The Bean Trees

by Barbara Kingsolver

Believe me in those days the girls were dropping by the wayside like seeds off a poppyseed bun and you learned to look at every day as a prize.

There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me. And the other is that then no matter what I did, whatever I came home with, she acted like it was the moon I had just hung up in the sky and plugged in all the stars. Like I was that good.

“You should apply for it, really. They couldn’t turn you down, being from Kentucky.” “Sure,” I said. What did she think, that I was genetically programmed to fry chicken?

Whatever you want the most, it’s going to be the worst thing for you.”

“I feel like my mama’s whole life stopped counting when Daddy died. You want to know something? They even got this double gravestone. Daddy’s on the right hand side, and the other side’s already engraved for Mama. ‘Ivy Louise Logan, December 2, 1934—to blank.’ Every time I see it it gives me the willies. Like it’s just waiting there for her to finish up her business and die so they can fill in the blank.”

This is how Americans think.” He was looking at me in a thoughtful way. “You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it.”

“I don’t know exactly how to say this,” I said. “I thought I’d had a pretty hard life. But I keep finding out that life can be hard in ways I never knew about.”