Chapter 1
Which is not to say that we, me and Mama, were any better than the Hardbines or had a dime to our name. If you were to look at the two of us, myself and Newt side by side in the sixth grade, you co...
Chapter 2
On the bus she decided it must have something to do with the fact that the pamphlets were put together by men, who in her opinion liked the looks of a mother and baby better than a pregnant woman....
Chapter 3
"It's so dry out here kids will dehydrate real fast," Mattie told me. "They'll just dry right up on you. You have to watch out for that." "Oh, right," I said. I wondered how many other things were...
Chapter 4
Surprisingly, Angel had agreed to move back in until after her mother and grandmother's visit. He might be hard to talk to and unreasonable in every other way but at least, Lou Ann realized, he kne...
Chapter 5
Within ten minutes Lou Ann and I were in the kitchen drinking diet Pepsi and splitting our gussets laughing about homeostasis and bean turds. We had already established that our hometowns in Kentuc...
Chapter 6
"Lou Ann, I moved in here because I knew we'd get along. It's nice of you to make dinner for us all, and to take care of Turtle sometimes, and I know you mean well. But we're acting like Blondie an...
Chapter 7
"Taylor, remember that time you were mad at me because you didn't want us to act like a family? That all we needed was a little dog named Spot? Well, don't get mad, but I told somebody that you and...
Chapter 8
He seemed almost undecided about telling me this. "Sometimes in an environment of physical or emotional deprivation a child will simply stop growing, although certain internal maturation does conti...
Chapter 9
I thought of Esperanza, her braids on her shoulders. Esperanza staring at the ceiling. She would be lying on a cot somewhere, sweating the poison out of her system. [...] All of Esperanza's hurts f...
Chapter 11
I didn't want to believe the world could be so unjust. But of course it was right there in front of my nose. If the truth was a snake it would have bitten me a long time ago. It would have had me f...
Chapter 12
I couldn't sleep nights. I went to work early and left late, even when Mattie kept telling me to go home. Lou Ann took off a week from Red Hot Mama's, putting her new promotion at risk, just to sta...
Chapter 13
You're asking yourself, Can I give this child the best possible upbringing and keep her out of harm's way her whole life long? The answer is no, you can't. But nobody else can either. Not a state h...
Chapter 14
"Do you miss your home a lot?" I asked Estevan. "I know that's a stupid question. But does it make you tired, being so far away from what you know? That's how I feel sometimes, that I would just li...
Chapter 15
Estevan took off his shirt and lay back against the front of the boat, his hands clasped behind his head, exposing his smooth Mayan chest to the sun. And to me. How could he possibly have done this...
Chapter 16
They both wore clean work shirts, light blue with faded elbows. Esperanza had on a worn denim skirt and flat loafers. I had asked them please not to wear their very best for this occasion, not thei...
Chapter 17
But this is the most interesting part: wisteria vines, like other legumes, often thrive in poor soil, the book said. Their secret is something called rhizobia. These are microscopic bugs that live...