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141 " I felt my shoulders squaring. I wasn’t twelve years old anymore. I was a Birch in Birchville. My brown-skinned son would be a Birch in Birchville, too, yet he would be nothing but that ugly word to trash like Cody Mack. He could not live in the town as I knew it. He would not live in the South or even America as I knew it. I hadn’t truly understood how deep and old and dangerous this was, until tonight. We couldn’t hide up in our house and wait for them to choose. This was a war. An old, old war that had started before I was born and would likely not be finished in my lifetime, but I had to fight it. I was going to have to learn to fight it. "
― Joshilyn Jackson , The Almost Sisters
142 " You don’t ever let a man say ‘My way or nothing’ to you. Not even a good man. Not even my son. And you never say ‘My way or nothing’ to him. You don’t take your sweetheart’s love and use it on him. You can do that to your mama, but not your sweetheart.” I smiled at that. "
― Joshilyn Jackson , Gods in Alabama
143 " I wasn’t looking at a tree; I was looking at a treasure chest. A mawmaw and a poppy, as his sister’s children called them. Aunts and uncles, not pictured, but no doubt close by, one of them holding the camera that had snapped this shot. Seven cousins—no, eight soon. His youngest sister was due in a few weeks, he’d said. Cousins who ranged from Digby’s own age to Lavender’s. Cousins who looked like Digby’s father. Cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents who knew what it was like to grow up in America with brown skin. They were spread across Georgia and Alabama and South Carolina, a host of relatives who didn’t have to shift their gaze to know when they’d crossed into the Second South. Relatives who always knew. Digby deserved to have them, these smiling human beings clustered tight together. "
144 " Most of all Digby deserved a father. I could vet Batman forever if I wanted. I would eventually see past his shiny second-date persona to his flaws, whatever they might be. Maybe he’d turn out to be a bit of a jackass, but there was a righteous jackass in my Birchie’s kitchen right now, and he was fixing necessary cocoa for his kid. "
145 " The yard was filled, people spilling out into the road, and I realized I had never seen so many members of these two congregations intermingled. It looked like Birchie and Wattie were holding court under the puffball tree, seated side by side with lifted chins and crossed ankles. A steady stream of pilgrims brought them smiles and news and, in Lois Gainey’s case, a huge plate of muffins. Birchie and Wattie took all these offerings as their simple due, these little old ladies acting as the hinge between the two communities gathering in the yard. They were the human overlap. Inside me I was growing a boy who belonged here in this yard. Today, in this unrepeated hour, the Mack lawn looked like his birthright. "
146 " The world was dangerous and broken. But people had to feel safe anyway, to get on with the business of living. "
― Joshilyn Jackson , Mother May I
147 " I put the cookie in my mouth. I drank the cup, all the while looking at a congregation my son belonged in, knowing that it existed only in this moment. I swallowed, and I felt like I was sharing in a spicy, tart communion, strange and rare. It was a taste of the world as I wanted it to be. Inside the house the drapes twitched. The world as it actually was, present and watching. "
148 " I held my ground, because prey retreats, and hunger follows anything that runs. "
― Joshilyn Jackson , The Opposite of Everyone
149 " The roads had been deserted, but there'd been windows all around us, dark and silent, each its own glass eye. "
― Joshilyn Jackson , Never Have I Ever
150 " heaven in a gaze, A heaven of heavens, the privilege Of one another’s eyes. "
― Joshilyn Jackson , Someone Else's Love Story
151 " Burr had to know I understood what I had done. I knew you couldn’t kill only the pieces that needed killing, and leave the pretty parts whole. "
152 " Her whole body sang with a sick gladness that this was any child but hers. It was as immediate and involuntary as her heartbeat, and in her next breath, shame crept in. Not Shelby, thank God, thank God, but this girl was someone’s. "
― Joshilyn Jackson , The Girl Who Stopped Swimming