Sarah Wildmon

“I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I am a bird and what flows in my bones is swamp water. And my Mama and Papa, no longer are they dead. No, they are voices that rise out of the swamp mud, mist floating between the palmetto leaves, spirits whispering in the fog during twilight hours. They fill me.
I don’t have no mirrors to look at myself so that I know the truth. I don’t have no dollars clinging to my pockets to tell me what is and what isn’t. I just have these voices, and these fields, and my loa. So for now, that is why I stay. Not because I am dumb. Not because I can’t be nothing else but a field flea, as Uncle calls us.
Hear me now. I know things even other mambos do not know. My Haitian mama, she too was a mambo, she married a Seminole, Papa. He taught her all the Indian ways. And they taught me. So, I know it all.”
― Connie May Fowler, Sugar Cage

“You can’t just physically beat a man and expect him not to retaliate. Insults, slaps, threats go just so far. You’ve got to go for the jugular. You’ve got to finish the job in a clean sweep. What do the French call it? Coup de grace, as believe. I did learn a few things from living with Charlie.”
― Connie May Fowler, Sugar Cage

“At home I pulled all my blinds. I said to my Grandmama and Mama this and that. I said to them, You believed in signs. I remember that well. I remembered how my Mama could read the steam coming off a soup kettle. Especially if it had good, fresh marrow in it. And if I didn’t feel good, Grandmama would go out and bring in fistfuls of wild herbs. She’d throw them in broths and read, depending on my ailment. She was half doctor, half priest. I said to her once when I had the croup and she was making me drink something that had grass in it, I said, “Grandmama, are you making me drink magic?”

“No baby, this is good ole-fashioned hoodoo.”
― Connie May Fowler, Sugar Cage