Taylor's commitment to Turtle becomes a priority in her life. Returning home from a picnic in the desert, Taylor has to stop the car quickly because a mother quail and her babies are crossing the road. Kingsolver includes this episode to emphasize the responsibilities of motherhood and how Taylor is beginning to accept them. Taylor feels as proud as any parent when Turtle laughs and smiles for the first time after turning a somersault when the car stops quickly. And later, when Taylor and Turtle are in Mattie's garden planting seeds, Turtle says her first word, "bean." Taylor hugs Turtle and tells her — as her own mother told her — that she is "just about the smartest kid alive." Here, Taylor supports Turtle as her mother supported her while she was growing up in Kentucky. Her "smartest kid alive" comment suggests that she will succeed in raising Turtle to be a self-sufficient woman, just like her mother raised her.
Turtle, whose real name Taylor and Lou Ann discover is April, is as "healthy as corn," a metaphor that likens Turtle to a vegetable, which is the only class of words that Turtle seems able — or willing — to say. However, taking her role as a mother seriously, Taylor thinks that because of the abuse Turtle endured, Turtle should be examined by a doctor. Taylor takes her to Lou Ann's doctor and learns that Turtle is close to three years old, not two as she'd guessed. The doctor points out the many bones that have been broken and healed in Turtle's little body. Because this information is more than Taylor can bear, she stares out the window that the x-rays are propped up against. Seeing a bird's nest in a thorny cactus, she wonders how the bird ever "made a home in there." The bird's nest in the cactus symbolizes the miracle of Turtle's survival. Somehow, Turtle made a "home" within herself and survived.
