Mayme Character Analysis

Mayme: All the pawing and pulling. For a dollar they think they own you.

Esther: You know that white lady I talk about sometime, hold on...She keep asking me what they be wearing up in the Tenderloin. All that money and high breeding and she want what you wearing.

Mayme: No kidding?

Esther: What she got, you want, what you got, she want.

Mayme: Let me tell you, so many wonderful ideas been conjured in this room. They just get left right in that bed there, or on this piano bench. They are scattered all over this room. Esther, I ain't waiting for anybody to rescue me. My Panama man come and gone long time now. It sweet that he write you but, my dear, it ain't real.

Mayme: And do you love him?

Esther: As much as you can love a man you ain't seen. I'm thirty-five, Mayme, and he wants to marry me. And there ain't gonna be no more opportunities I'm afraid. I've told him yes.

Esther: How you know she ain't a good person? And he just saying what you want to hear. That his words are a smooth tonic to make you give out what ain't free. How you know his wife ain't good?

Mayme: I don't know. But do it matter?

Esther: Yeah it do. You ever think about where they go after they leave here? Who washes their britches after they been soiled in your bed?

Mayme: The world changing and he wants big strong horses. He made me laugh. He promised to take me out someplace special, but I didn't have nothing nice to wear. And honestly it made me think about how long it been since I done something for myself. Gone someplace like you said, where a colored woman could go to put up her feet and get treated good for a change. And I see the dice rolling, and I think Lord, God, wouldn't a place like that be wonderful. But every time the dice roll, that place is a little further away. Until it all gone.

Esther: LET HIM GO! Let him go. He ain't real, he a duppy, a spirit. We be chasing him forever.

Mayme: All the pawing and pulling. For a dollar they think they own you.

Esther: You know that white lady I talk about sometime, hold on...She keep asking me what they be wearing up in the Tenderloin. All that money and high breeding and she want what you wearing.

Mayme: No kidding?

Esther: What she got, you want, what you got, she want.

Mayme: Let me tell you, so many wonderful ideas been conjured in this room. They just get left right in that bed there, or on this piano bench. They are scattered all over this room. Esther, I ain't waiting for anybody to rescue me. My Panama man come and gone long time now. It sweet that he write you but, my dear, it ain't real.

Mayme: And do you love him?

Esther: As much as you can love a man you ain't seen. I'm thirty-five, Mayme, and he wants to marry me. And there ain't gonna be no more opportunities I'm afraid. I've told him yes.

Esther: How you know she ain't a good person? And he just saying what you want to hear. That his words are a smooth tonic to make you give out what ain't free. How you know his wife ain't good?

Mayme: I don't know. But do it matter?

Esther: Yeah it do. You ever think about where they go after they leave here? Who washes their britches after they been soiled in your bed?

Mayme: The world changing and he wants big strong horses. He made me laugh. He promised to take me out someplace special, but I didn't have nothing nice to wear. And honestly it made me think about how long it been since I done something for myself. Gone someplace like you said, where a colored woman could go to put up her feet and get treated good for a change. And I see the dice rolling, and I think Lord, God, wouldn't a place like that be wonderful. But every time the dice roll, that place is a little further away. Until it all gone.

Esther: LET HIM GO! Let him go. He ain't real, he a duppy, a spirit. We be chasing him forever.