The group, which consists of Taylor, Turtle, Estevan and Esperanza, then reach Lake o’ the Cherokees. They admire the beauty of the lake and mountain.
Once more Taylor shows her optimism by thinking that she hopes she will find something better behind the next hill and she feels sure about that. “I still would
have to say it’s stretching the issue to call the Ozarks mountains, but they served. I felt secure again, with my hopes for something better tucked just out of sight
behind the next hill.” 206. Finally, as Taylor cannot find Turtle’s relatives, she makes a promise to
Turtle that she will not let Turtle stay away from her. Taylor said that she will try as hard as she can to keep staying with Turtle 211. That statement merely shows
Taylor’s being optimistic that she can adopt Turtle legally.
d. Sensitive
As a woman, Taylor sometimes feels upset or sad if there is something bad or unjust. One day, someone left the child in her car and asked her to take care
of the child, and then she continued her journey. Since Turtle does not make any sound at all, Taylor thinks she brings a dead body. However, after a while she
smells wet wool, and she thanks God that the child is alive. Taylor needs to change the child’s diaper. Having found a motel, she asks the owner to rent her a
room. As she cannot afford to pay, she offers to change every bed in that place. The owner agrees with that. While Taylor is changing Turtle’s clothes, she is
shocked to find a bruise on the child. “There was a bruise twice the size of my
thumb on its inner arm.” 22. She becomes more upset as she finds more bruises then.
When I pulled off the pants and the diapers there were more bruises. Bruises and worse.
The Indian child was a girl. A girl, poor thing. That fact had already
burdened her short life with a kind of misery I could not imagine. I thought I knew about every ugly thing that one person does to another, but
I had never even thought about such things being done to a baby girl. 23
From the way she thinks about Turtle’s bruises, it clearly describes Taylor as a sensitive woman. She feels upset if there is someone doing such bad thing to a
baby. Taylor shows her sensitivity when she and Estevan spend the night in
Taylor’s house, while Lou Ann visits her husband’s family. Estevan tells her about Ismene, his daughter, who is left in Guatemala to save seventeen people.
Taylor is very surprised to know that Estevan and Esperanza can do such thing, and she thinks it is not unfair for them.
I felt numb, as if I had taken some drug. “And you picked the lives of those seventeen people over getting you daughter back?” I said. “Or at
least a chance at getting her back?” “What would you do, Taylor?”
“I don’t know. I hate to say it, but I really don’t know. I can’t even begin to think about a world where people have to make choices like that.”
“You live in that world,” he said quietly, and I knew this, but I didn’t want to. 137
Taylor cannot accept the choice Estevan makes, but she cannot do anything. She has to realize that some people may experience such unfair situation. Taylor’s
sensitivity also arises after their conversation. “I started to cry then, just tears streaming out all over and no stopping them. Estevan put his arm around me and I
sobbed against his shoulder. The dam had really broken.” 137.
Taylor thinks that the world is so unjust when Mattie said that Estevan and Esperanza should move to a safe house farther from the border. It may be Oregon
or Oklahoma 158-159. Taylor asks what if they keep staying there, and then Mattie replies that only legal immigrant can still stay there. Taylor cannot believe
that she faces such unfairness of the world. “I didn’t want to believe the world could be so unjust. But of course it was right there in front of my nose. If the truth
was a snake it would have bitten me a long time ago. It would have had me for dinner.” 159. She is sad that she cannot do anything to help them.
However, Taylor can finally help them though she can only drive them to Oklahoma, and at the same time she is going to look for Turtle’s relatives. On the
way to Oklahoma, Estevan tells about the condition in Guatemala where police is everywhere and the whole villages of Indian are forced to move again and again.
“As soon as they planted their crops, Estevan said, the police would come and set their house and fields on fire and make them move again. The strategy was to
wear them down so they’d be tired or too hungry to fight back.” 195. Taylor is wondering why people do such a thing to Indians, why everybody always tries to
get rid of the Indians. She is not really asking for an answer, she just wants to say that 195.
The way people used to call Estevan, Esperanza, and other people in Mattie’s house as ‘illegals’ also makes Taylor getting upset. She does not
understand why people call them in such a way; while in fact human can be good or bad.
“You know what really gets me?” I asked him. “How people call you ‘illegals’. That just pisses me off, I don’t know how you can stand it. A
human being can be good or bad or right or wrong, maybe. But how can you say a person is illegal?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.” “You just can’t,” I said. “That’s all there is to it.” 195
Both Taylor and Estevan think that everybody knows the answer, yet they just cannot say it.
In this novel, Taylor’s being sensitive is seen from her perception about the world which looks so unjust to people who cannot fight back. She feels really
upset about it. One time as she goes home, Lou Ann told her that someone will kidnap Turtle when Turtle is playing in the park with Edna Poppy, a blind woman,
and her neighbor who help to take care of Turtle and Lou Ann’s son while they are working. Taylor becomes very upset then. She tells her feeling to Lou Ann.
“I don’t know where to start, Lou Ann,” I told her. “There’s just so damn much ugliness. Everywhere you look, some big gut kicking some little
person when they’re down-look what they do to those people at Mattie’s. To hell with them, people say, let them die, it was their fault in the first
place for being poor or in trouble, or for not being white, or whatever, how dare they try to come to this country.”
“I thought you were upset about Turtle,” Lou Ann said. “About Turtle, sure.” I looked out the window. “But it just goes on and on,
there’s on end to it.” I didn’t know how to explain the empty despair I felt. “How can I just be upset about Turtle, about a grown man hurting a baby,
when the whole way of the world is to pick on people that can’t fight back?” 170
As a woman, Taylor is so sensitive that she can easily get upset or sad, especially when she is facing such unfairness.
e. Loving
