Tryin' not to keep you outa yo' comfortable no longer'n you wanted to stay In other words, I don't want to keep you here in this uncomfortable place any longer than you want to stay. Earlier in the novel, Tea Cake wanted to comb Janie's hair, and she referred to it as her "comfortable," not his. "Comfortable" would be a unique personal possession.
Give it uh poor man's trial A poor man takes any respectable job he can get and does his best with it.
uh common trial similar to the definition above. Just to be working, Tea Cake will take any job available.
de Jim Crow law These are laws associated with traditional discrimination against or segregation of blacks, especially in the United States.
trouble and compellment Tea Cake is troubled by the white guards forcing him — compelling him — to help bury the dead.
motherless chile Tea Cake is out of his element. He feels as though he doesn't belong to anyone, like a child in slavery sold away from its mother. The song "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" is often included in collections of spirituals.
Six months behind de United States privy house at hard smellin' The reference is to a privy, a toilet, especially an outhouse, which has a thoroughly obnoxious smell if it hasn't been properly maintained. This is Tea Cake's metaphor for being tossed into a federal jail and put to hard work.
bucked each other beat and/or challenged each other.
quart of coon-dick cheap moonshine or bootleg whiskey.
lap-legged brother a suggestion that Mrs. Turner's brother's legs are malformed and not straight — clearly, an insult.
watchin' de job watching and waiting for Tea Cake to die.
relic Janie is the relic, or the person who has survived, from their marriage. The word could also be an echo of the Old English term relict, which means surviving the death of another.
