Summary

Chapter 23: The narrator wakes the following morning and begins a purging of her past history on a huge scale: she tears up every paper from her scrapbooks and work, one page apiece from each of her father’s books, slashes blankets except for the one she wears as clothing, tears up her mother’s leather jacket and one of her father’s old hats, and throws dishes and all the household items and her wedding ring from her “non-husband” and other belongings into a great pile. With only her blanket, she sleeps outside, eats from the garden, and essentially lives as an animal might for one day and night. She feels that she is returning to an earlier time, and she wants to start over. She sleeps outside with her stomach hurting from hunger and feeling her body covered in mosquitoes.

Chapter 24: The narrator sleeps...