Chapter 4 Summary

By mid-fall, Grandma Moore's cancer spreads to her brain. The advancement does not slow her down in any way. Instead, she bears down harder on the Karr household. Grandma drinks a six-pack of beer everyday, instead of taking morphine to ease her pain. She does not appear to get drunk, though she frightens Mary nevertheless. Mary practices tightening her stomach muscles to stave off her anxiety whenever she has to look in the cataract-clouded eyes of her grandmother. Meanwhile, Grandma Moore finds fault with the girls' behavior daily and commissions Charlie to administer beatings. Charlie is emotionally beaten down herself, and she goes through with whatever her mother wants. Her one objection is when Grandma wants to beat the children with a leather horsewhip she built out of craft store material.

As Grandma Moore alienates Charlie from her daughters, she also succeeds in...