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” (10). Taylor’s mother never wanted to hold her daughter back, “The day I brought it home, she knew I was going to get away” (11). So when Taylor brought home the car, she made sure Taylor could handle being on her own. She’s the type of mother who prepares her children for everything; she took all the air out of the tires so Taylor could fix them: “’That’s good, Missy,’ she said. ‘You’ll drive away from here yet. I expect the last I’ll see of you will be your hind end’” (11). Taylor’s leaving Kentucky was the best thing that happened to her. She moved on with her life, made many new friends, got a job where she got rid of her fear (tires) and found Turtle.On her way to anywhere far from Kentucky, Taylor ends up with something she had been avoiding all her life: a child. Taylor stops to get coffee and leaves with a little Indian baby girl. A strange Indian woman appears from the middle of nowhere, “She opened up the blanket and took out something alive. It was a child. She wrapped her blanket around and around it until it became a round bundle with a head. Then she set this bundle down on the seat of my car. ‘Take this baby,’ she said” (17). Taylor is a strong and independent woman. But she did not know how to react in the occasion. Taylor uses dry, sarcastic, humor when she does not know what else to do, “If I wanted a baby I would have stayed in Kentucky. I could have had babies coming out of my ears by now’” (18). Turtle, named after mud turtles that cling for their lives, was abandoned without any explanations. It was obvious that no one wanted her and she suffered for it, “’This baby’s got no papers. There isn’t nob...
