Chapters 7 - 10 Summary

Ola tells Emily about moving from Alabama to California. In Alabama, she lived near her own mother and knew everyone in the area. California was foreign, a "safer planet, but another planet" (p. 33). She talks about the death of her husband and the negative impact it had on her and, especially, on Diane. Later, Emily looks through old black and white photographs of her grandfather and remembers the stories she has heard—how he had saved for years to have enough money to but the convertible Buick that Ola still drives. How he had loved the car only a few days before he was murdered and the car was vandalized by having the words "uppity nigger" (p. 35) painted on it. Diane has never managed to move beyond the hate crime. Ola had been two months pregnant at the time but...