Quote 4
"Is this your kid?"
She shook her head. "My dead sister's."
"Are you saying you want to give me this child?"
"Yes."
"If I wanted a baby I would have stayed in Kentucky," I informed her. "I could have had babies coming out my ears by now." (1.96-100)
Growing up in Pittman County gives Taylor the distinct impression that raising children is a burden—the kind of thing a woman does because she has no other choice. Getting through high school without getting pregnant is one of the greatest achievements of her life, according to her, and she isn't about to ruin things now.
Quote 5
The most amazing thing was the way that child held on. From the first moment I picked it up out of its nest of wet blanket, it attached itself to me by its little hands like roots sucking on dry dirt. I think it would have been easier to separate me from my hair. (1.144)
The little child's tenacious grip eventually earns her the nickname "Turtle," but check out the pointed simile that Taylor uses here! When Taylor associates the infant's "little hands" with "roots sucking on dry dirt," she makes the first of the novel's many symbolic comparisons between human beings and plants. You could say that this is where that symbol takes root (har har).
Quote 6
"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 lurking around waiting to take a child's life when you weren't paying attention. I was useless. I was crazy to think I was doing this child a favor by whisking her away from the Cherokee Nation. (3.81-82)
Taylor isn't wrong: real consequences will come from her decision to bring Turtle away from Cherokee Nation territory, and from whatever family she might have left there. And Taylor isn't the most enlightened when it comes from protecting a lil' 'un from the elements. But to get that whole story you've got to pick up Pigs in Heaven, The Bean Trees' sequel.