Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo

Where there is a woman there is magic. If there is a moon falling from her mouth, she is a woman who knows her magic, who can share or not share her powers. A woman with a moon falling from her mouth, roses between her legs and tiaras of Spanish moss, this woman is a consort of the spirits.

The slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, & accepted indifference as kindness.

You can't fuck somebody into loving you.

[S]ince I became a woman, boys were gonna follow me around more often, 'cause they could follow the trail of stars that fall from between my legs after dark.

Sassafras had never wanted to weave, she just couldn't help it. There was something about the feel of raw fleece and finished threads and dainty patterned pieces that was as essential to her as dancing to Carmen De Lavallade, or singing to Aretha Franklin. Her mama had done it, and her mama before that; and making cloth was the only tradition Sassafras inherited that gave her a sense of womanhood that was rich and sensuous, not tired and stingy.

Cypress laid waste to the tunnels, caverns, and shadows of the other world. She drew upon memories of her own blood: her presence would be a mortal threat to those who wounded, maimed, her ancestors, her lovers, Leroy. Like those women before her, who loaded bundles on their heads and marched off to fields that were not their own, like the "bearers" of her dreams swamped with births of infants they would never rear, Cypress clung to her body, the body of a dancer; the chart of her recklessness, her last weapon, her perimeters: blood, muscle, and the will to simply change the world.

Every once in a while, he saw a woman with something he wanted. Something she shouldn’t have. He didn’t know what it was, an irreverence, an insolence, like the bitch thought she owned the moon.

When you realize your blood has come, smile; an honest smile, for you are about to have an intense union with your magic. This is a private time...for thinking and dreaming. [D]raining worries, fall away as your body lets what she doesn't need go from her. Remember that you are a river; your banks are red honey where the Moon wanders.

Some folks you tell some things, some folks you don’t.

Exiles, she and Leroy. They didn't need to go to Paris; that would do no good. What's the point of being spat on in France? What could they do in Rio, where black people are a mythological presence? No, the frontiers in Leroy's destiny were the sounds he heard and gave back as music; for Cypress the terrain of the new world was art. Her dance, like her people before her, adapted to the contours of her new land.