Summary

One day, Sarah Broom was five years old and was in the bathroom where her father Simon died when she was a baby. Sarah liked to hide from her brothers in the bathroom. Sarah was born in 1979, and her father died of an aneurysm six months later. She writes about his funeral, and about how Ivory's self-consciousness about her home grew after his death. Ivory was left alone with six adult children, two teenagers, and four young children. She did not want to marry again and relied only on herself and God. Ivory learned to drive and manage money; she acquired a job as a nurse's aide and would eventually study to become a nurse.

Not long after Simon's death, Sarah's brother Darryl turned 19 years old and was arrested for stealing computers. Ivory could not afford to bail him out and her...