The Bean Trees: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

The novel returns to Taylor’s perspective while she and Turtle are still living in the Republic Hotel in downtown Tucson. The hotel is near the railroad station, which Taylor describes as an artery delivering blood to the city that has hardened, and a train wakes Taylor up every morning at 6:15. On the days that it doesn’t wake her up, Taylor waits for it to whistle before she gets out of bed.

Taylor has quit her job at the Berger Derby, and she misses working with Sandi. Sandi’s life post-pregnancy has been difficult, as the baby’s father left and Sandi’s family resent the fact that Sandi’s son is illegitimate. Yet Taylor respects the way that Sandi seems to know all the tricks to raising a child on a budget in Tucson. Taylor and Sandi go together to pick their kids up from the Kid Central Station at the mall, playacting that they have been shopping this whole time instead of working.

Turtle still does not speak or engage with anyone, and stares cat-like into empty space the whole time she is at the Kid Central Station daycare. Taylor knows this isn’t healthy, but doesn’t know what else to do with Turtle while she is at work. Her worries bleed into her time on shift, and Taylor soon can’t stand the Burger Derby work policies any longer. When the manager tells her that she is supposed to dry clean her own uniform, Taylor throws her hat in the trash and quits. Even though she is glad to be rid of the toxic environment of the fast food restaurant, Taylor regrets that she doesn’t see Sandi any more and that she has no other ideas for a reliable source of income.

Now that Taylor can no longer go to Burger Derby for breakfast, she hangs out at local coffee shops to read newspapers that other patrons leave behind. Taylor looks at the want ads and the For Rent articles trying to find another place to stay. The artistic population of Tucson often write strange (to Taylor’s mind) requests for roommates who are vegetarian or sensitive, but Taylor finally finds two roommate ads that seems passably normal in good locations.

Taylor goes to the first address on her roommate search, wearing the cleanest clothes she can find and dressing Turtle in her lucky red and turquoise shirt. The house is a ramshackle bungalow with wind chimes on the front porch. A woman in bohemian clothing answers the door and invites Taylor and Turtle into a room decorated with rugs and pillows but no furniture. The woman introduces herself as Fay (spelled Fei) and the two other inhabitants as La-Isha and Timothy. Taylor finds them both exotic and puzzling, with their brightly colored clothing and concerns about caffeine.

Taylor introduces Turtle to the housing collective. Fei welcomes Turtle as a “small person,” but the housing interview begins to fall apart when Taylor says that Turtle ate a hot dog for lunch. Fei, La-Isha, and Timothy are devoutly vegan and expect any potential roommate to assist in their soy-milk collective. La-Isha is clearly having doubts about Taylor and Turtle’s suitability for the house, which only worsens when Taylor shares that she used to work at Burger Derby. Timothy attempts to play with Turtle, but she stays non-responsive as usual. Fei inquires about Turtle’s Native American ancestry, to which Taylor lies that Turtle got her Cherokee from her grandfather, as Cherokee blood “skips a generation.”

The second house that Taylor visits is right across the street from Jesus Is Lord Used Tires. Taylor meets the owner, Lou Ann Ruiz, and the two women bond immediately over their Kentucky backgrounds. Taylor and Lou Ann laugh about Taylor’s disastrous first roommate interview. Lou Ann then shows Taylor around the house, including the room where Taylor and Turtle will sleep and the room where Dwayne Ray is asleep.

Lou Ann tells Taylor that Dwayne Ray was born in January and asks how old Turtle is. Taylor fills Lou Ann in on the unconventional circumstances of Turtle’s “adoption” as Turtle clutches tight to Taylor’s braided hair. Lou Ann and Taylor commiserate over the rough start that Turtle had to life as they watch Lou Ann’s cat, Snowboots, scratch at the carpet as if it is a litter box. Lou Ann comments that she thinks that the cat went crazy because she treated it with affection while Angel, her ex-husband, couldn’t stand it. Taylor thinks that the cat is funny, but Lou Ann is ashamed at this evidence that Snowboots came from a broken home.

Lou Ann and Taylor continue to talk about the events that led Taylor to find Turtle. Lou Ann says to be glad that Taylor was in a car and not an airplane, a perspective that Taylor had never considered before. Lou Ann describes a horrific plane crash in a river in Washington DC that she saw once on the news, then leaves Taylor to that memory as she goes to get Dwayne Ray from his nap. Taylor remembers footage from that plane crash of a woman who was saved by a rescue helicopter. She thinks that the woman looked like Turtle while clinging to the rope from the helicopter.

Lou Ann brings Dwayne Ray out, fussing about his flat face, but Taylor assures her that all baby’s heads look flat for a while. Taylor then asks if she and Turtle can move in and Lou Ann says that she would love it. Lou Ann was afraid that no one would ever want to live with her and that she had wasted 4 dollars on the ad in the paper. Taylor tells her to stop being so insecure, and that she herself is just a “plain hillbilly from East Jesus Nowhere with this adopted child that…is dumb as a box of rocks.” Lou Ann hides her smile, laughing that Taylor talks just like she does.