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"'Your Momma was a kind child,' her grandmother said. 'But she never forgave her father.' 'Did you?' Dicey asked. 'No. Yes.' Somehow this made sense to Dicey. It let her know that she would be all right and her family would be all right. They wouldn't be children forever. They didn't have to have a place, they just had to have themselves."

Dicey gains comfort from this ambiguous exchange in Chapter 11 of Part Two during her conversation with Gram in the kitchen after their fight over Sammy. Dicey has resigned herself to the idea of leaving Gram's place the next day, but gratefully accepts her explanation for whether her Momma forgave her father. For some reason, Gram's contradictory answer to whether she forgave her husband for his harshness relieves Dicey. First, it communicates her grandmother's internal contradictions to her once again, the contradictions that earlier made Dicey think Gram would let them stay. Secondly, the contradiction in Gram's answer causes Dicey to realize that it is natural for human beings to experience internal contradictions, and that uncertainty itself does not have to be an insurmountable barrier to living and growing up. Gram's words prove Dicey's nascent understanding that two contradictory truths and two contradictory desires can exist inside one sane person at the same time.

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