Book Of Night Women

Bad feeling is a country no woman want to visit. So they take good feeling any which way it come. Sometime that good feeling come by taking on a different kind of bad feeling.

She not black, she mulatto. Mulatto, mulatto, mulatto. Maybe she be family to both and to hurt white man just as bad as hurting black man…..Maybe if she start to think that she not black or white, then she won’t have to care about neither man’s affairs. Maybe if she don’t care what other people think she be and start think about what she think she be, maybe she can rise over backra and nigger business, since neither ever mean her any good. Since the blood that run through her both black and white, maybe she be her own thing. But what thing she be?

People think blood red, but blood don't got no colour. Not when blood wash the floor she lying on as she scream for that son of a bitch to come, the lone baby of 1785. Not when the baby wash in crimson and squealing like it just depart heaven to come to hell, another place of red. Not when the midwife know that the mother shed too much blood, and she who don't reach fourteen birthday yet speak curse 'pon the chile and the papa, and then she drop down dead like old horse. Not when blood spurt from the skin, on spring from the axe, the cat-o'-nine, the whip, the cane and the blackjack and every day in slave life is a day that colour red. It soon come to pass when red no different from white or blue or black or nothing. Two black legs spread wide and mother mouth screaming. A black baby wiggling in blood on the floor with skin darker than midnight but the greenest eyes anybody ever done seen. I goin' call her Lilith. You can call her what they call her.

She not no fool, Lilith tell herself. She not a sleeping princess and Robert Quinn is not no king or prince. He just a man with broad shoulders and black hair who call her lovey and she like that more than her own name. She don’t want the man to deliver her, she just want to climb in the bed and feel he wrap himself around her.

Hate and love be closer cousin than like and dislike.

You sure you can handle big woman chat, pickney? You sure you ready for that journey? You think good before you answer. Because some people about to forget that me be the head bloodcloth nigger in here. Now, go peel two potato and don't draw me tongue out in this place.

—Lilith. Named you meself. Did you know Adam had a first wife before Eve? Called her Lilith, but the bitch was too headstrong so got rid of her, he did. Headstrong, another word for uppity.

—You different, Lilith. You have more darkness ’bout you now. You turning into woman, Homer say to her. —Me turning into something, Lilith say.

Gorgon say that Callisto was a woman who laugh all her life but never smile once.

see how the white womens goin’ look and hear how white womens laugh in the colonies. She think of white flesh and black flesh, that really be brown flesh by blood and the two flesh melt into one flesh that don’t know colour. Then Lilith wonder if she dreaming because dreaming is one thing God never allow negro to do.

Make me tell you something else about reading. You see this? Every time you open this you get free. Freeness up in here and nobody even have to know you get free but you." ~Homer, The Book of Night Women

Homer say, Pretty gal go a river and see herself in water. Pretty gal drown when she go down to kiss herself.

What making love feel like?" "Making love? Like the longest sweetest tickling. Then it turn into something else and bump come up under your skin and is like one wave hit you toe and wash all the way up to you head, sometime one, two, three time. You never know two people could make that one feeling. With Benjy, me used to shake and move so hard because he do it so good. And you pussy? It feel like it just get bless. Making love is good thing, Lilith.

—Little pussy like me still have bigger cock than the two of them, she say. She pull the gag out of Sacco mouth. —What you gonna do, Miss

Something else that her mind answer before the question ask. She know the answer. She can’t help nobody out of white man power, not even herself. The woman eye still asking. Lilith don’t know how to fix her eye to say no, so she look at the man and the same question come over him face.

Homer porge il libro a Lilith e lei lo prende fra le dita. Lilith si aspetta che sia come un vestito o un portagioielli, facile a rompersi come qualsiasi cosa dei backra. Il libro è duro e morbido al tempo stesso, la copertina su cui fa scorrere le dita sembra lino al tatto, o tela grezza, ma il libro è anche duro come il legno e spesso. Il libro è rosso come il vino o il sangue. Lei non ha mai, mai toccato né annusato niente di simile. Un effluvio come d'olio, o forse di ascelle di uomo bianco, o di polvere e qualcos'altro, tutte cose che separate hanno un odore orribile ma insieme creano la più meravigliosa delle miscele. Lilith chiude gli occhi e fiuta quell'odore come fosse tabacco.