Quote 46
"Did you get up in the middle of the night to do the feeding and diapering?"
"No," he said, smiling a little.
"I can't believe I'm even asking you that. Does it hurt you a lot to talk about Ismene?"
"At first, but not so much now. What helps me the most is to know her life is going on somewhere, with someone. To know she is growing up." (9.78-81)
After Esperanza attempts to commit suicide, Estevan tells Taylor about their daughter, Ismene, who was stolen by Guatemalan authorities. Their conversation reveals how differently Estevan and Esperanza have reacted to the loss: whereas Esperanza is still too distraught to cope, Estevan finds ways to go on. But does that have to do with gender roles, too? Given what he says about not doing the feeding and diapering, what can we infer about his and Esperanza's different relationships with their infant child?
Quote 47
The rest of us watched. Mr. Armistead stopped fidgeting and Mrs. Cleary's hands on her papers went still. Here were a mother and her daughter, nothing less. A mother and child—in a world that could barely be bothered with mothers and children—who were going to be taken apart. Everybody believed it. Possibly Turtle believed it. I did. (16.27)
When Taylor describes the world as one "that could barely be bothered with mothers and children," what does she mean? What earlier scenes or events from the novel might she have in mind? How does the supposed downplay of mother-daughter relationships fit in with the community Taylor has built for herself?
Quote 48
I had looked at some maps, but since I had never in my own memory been outside of Kentucky
[...], I had no way of knowing why or how any particular place might be preferable to any other. That is, apart from the pictures on the gas station brochures: Tennessee claimed to be the Volunteer State, and Missouri the Show-Me State, whatever that might mean, and nearly everyplace appeared to have plenty of ladies in fifties hairdos standing near waterfalls. These brochures I naturally did not trust as far as I could throw them out the window. (1.56)
Since the gas station brochures are geared towards tourists, rather than people looking to settle down in someplace new, Taylor finds it hard to learn what other states are really like. Why doesn't she look 'em up on the good ole world wide web? Because (duh) these were the days before the Internet was good, or ole, or even existed. Maybe that's also why kids in Kentucky had nothing better to do than get barefoot and preggers all the time.