Minnie

The Negro maid who works in Miss Reba's Memphis brothel appears in four novels. In Sanctuary, where she is named Minnie, she is a kind of confidant and guardian to Temple - either because Popeye pays her, or because she is afraid of him. This role is made explicit in her next appearance, in Requiem for a Nun, where she is not named: Temple describes her as both her guard and the one person with whom she could "talk" (111-12). She is given her name back in the scene at Reba's in The Mansion, where according to Mink Snopes she has to wear a hat at all times because her husband beat her with a flatiron and "damn near tore her ear off with it" (89). She makes her final appearance, again as Minnie, in The Reivers. Ned describes her color as "high-brown" (161). Lucius describes her in terms of her teeth: the "richly alabaster matched and evenly serrated" white ones that shine in "the rich chocolate of her face," but especially the "middle right-hand upper one" that is a gold implant (97-98), and that somehow makes Reba's diamond earrings look small. She has already been married "twice" (132).