Quote 19
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 home, that's for sure. For heaven's sake, the best they can do is turn their heads while the kids learn to pick locks and snort hootch, and then try to keep them out of jail. Nobody can protect a child from the world. That's why it's the wrong thing to ask, if you're really trying to make a decision. (13.55)
After Turtle is attacked in Roosevelt Park, Taylor sinks into a depression so low that she can't imagine being able to give Turtle the stable home life she deserves. But, as Mattie tells Taylor, letting Turtle be admitted into a state home isn't the answer. Taylor may not be able to give Turtle a perfect home or a perfect life, but who the heck can give a perfect existence to anyone? The love she can offer sure is better than what the state can do.
Quote 20
"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 like to crawl in a hole somewhere and rest. Go dormant, like those toad frogs Mattie told us about. And for you it's just that much worse; you're not even speaking your own language." (14.26)
Although Taylor doesn't often say that she misses Pittman County, this conversation with Estevan reveals that she does feel uprooted now that she's living in Tucson. Kentucky may not mean the same thing to her as it does to Lou Ann, but it's a part of her all the same.
Quote 21
"You know where we're going now? We're going home."
She swung her heels against the seat. "Home, home, home, home," she sang.
The poor kid had spent so much of her life in a car, she probably felt more at home on the highway than anywhere else. "Do you remember home?" I asked her. "That house where we live with Lou Ann and Dwayne Ray? We'll be there before you know it." (17.184-186)
By the end of the novel, Taylor has come to think of Tucson as home, and, most importantly, she's come to think of the house she shares with Lou Ann, Dwayne Ray, and Turtle as "home" too. Although the highway stretches before them, heading west, the two aren't driving off into the sunset of the great unknown; instead, they're returning to a place they've come to know and love. Now doesn't that make ya feel all warm and fuzzy inside?