The Bean Trees

Lou Ann gets a job at Red Hot Mama’s salsa factory. While the working environment is terrible—no air conditioning and the workers subject to the potent fumes of spicy peppers—Lou Ann becomes passionate and enthusiastic about her work. She frequently brings home salsa and adds it to all the dishes they eat. Taylor begins cooking bland food to give their taste buds a break.

The summer becomes very hot and dry, and Taylor searches the newspaper every day for a prediction of rain. Lou Ann searches the newspaper for stories about disasters and freak accidents. She admits that she worries about the future a lot, having had a dream during her pregnancy in which an angel told her that Dwayne Ray wouldn’t live to see the year 2000. She describes how, as a child, she and her brother would pretend to see the future by looking into an old cigar box. While her brother would invent stories of himself as an old man, Lou Ann would only make predictions a few weeks in advance because of her fear of dying young. Taylor comforts her by saying that her anxieties make her a good mother and are evidence of how deeply she cares for Dwayne Ray.