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Rachel and Beth’s Mother
Rachel, Beth, Laura, and Max’s father is a professor who runs a mail correspondence school during most of their childhood. After his marriage to his children’s mother falls apart and ends in divorce, he only sees his children infrequently, and they resent not having him play a more significant role in their lives. However, after the children’s mother marries the abusive conman, their father takes over custody of them. Beth ends up living with him until her mid-twenties and briefly working at his school, although her work ends up being too shoddy and unreliable. He then spends several years trying to find an appropriate alternative living situation for Beth. Well-meaning and reliable but distant, Rachel and Beth’s father offers the care and self-sacrifice involved in love, but not necessarily the active support or moral lessons that Rachel finds from the bus drivers.
Rachel and Beth’s Father Quotes in Riding the Bus with My Sister
The Riding the Bus with My Sister quotes below are all either spoken by Rachel and Beth’s Father or refer to Rachel and Beth’s Father. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
8. March: Into Out There
Quotes
Mommy sits Max and Laura and me down in her room and closes the door. She tells us, “Beth needs a little extra help sometimes, and whenever you see that she does, help her. Don’t you ever forget: it could have happened to any one of you.”
[…]
Daddy says, “Some people send mentally retarded kids away to institutions, but we’ll never do that. Ever, ever, ever. We’ll always have room for her.”
Then when they get up and open the doors I think about how we just heard two words that they never say in front of Beth: “mentally retarded.” We never ask why, we just go back to playing with her. But we know, too, not to say those words where she can hear them.
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27. September: Releasing the Rebel
Quotes
Dad realizes they are lost.
“I don’t know where we are,” he admits, squinting through the blackness.
“Will we get home?” Beth asks.
“Somehow. I’ll get us there somehow.”
She’s quiet for a minute, then she looks at him. “At least we have each other,” she says.
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28. October: The Hunk
Quotes
She goes on and on, and now the dark voice, which I thought I’d laid to rest last month, roars within me again. I squeeze my hands together. When I started riding the buses, I remember, I thought of the people who didn’t like Beth as insensitive and narrow-minded. Now I find myself more sympathetic to their point of view. Yes, some of them are coarse and offensively vocal. But she is so loud. And she talks all the time. About nothing. I know many of us babble on about nothing, too, but she does it over and over and over—and over and over and over—and it’s really eroding the limits of my endurance. Dad used to tell us he came to dread their car rides to work for precisely the same reasons. That was twenty years ago.
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Get the entire Riding the Bus with My Sister LitChart as a printable PDF.
Rachel and Beth’s Father Quotes in Riding the Bus with My Sister
The Riding the Bus with My Sister quotes below are all either spoken by Rachel and Beth’s Father or refer to Rachel and Beth’s Father. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
8. March: Into Out There
Quotes
Mommy sits Max and Laura and me down in her room and closes the door. She tells us, “Beth needs a little extra help sometimes, and whenever you see that she does, help her. Don’t you ever forget: it could have happened to any one of you.”
[…]
Daddy says, “Some people send mentally retarded kids away to institutions, but we’ll never do that. Ever, ever, ever. We’ll always have room for her.”
Then when they get up and open the doors I think about how we just heard two words that they never say in front of Beth: “mentally retarded.” We never ask why, we just go back to playing with her. But we know, too, not to say those words where she can hear them.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
27. September: Releasing the Rebel
Quotes
Dad realizes they are lost.
“I don’t know where we are,” he admits, squinting through the blackness.
“Will we get home?” Beth asks.
“Somehow. I’ll get us there somehow.”
She’s quiet for a minute, then she looks at him. “At least we have each other,” she says.
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28. October: The Hunk
Quotes
She goes on and on, and now the dark voice, which I thought I’d laid to rest last month, roars within me again. I squeeze my hands together. When I started riding the buses, I remember, I thought of the people who didn’t like Beth as insensitive and narrow-minded. Now I find myself more sympathetic to their point of view. Yes, some of them are coarse and offensively vocal. But she is so loud. And she talks all the time. About nothing. I know many of us babble on about nothing, too, but she does it over and over and over—and over and over and over—and it’s really eroding the limits of my endurance. Dad used to tell us he came to dread their car rides to work for precisely the same reasons. That was twenty years ago.
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