How we cite our quotes: Chapter.Paragraph
Quote #4
I remembered what Granddaddy Opal had said about Mama. If your mama was dead when you were born, then you was never born. I changed it, right in my head I changed it, so that Granddaddy Opal said to me, "Welcome to my house, young lady, glad to have you stay." (4.13)
Gigi isn't the only one who has a habit of rewriting history—it's a skill she's actually passed on to Miracle as well. Here, Miracle takes her traumatic first meeting with Granddaddy Opal and changes the memory to make him softer and kinder upon her arrival.
Quote #5
I went to a special place, a safe, new place. There were green fields and wildflowers there, and fairies and gnomes and distant castles poking through swirls of pink and white clouds. A blanket of butterflies flew overhead to greet me. Then they drifted down and settled about my shoulders and kept me warm and safe. No words, no dirt balls, no teacher, no child—could reach me there, except Dane. I talked to Dane in my special new place. (5.17)
Miracle and her grandma have a lot in common. Just like Gigi, Miracle creates a fantasy world to enter whenever the world gets too overwhelming, particularly when she feels isolated and lonely at school—and in this world, Dane is present.
Quote #6
What if Dane melted so he could go back in time? It's possible, isn't it? If he did, then he was probably going back to the time just before Mama got hit by the ambulance. He's probably making sure she doesn't go to town to see the doctor that day. He's keeping her at home […] and thinking about how it's going to be—Dane, and her, and me, the new baby, living in a cottage by the sea. (9.48)
Miracle is so desperate to avoid facing the truth about Dane's disappearance that she goes from creating a fantasy world that he lives in to using Granddaddy Opal's black hole book as evidence that he's gone back in time. Her mind seems to be constantly at war between hiding her emotions in different versions of reality and facing the truth she knows to be real.