Ma Mae Quotes

“Now git goin thru that screen door before I use it as a weapon. You're just a witless fool. That's what you are, a fool, Mae Mae said, shaking her head as if she had just discovered truth. An' put a log on that fire for me on your way out. Make yourself useful for something but misery. Cause you messed with the wrong MaMae. Look in my eyes. Philip, in all of his dejection and correction, had to look with respect. Yes, maam, he said sheepishly looking up from from the pine floor into her narrow, serious eyes. See I see right thru ya, she said, noddin her chin and holding her eyes like fire into his soul. An' the motives of your heart are stinkin up the place. I don't want the kids to smell it when they wake up from their naps. I don't know what's wrong with your generation. Missing men. No fathers. It disgusts me. At least in my time, women got some respect an alimony. An my daughter's got six kids and broke. But yours, they just gone missing. Hiding up in the woods with some women. Or abscounding to your cousin Satchie's trailer. Not supportin' them kids. Goin to jail. Servin their selves instead of the One who made 'em. It ain't no man problem, it's a sin probl'm. An people my age just sick that none of yall, no not one, know the capital letters of RESPONSIBILITY. Now take your lies and country jeans an drive down the gravel cause you ain't welcome here no more. The screen is locked, Ma Mae shouted as Philip walked blankly out the door.”
― Toni Orrill

“Close your circle Poppy, tight, like a noose on a rat. Protect your heart like a guard dog, cause people have lost their minds Poppy, like sheep they've gone astray. Out in the wilderness. But you've been found. Shine the light cause its a dark world, but you don't have to face it alone. Aww, Ma Mae, you always know what to say. That was actually sweet. Poppy went to embrace her mother but Ma Mae put out her hand in resistence. No hugs, you know I'm not a hugger. How can you be a southern woman and not hug? Lotsa experience hugging the wrong people.”
― Toni Orrill