She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. - Toni Morrison

It was a fine cry - loud and long - but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.

It is sprinkling now. A teasing August rain that raises expectations it cannot fill.

Except for an occasional request for color she said practically nothing — until the afternoon of the last day of her life when she got out of bed, skipped slowly to the door of the keeping room and announced to Sethe and Denver the lesson se had learned from her sixty years a slave and ten years free: that there was no bad luck in the world but whitepeople. "They don't know when to stop," she said, and returned to her bed, pulled up the quilt and left them to hold that thought forever.