Summary
After her mother's funeral, the undertaker drives Ellen
and her father home. Immediately afterward, Ellen's father takes
his keys, drives off in his truck, and does not return until the
following night. Ellen stays home and eats the food that the women
from the church have made for her and her father. She does not use
a plate or utensils but eats straight from the bowls in which the
food has been delivered.
Ellen rifles through her mother's dresser and pulls out
some of her clothes to wear to school, since she and her mother
are roughly the same size. Ellen notes that her own body is oddly-shaped,
for her head is a bit too large for her body, though she is certain
that when she forms a chest and hips—for which she has been waiting
for quite awhile—her physique will be proportional. She has outgrown
all of her own clothes, with the exception of a few pairs of socks,
and she enjoys wearing her mother's clothing.
Ellen's teachers are all curious to hear about her mother's
death. One teacher follows her into the library and probes Ellen
for the story of her mother's death, though the teacher already
knows. She is fond of this particular teacher who lets her scratch
her back during rest time. Afterward, Ellen enjoys how her fingers
smell of the teacher's powder.
Starletta, who, according to Ellen, is not as smart as
she is herself, but is more fun, is sitting on the steps after school.
The girls decide to walk home together instead of taking the bus.
When Ellen arrives home, it is dark already, and she sees that her
father has turned the lights on inside. She enters the house without
speaking to him, as she does whenever he is home with her. If she
can, she goes outside to keep safely away from him.
Since his wife's death, Ellen's father has done nothing
more than drink and sleep. One night, his two brothers, Ellis and
Rudolph come over and find him passed out in the yard. Ellis and
Rudolph put him to bed and return the next day to ask that he sign
all of his possessions over to them. Ellen reports that after her
father signs the papers, he brags that he is now a "free man" and
can finally relax. Each month, one of the brothers leaves an envelope
of cash money in the mailbox, and Ellen makes a point of getting
to it before her father can. She budgets the money herself, dividing
it up for separate bill payments and other necessities. She gives
what remains to her father, which he uses to buy alcohol.
The hardest part about her situation, Ellen says, is the
food. Her father will only eat at a diner in town or will not eat
at all. Ellen refuses to be seen with him in public and must survive
on frozen dinners that she buys for herself at the grocery store.
When it gets cold, an inevitability that Ellen dreads, Starletta's
father takes the girls into town to buy them warm winter coats.
It is too cold for Ellen to play with Starletta outside in the ditches,
so she concocts a game of her own, creating families and their fully
supplied houses from mail-order catalogs. When she tires of the
catalogs, Ellen joins the Girl Scouts. She forges her father's signature
so that she may have the most badges. But by Christmas, Ellen has
tired of the scouts too.
