Quote 25
Mattie's place was always hopping. She was right about people always passing through, and not just customers, either. There was another whole set of people who spoke Spanish and lived with her upstairs for various lengths of time. I asked her about them once, and she asked me something like had I ever heard of a sanctuary. (6.8)
Mattie tries to remind the American people that as a signatory to UN treaties, the U.S. is obligated to take in refugees whose lives are being threatened. Since the state and federal governments aren't doing the job to her satisfaction, she's willing to do what she can to meet those obligations on those people's behalf. In Mattie's opinion, the country is shirking its duties as a member of a global community of nations.
Quote 26
Now and again these days, not just in emergencies, we were leaving the kids with Edna and Virgie Mae on their front porch to be looked after. Edna was so sweet we just hoped she would cancel out Virgie's sour, like the honey and vinegar in my famous Chinese recipe. It was awfully convenient, anyway, and Turtle seemed to like them okay. She called them Poppy and Parsnip. (8.59)
Although Taylor worries about the things Turtle might pick up from the somewhat nasty Virgie Mae Parsons, a.k.a. Parsnip, the neighbors slowly establish themselves as part of the community of caretakers who help to raise Turtle. Some say it takes a village to raise a child, and The Bean Trees certainly agrees. Especially if it's a village with plant nicknames.
Quote 27
In our school there were different groups you would run with, depending on your station in life. There were the town kids, whose daddies owned the hardware store or what have you—they were your cheerleaders and your football players. Then there were hoodlums, the motorcycle types that cut down trees on Halloween. And then there were the rest of us, the poor kids and the farm kids. Greasers, we were called, or Nutters. The main rule was that there was absolutely no mixing. (9.21)
Taylor isn't exactly describing an ideal set-up for community feeling here, but her high school experiences do teach her one important thing about humans in society. For people like her classmate Scotty, for example, who "didn't belong to any group" (9.25), social loneliness and isolation were devastating. Without having someone to belong to, it's easy to feel worthless and disposable. And even being a Greaser or a Nutter is better than that.