Their Eyes Were Watching God: Chapters 7-14

For the first time she could see a man’s head naked of its skull. Saw the cunning thoughts race in and out through the caves and promontories of his mind long before they darted out of the tunnel of his mouth.

“Ah rather be shot with tacks than tuh hear dat ’bout mahself,” Lige Moss commiserated.

People who never had known what it was to enter the gate of the Mayor’s yard unless it were to do some menial job now paraded in and out as his confidants.

People who never had known what it was to enter the gate of the Mayor’s yard unless it were to do some menial job now paraded in and out as his confidants.

They came to the store and ostentatiously looked over whatever she was doing and went back to report to him at the house.

Then again the gold and red and purple, the gloat and glamor of the secret orders, each with its insinuations of power and glory undreamed of by the uninitiated.

She sent her face to Joe’s funeral, and herself went rollicking with the springtime across the world.

She knew by her head that she was absolute owner, but it always seemed to her that she was still clerking for Joe and that soon he would come in and find something wrong that she had done. She almost apologized to the tenants the first time she collected the rents. Felt like a usurper.

Those full, lazy eyes with the lashes curling sharply away like drawn scimitars.

“Anybody have uh Coca-Cola wid me?”
“Ah just had one,” Janie temporized with her conscience.

All the fears that circumstance could provide and the heart feel, attacked her on every side. This was a new sensation for her, but no less excruciating.

Janie acted glad to see her and after a while Pheoby broached her with, “Janie, everybody’s talkin’ ’bout how dat Tea Cake is draggin’ you round tuh places you ain’t used tuh. Baseball games and huntin’ and fishin’. He don’t know you’se useter uh more high time crowd than dat. You always did class off.”

So Ah got up on de high stool lak she told me, but Pheoby, Ah done nearly languished tuh death up dere. Ah felt like de world wuz cryin’ extry and Ah ain’t read de common news yet.

Then when her ready cash was gone, had come Who Flung to denounce his predecessor as a scoundrel and took up around the house himself.

They came in wagons from way up in Georgia and they came in truck loads from east, west, north and south. Permanent transients with no attachments and tired looking men with their families and dogs in flivvers.