be greater. For a while after we went to live in the neighborhood, this ceaseless, strident din made night hideous, and we would gladly have dispensed with it.

But as time wore on we grew accustomed to our nocturnal concert; we began to differentiate its notes and to distinguish a sort of rude harmony in these voices of the night; and after we had become thoroughly accustomed to it, I doubt whether we could have slept comfortably without their lullaby.

But I had not been living long in the vicinity of this frog-pond before its possibilities as a source of food-supply suggested themselves to my somewhat practical mind.

“I hear it distinctly,” said my wife after a moment. “It sounds like the lament of a lost soul.”

I had never heard the vocal expression of a lost soul, but I tried, without success, to imagine that I could distinguish one individual croak from another.

“Well, what is there about that frog, Julius,” I inquired, “that makes it any different from the others?”

He had seen life from what was to us a new point of view—from the bottom, as it were; and there clung to his mind, like barnacles to the submerged portion of a ship, all sorts of extravagant beliefs.

The simplest phenomena of life were to him fraught with hidden meaning⁠—some prophesy of good, some presage of evil.

The source of these notions I never traced, though they doubtless could be easily accounted for. Some perhaps were dim reflections of ancestral fetishism;

“ ‘Look a heah, nigger,’ sez Aun’ Peggy, ‘I’s ti’ed er yo’ s’pose’n’, en I’s was’e all de time on you I’s gwine ter fer two chick’ns. I’s feared you wants ter git free too easy.

I s’pose you des wants ter lay down at night, do yo’ trabblin’ in yo’ sleep, en wake free in de mawn’in.

You wants ter git a thousan’ dollah nigger fer nuffin’ en dat’s mo’ d’n anybody but de sma’test w’ite folks kin do. Go ’long back ter yo’ wuk, man, en doan come back ter me ’less’n you kin fetch me sump’n mo’.’