Character Analysis
T. Ray is Lily's father. He's unpleasant and abusive to Lily, something she mentions early on:
I had asked God repeatedly to do something about T. Ray. He'd gone to church for forty years and was only getting worse. (1.11)
When Lily does something he doesn't like, he makes her kneel on grits, which is, she reports, extremely painful.
Lily and T. Ray never end up with a warm and fuzzy relationship, but she does have a bit more of an understanding of how he got the way he is by the end of the novel. When T. Ray comes to try to take her back to Sylvan and goes completely ballistic when he is reminded of how Lily's mother abandoned him, Lily realizes that he's fighting his own demons and wounds. So, while she certainly doesn't want to go back with him, she does seem to make some kind of peace with him . . . and holds out hope that they will have a relationship someday.