Summary

In Chapter 7, Ford describes her mother miscarrying the baby she conceived with her boyfriend. Her mother experienced lingering psychological trauma and would sit, bleeding, in the bathtub for hours. As a result, R.C. and Ford were separated, with Ford being sent to live with her grandmother at her great-grandfather’s farmhouse in Missouri. She remembers this time as peaceful, full of books, freedom to roam, and relatively little discord.

Chapter 8 describes Ford and her grandmother moving back to Indiana again, to be with the rest of the family. Ford’s mother had had another baby, a girl named Nikki, and they lived in a new apartment. Life resumed a normal pace as Ford graduated kindergarten, but then in the first grade, Ford’s issues with her mother resumed. Ford’s teacher mistakenly told her mother that Ford had said inappropriate things to...