Images list

1) "When I lay in bed next to Lecia's solid, sleeping form, that picture of grandma's pale arm with the ants would rear up behind my closed eyes." (103) Mary is afraid to close her eyes, she seems, like most of us to be afraid of an image she associates with death. (even if her grandmother wasn't dead yet.) It also is her fighting against her own mind at night, much like her mother seems to be doing after her grandmothers death.

2) "I watched from the middle of my parents' bed, a steaming plate of beans and biscuits balanced on my patch of covers, while one grown man after another buckled in the middle like everything inside him was going soft at once, and I knew that dead child's face would stay on each daddy's eyeballs forever." (104) Mary is again showing us her child's way of seeing the harshness of the world. It is almost Adult the way she says it, but the description of sitting on the bed, the food and the use of the word daddy's makes it seem a child's observation. 

3) "I could see tiny circle marks left behind where it had suctioned onto the flesh. The flesh was pulpy where these had been attached. There were perfectly circular blisters rising up." (115) Lecia's leg reminds Mary of her grandmothers, because she says in her prayer, "Don't let them chop her leg off either...". Right after this image Mary also says this kind of thing wasn't supposed to happen with daddy around. which seems to hint at some up coming family turmoil. 

4)"They twist around on their folding chairs like they would rather corkscrew holes in the floor and drop out of sight than hear about somebody's daddy hanging hisself." (119) Mary is talking about the biggest lie her daddy ever told, and how uncomfortable it made the men of the liars' club to hear it. 

5) "I've been sitting around all month watching cobwebs grow between my mother's fingers while she lays in bed reading and wishing herself dead." (119) This attests to the deterioration of Mary's mother's mental health after her grandmothers death. and how her dad does nothing to fix or help it, and they just act like its nothing.

6)"I am eye-level to the card table, sitting on an upended bait bucket, safe in my daddy's shadow, and yet in my head I'm finding my mother stretched out dead."(124) Mary reveals a vital part of her family structure here, it's been shown before, and blatantly stated, but never put so sadly. Her father is the rock, the foundation, the safety net. While her mother is almost like the hurricane that destroyed the other town in Louisiana, she's destroying herself, and the family too, she's unpredictable and unreliable. 

7) "The screen banged again, and I heard what I quickly figured out was the glass lasagna casserole shattering on the patio after him." (136) This entire scene is full of images revealing the differences in Mary's parents and how they view things. this image is her mother throwing the lasagna Mary was longing to have for her birthday at her father after they fight over money.

8) "In the garage, I could at first see the ruby end of daddy's cigarette and nothing else." This shows how Mary's father handles the stress of fighting, he retreats and smokes, also he takes a few swigs of alcohol, too. He clearly didn't want to upset Mary, as he apologizes and offers for the family to eat out.