A spear and a snake
The narrator compares the limbs her mother dug to a spear or a snake. The narrator says, "On that night long ago, my mother knelt in the fractured tree's roots and dug out two long, thin limbs: one with a tip curved like a spear, the wavy as a snake, clumsily hewn." The narrator uses this simile to illustrate her mother's anger towards the slave owner, who compels her to feed him and his paunchy milk-shallow kids.
A weapon
The shivering the narrator feels when she hears different stories beyond the door is likened to a weapon. The narrator says, “The stories I hear are not my mother’s stories: there is a different ringing, a different singing to them that settles down into my chest and shivers there like a weapon vibrating in struck flesh.” After listening to these stories, the narrator realizes that pale girls are privileged because of their superiority. The shock the narrator experiences when she discovers new things away from what she hears from her mother's stories cuts across like a vibrating weapon.
Small knives
The mother’s eyes are compared to small knives when she looks at her slave master. The narrator says, “Her head is down, but then she raises it and I know that eyes can be weapons, too, that they can glitter like small knives like them used to gut a fish." The narrator's mother is discontent, pays little attention to her master and uses her eyes as a weapon because she cannot confront him physically.
