Summary—Chapter Two: New Year’s Pig
The narrative voice shifts from Taylor to that of an anonymous, omniscient
narrator who introduces us to Lou Ann Ruiz, a Kentuckian living
in Tucson, Arizona. Lou Ann is pregnant, and as the chapter opens,
her husband, Angel, has just left her. Three years earlier, Angel
lost the lower half of his leg in a car accident. When Lou Ann got
pregnant, she stopped having sex with him. Convinced that his amputation
repulsed Lou Ann, Angel accused her of wanting to sleep with other
people. Lou Ann feels that Angel no longer likes her or anyone else.
The narrator describes Halloween, the day on which Angel leaves
Lou Ann. Lou Ann goes to the doctor and, while in the waiting room,
hopes that her child will not be born on Christmas. She has negative
associations with the day, since Angel lost his leg on Christmas.
Moreover, she does not want her baby to feel robbed of his own special
birthday, which he might if it fell on a holiday. The doctor informs
Lou Ann that she must lose weight. She takes the bus home, enjoying
the novelty of personal space. Because of her pregnancy, men no
longer make suggestive remarks or brush up against her. She gets
off the bus and walks past Jesus Is Lord Used Tires, a store featuring
a large painted mural of Jesus with a tire dangling below him. Next
to the tire store is Fanny Heaven, a nightclub and pornography shop.
Lou Ann stops at Lee Sing Market to buy diet food. Lee Sing, the
owner, predicts Lou Ann will have a girl. Lee Sing says having a
girl is like feeding the neighbor’s New Year pig—all your care goes
into something that will end up with another family. Offended, Lou
Ann thinks that even though she proved Lee Sing right by leaving
her native Kentucky, her brother also left.
At home, Lou Ann realizes that Angel has left her. She
observes what he left behind and what he took with him, and she
thinks that his choices reveal more about him than she learned in
nearly five years of marriage. He took beer mugs, a picture of himself
at the rodeo, and the television, but he left behind all the kitchen
things and sheets and blankets. Children come to her door and for
a moment frighten her until she remembers it is Halloween. When Lou
Ann goes to bed, her feet are so swollen she cannot get her shoes off.
She weeps.
Summary—Chapter Three: Jesus Is Lord Used Tires
Taylor stays through Christmas at the hotel in Oklahoma,
helping Mrs. Hoge with the chores and earning a little money. She
has named the baby Turtle because of its firm grip. Around New Year’s Day,
Taylor and Turtle leave the hotel and start driving. When they reach
Arizona, the topography and sky seem so surreal to Taylor that she
decides to stay there. It begins to hail, and Taylor pulls off the
highway in Tucson. A man points out that she has two flat tires. A
few blocks down the road, Taylor finds Jesus Is Lord Used Tires. There
she meets Mattie, the kind older woman who runs the place. Mattie
tells Taylor that Taylor’s two back tires are shot. Taylor cannot
afford new ones. To cheer up Taylor, Mattie invites her and Turtle
inside and gives Taylor coffee and Turtle apple juice and crackers. Mattie
drinks from a mug decorated with pictures of rabbits having sex,
and Taylor puzzles over this lack of prudery in someone who owns
a shop called Jesus Is Lord Used Tires. Mattie explains that she and
her late husband opened the place and that he was a fanatical Christian.
A priest stops by. An Indian family sits in his station wagon. He
seems nervous and leaves quickly.
Taylor marvels at Mattie, this woman who understands
cars and runs her own business, and thinks that in her hometown
such a woman would be scorned and ignored. Mattie takes Taylor and Turtle
out to the back of the house, where they see her amazing and unusual
garden, which is filled with flowers, vegetables, and car parts,
including an entire Thunderbird minus the wheels. Mattie shows Taylor
her purple beans, the seeds of which she received from the Chinese
woman next door, who vows they are descendants of seeds she brought
from China in 1907.
Tucson feels like a foreign country to Taylor, and the
city seems years ahead of Kentucky. She and Turtle stay in the cheap
Hotel Republic downtown. One day she ventures into a museum filled with
modern, nonrepresentational sculptures made of sand. Another day,
she asks about a job at the hospital, but she is turned away. She
meets a friendly woman named Sandi who works at Burger Derby and
has a baby boy. Sandi loves the Kentucky Derby, and it thrills her
that Taylor comes from Kentucky.
