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"She took up a hoe instead, and began to put every square inch of her sandy tow-acre rented lot under cultivation: peanuts, sweet potatoes, and four dozen kinds of flowers. She seemed determined to grow tragedy out of herself like a bad haircut" (Kingslover 408).
Orleanna tried to connect with Ruth May and the Earth to rid her guilt by taking on gardening.

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"But Mother wanted to consume me like food" (Kingslover 409).
After Ruth May's death, Mother begins to look after Adah in the way she used to look after Ruth May. Adah accepts this as her Mother loves "from the bottom up."

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"If I could reach backward somehow to give Father just one gift, it would be the simple human relief of knowing you've done wrong and living through it. Poor Father, who was just one of a million men who never did catch on. He stamped me with a belief in justice, then drenched me in culpability, and I wouldn't wish such torment on even a mosquito" (Kingslover 525).

Through the death of Ruth May and her experience throughout her life in the Congo, Leah grew to be disgusted with her Father which impacted her life as she no longer looks up to him. It seems that Leah has come to peace with this as she refers to Nathan as "poor Father" as if she feels sorry for him.

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"I guess you might say my hopes never got off the ground" (Kingslover 406).
After Ruth May's death, Rachel settles for a life knowing she deserves more. She finds peace in Johannesburg using her beauty as an advantage as a business woman knowing this life is far better than the one she suffered through in the Congo. This is an image of Johannesburg in the 1960s.

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"If you are the eyes in the trees, watching as we walk away from Kilanga, how will you make your judgment? Lord knows after thirty years I still crave your forgiveness" (Kingslover 385).
Orleanna is left feeling extremely guilty after losing her youngest daughter as she knew they were in danger but stayed. Thirty years later, she still "craves" Ruth May's forgiveness.

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"When push comes to shove, a mother takes care of her children from the bottom up" (Kingslover 444).
Orleanna is changed in the sense that now, Adah is who she protects and looks after from the moment they left the Congo.

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"I am losing my slant. In medical school I have been befriended by an upstart neurologist, who believes I am acting out a great falsehood" (Kingslover 439)
Because Ruth May's death pushed Orleanna to make it back to the States, Adah gets the chance to find her belonging in medical school where she finds that all this time she has been capable of speaking and walking. It was in her mind all this time.

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"Let others do the pushing and shoving,  and you just ride along. In the end, the neck you save will be your own" (Kingslover 516).
Ruth May's death and the Congo effect Rachel the least. By the end of this whole agonizing experience, even after losing her littlest sister, Rachel is still all about herself.

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"I imagined him still standing in our yard, frozen under the deluge, baptizing an endless circle of children, who would slip away and return with new faces requiring his blessing" (Kingslover 393).

After Ruth May died, Nathan continues saving children. He becomes more obsessed as Ruth May died without being baptized.

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"It is impossible to describe the shock of return. I recall that I stood for the longest time staring at a neatly painted yellow line on a neatly formed cement curb" (Kingslover 411).
In this moment, as Adah returns to America she is shocked by all the wasted resources and wonders why all of this is necessary. She had gotten use to life in the Congo, where there were no yellow lines because there weren't enough cars to have them.

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"I'd walked in his footsteps my whole life, and now without warning my body had fallen in line behind my mother" (Kingslover 393).

When Ruth May died, not only did Nathan lose his youngest daughter but he lost his wife, Rachel, Adah, and Leah as well. This quote from Leah is significant because Nathan lost his daughter whom looked up to him most.

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"Then I thought with astonishment, Why, Ruth May is no longer with us! It seemed very simple. We were walking along this road, and she wasn't with us" (Kingslover 391).

Although Leah was not the oldest, she filled the role at many times to care for Ruth May in Mothers absence as Rachel was very self absorbed. Without Ruth May there, Leah no longer really had anyone to check up on and that was a feeling Leah wasn't used to.

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"There is not justice in this world. Father, forgive me wherever you are but this world has brought one vile abomination after another down on the heads of the gentle, and I'll not live to see the meek inherit anything. What there is in this world, I think, is a tendency for human errors to level themselves like water throughout their sphere of influence. That's pretty much what I can say, looking back. There's the possibility of balance. Unbearable burdens that the world somehow does bear with a certain grace" (Kingslover 522).

Leah is explaining how there is no justice in Africa; it is full of dangers. She now has children of her own, and does not want them to suffer through the tragedies she has. This shows how Leah is impacted by Ruth May's death as she does not want to relive such a moment with one of her own four boys.

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"Adah closed her eyes and thought for a second and then quoted the whole thing out: ""The King of Kings aroused the anger of Antiochus against the rascal. And when Lysias informed him this man was to blame for all the trouble, he ordered them to put him to death in the way that is customary there. For there is a tower there seventy-five feet high, filled with ashes, and there they push a man guilty of sacrilege or notorious for other crimes to destruction. By such a fate it came to pass that the transgressor died, not even getting burial in the ground" (Kingslover 487).
Nathan ironically got the fate which Adah believed he deserved after the family left Nathan and the Congo. This is ironic as Nathan used to make Adah say this verse as she was "slow."

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"When we finally got to that village and and there was Mr. Axelroot in his sunglasses leaning against his airplane, all smirking and Sanforized in his broadshouldered khaki uniform, I only had one thing to say: "Enought already. Get me out of here!" I didn't care what kind of forms I had to sign. I would have signed a deal with the Devil himself. I swear I would have" (Kingslover 403).
After living in the Congo which was not fit for Rachel, she was already dreading life and wanting to go home. Ruth May's death made her desparate and pushed her over the edge, causing her to initially marry Axelroot to escape the Congo.