Ness Homegoing Quotes

and because Ness understood loss, and because she understood motherlessness and wanting and even silence, she reached for the girl’s head and pulled her down onto the bed.

No, her scarred skin was like another body in and of itself, shaped like a man hugging her from behind with his arms hanging around her neck. They went up from her breasts, rounded the hills of her shoulders, and traveled the full, proud length of her back. They licked the top of her buttocks before trailing away into nothing. Ness’s skin was no longer skin really, more like the ghost of her past made seeable, physical. She didn’t mind the reminder.

When they sold Ness in 1796, Esi's lips stood in the same thin line. Ness could remember reaching out for her mother, flailing her arms and kicking her legs, fighting against the body of the man who'd come to take her away. And still Esi's lips had not moved, her hands had not reached out. She stood there, solid and strong, the same as Ness had always known her to be. And though Ness had met warm slaves on other plantations, black people who smiled and hugged and told nice stories, she would always miss the gray rock of her mother's heart. She would always associate real love with a hardness of spirit.

Still, she didn't speak, and Ness never asked her to, knowing full well that Pinky would speak when she had something to say, laugh when something was truly funny. For her part, Ness, who had not known how much she missed company, took comfort in the girl's quiet presence.

Ness could feel a heat rising from the earth, and she knew, the way a person knew air or love just by feeling, that the Devil was after them.

I know the way back out,” Aku said. The sermon was about to begin and Ness knew she wouldn’t have much time. Easter Sunday would not come again for another year, and by that time she or Aku or both could be sold; dead, even.

Ness could remember reaching out for her mother, flailing her arms and kicking her legs, fighting against the body of the man who’d come to take her away. And still Esi’s lips had not moved, her hands had not reached out. She stood there, solid and strong, the same as Ness had always known her to be. And though Ness had met warm slaves on other plantations, black people who smiled and hugged and told nice stories, she would always miss the gray rock of her mother’s heart. She would always associate real love with a hardness of spirit.