Underground Season 2 Episode 3: "Ache" Quotes
Daniel's kid: What did she mean by that, daddy?
Daniel: It means you strong, not just in body but in mind, too.
Donahue: So is that the plan to get the Black Rose? Turn her bretheren on her?
Patty: I can do better for this unique circumstance.
Donahue: What makes this circumstance unique?
Patty: There's one man I know more than anyone, motivated to pluck the petals off the Black Rose.
Young Ernestine: I'd still be a slave. No matter where I sleep. I don't want the master. That's just what I get. And it's not just him. Them overseers. Some of those others in that field, too. Anybody think they can take a piece of me. I'm just trying to protect myself. The only one trying, so I'mma use what I got.
Woman: You sad, pretty little thing. You can't protect nothing. You can't control nothing. Yo body ain't never been yours and never will be. But looks is all you got, so I 'spose you better us 'em. You cut out your insides, that's the only way. You till the master's seed, they blood is in you and it seep to the bone. Ain't no running from it. Your kin then sold you an old and terrible lie, that you can survive this.
Young Ernestine: I heard you help some of the girls around here.
Woman: You ain't with child.
Young Ernestine: I ain't. I don't wanna be. Not ever.
Hicks: You lucky massa ain't send you to the overseer. All you had to do was look pretty and sing.
Ernestine: You wanna be the master's bitch? You go ahead, but you leave me out of it.
Well, you can't make a legend out of the truth. At least, not one worth publishing.
Patty
Matthew: This is exactly what I was talking about, right here. What this island does to you.
Friend: What, drink with the help?
Matthew: No, it changes you. My stepmother, she was a farmer's daughter...little piece of land near Charleston, sweet as apple pie. When she first moved here she was uncomfortable being waited on hand and foot. Then, her hand was okay with it. Then her foot. By the time I left, she was spent most of her time hollering at the house girls, calling themm incompetent. Beating them with a switch.
Friend: What are you going on about?
Matthew: New York. I remember hearing it called bondage, and it always stuck with me. Slavery is such a one-sided term for it all. Bondage suggests duality. That it affects us, too. Brings out the worse.
Rosalee: The promise of freedom if you just work harder. That's how they get ya. My brother believed that.Hard and unfair is how my momma used to call it. Forget it was about making the best life inside the pain. She'd do anything to protect her chillun.
Harriet: Looking at you swinging that ax, she did something right.
I was massa's most exceptional nigga. Just like you taught me; and all it got me was the length of this rope, and you went right back to being one of his whores. His fingerprints all over you, and you ain't never want for nobody. Why you want for him?
Sam
Sam: Who you tryna fool? Massa house, that's home. That's where you at ya best.
Ernestine: I was at my best when I was his whore?
Sam: Be better if that's all it was, but what you and massa had, that was more.
Ernestine: Naw it wasn't.
Sam: Then what about Rosalee?
Ernestine: Security.
Sam: Little James?
Ernestine: An accident. I made sure I had none of those.
Sam: But you was his more than you was my momma.
Jack: What about Smoke?
Patty: What about Smoke?
Jack: He should go.
Patty: No, he should not.
Jack: And why not?
Patty: Because, I am going to bed Smoke, later, and I don't want to catch a cold.
Will you do this for me, momma?
Young Sam
