The Bean Trees: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

Estevan rushes to Taylor’s house to tell Taylor that Esperanza has attempted suicide by overdosing on baby aspirin. Mattie has taken Esperanza to a clinic that doesn’t require papers, something Taylor has never considered before. Estevan insists that Esperanza will be okay, though he has no way of knowing this, and explains what will happen at the hospital. Taylor suspects this has happened before.

Estevan and Taylor go into the kitchen, with Estevan lost in grief and Taylor unsure what to say. She offers Estevan food, the usual response Kentucky women have to a crisis, but he only wants a beer. Taylor says that she has to either make food or talk, so Estevan tells her to talk. He says, “It’s okay,” slang that Taylor has never heard him use before he started working as a dishwasher.

Taylor starts to tell Estevan of unimportant things, explaining that Lou Ann has gone for the night with Dwayne Ray to her mother-in-law’s house for a family reunion. Taylor mentions that Angel’s family is Catholic, and considers Angel and Lou Ann still married because they don’t believe in divorce, then realizes that Estevan must be Catholic too. Taylor suddenly switches the subject back to Esperanza’s suicide attempt, telling Estevan there was nothing he could have done to prevent it. She talks about a friend she had in high school named Scotty Richey who killed himself on his 16th birthday.

Taylor delves into Scotty’s plight, explaining that he had no friends in any of the usual Pittman cliques. Estevan compares these cliques to the Indian caste system, where people of different castes cannot mix. Taylor agrees with this, saying that Scotty’s problem was that he was too poor to be accepted by the rich kids, but too smart to hang out with the other poor kids. Nervous at how much she is chattering, Taylor drinks half of her beer in silence before telling Estevan that Esperanza’s situation is different because Esperanza has Estevan to support her. Taylor realizes that she is furious at Esperanza, while she and Estevan sit in silence.

Estevan suddenly breaks the silence to tell Taylor about the Guatemalan use of electricity in interrogation rooms. Taylor doesn’t understand until Estevan spells out that the Guatemalan police take apart an old telephone and electrocute the people they are interrogating until they confess. Taylor is horrified, and feels even worse for chattering about Scotty when Estevan has this in his background. She goes to get more beer and realizes that her crush on Estevan is completely unrealistic; he has seen so many things that she will never understand. Taylor blames her ignorance of his experiences not on a lack of caring, but on her American upbringing that shielded her from many of the hardships in life.

Taylor admits that she has had it easier that Estevan because she is American, but she also tells him that Tucson is a foreign country to them both. Just then, Turtle appears in the doorway to the living room, and Taylor jokingly orders her to “hop” back to bed. Both Estevan and Taylor have to hide smiles as Turtle hops the whole way back to her bedroom.

Estevan asks Taylor not to judge Esperanza too harshly until she knows what Esperanza has had to go through. Taylor, confused at how they arrived at this part of the conversation, simply admits that she doesn’t know anything about either Estevan or Esperanza’s lives. Estevan tries to hide his tears as he starts to cry and whispers, “Ismene.” He explains that Ismene was the child in Guatemala whom Esperanza thought of when she met Turtle.

Estevan tells Taylor that Ismene was his and Esperanza’s daughter, and that she was taken in a raid on their neighborhood in Guatemala City. Esperanza’s brother and two friends were also brutally murdered because they were members of the teacher’s union. Taylor is too shocked at this story to even cry. When she asks why Estevan and Esperanza did not try to get Ismene back, Estevan explains that he and Esperanza would have been forced to betray all the surviving members of the teacher’s union to get her back. Ismene was probably taken as bait, he says, and then eventually adopted by a government family that could not have children.

Taylor is horrified that Estevan had to choose between saving his daughter or saving the lives of his friends. She finally starts to cry, realizing that such awful events happen in the same world that she lives in every day. Estevan holds her as she sobs, until she worries that she is getting snot on his shirt. Estevan does not know what “snot” means, and Taylor refuses to explain. Instead, she tells Estevan that her entire life, even the bad things, has actually been incredibly lucky. Chief among these lucky events are Turtle and Mattie, though Taylor previously avoided motherhood and tires at all costs.

Turtle appears again at the doorway, looking shell-shocked at her mother’s tears. Turtle goes to cuddle in Taylor’s lap and Snowboots the cat lays down in Estevan’s lap. Taylor thinks that the four of them look like a family of paper dolls that she loved dearly as a child. She gets up to put Turtle to bed, then returns to sit close to Estevan on the couch. Taylor apologizes to Estevan for seeming ungrateful about the responsibility of motherhood, now that she knows of the tragedy in his past.

Taylor guesses that the human race would go extinct if people had the option to return babies after a thirty-day trial. Estevan laughs and says he would have kept Ismene, but Taylor reminds him that he, as the father, didn’t do much of the hard work when Ismene was an infant. Estevan likes thinking of Ismene growing up somewhere else, and Taylor starts to dream unpleasantly about Turtle being raised by Virgie Mae next door. Estevan and Taylor drift in and out of conversation and sleep.

When Taylor finally wakes up again, she and Estevan are curled together on the couch. Taylor holds his hand for a moment, then guiltily thinks of Esperanza struggling to stay alive in a clinic. She imagines Esperanza constantly searching for Ismene, a child who looks just like Turtle. Taylor kisses Estevan’s hand once, then leaves him asleep on the couch and goes to her own bed. The moonlight in her bedroom reminds her of “moon soup,” and Taylor hears a cat yowl and a rooster crow long before daybreak before falling asleep.