In this section, the narrative voice switches to Mam. She’s in New York City. It is 1990. She visited Caldwell for Christmas vacation during the previous year but stayed only two weeks. Promising her daughters that she’d return in June, she returned to the US on New Year’s Eve. Previously, she lived in New York with her roommates, Yasuka and Anne, for five months. She thinks often of Gus and her daughters and wonders if they’re happy. She thinks, too, of how her Ol’ Ma noted that it takes a special man to feel confident enough to allow his wife to leave him so that she can study. Before she left, Ol’ Ma and Ol’ Pa threw a party for her in Logan Town. Mam told her mother that people were gossiping, saying that she had no business going to the US when she had a husband who made a good salary and three daughters. However, Mam insisted that she go. With a master’s degree, she could one day work at the ministry of education.

Before she left, she instructed Gus to read to the girls each night and to call her if they got sick, even with just a cough.