Betty

Content Warning: This section discusses racism, violence, bullying, physical abuse, animal cruelty and death, depression, self-harm, attempted suicide, drug addiction and overdose, child sexual abuse and rape, incest, termination of a pregnancy, a lynching, death, and murder.

Betty sits in the car with her father as he explains that he has a glass heart with a bird from heaven inside it. Not everyone has a glass heart, but he and Betty do. Betty asks what happens to their birds when they die, and her father tells her that the birds will fly out of their hearts and lead them to heaven.

Betty describes her childhood as a difficult and dangerous one, during which “a girl comes of age against the knife” and more than one of her siblings dies (7). Betty introduces her father, Landon. Both his parents are Cherokee, and he continues their traditions by teaching his daughter to listen to the land and respect it.

Betty’s parents meet when her mother, Alka, sits on a quilt in a graveyard where her father works as a gravedigger and collects mushrooms. When it starts raining, Landon takes her under a tree to hide from the storm, and they have sex.

Months later, Alka is visibly pregnant.