Ruby calls Bernie and Heidi listens as Bernie tells her that Mama died in her sleep after a particularly bad headache. Heidi feels intense guilt as well as shock for not having listened or taken Bernie seriously on the earlier call when Bernie told Heidi to come home. Ruby takes Heidi to her home again to let her bathe and go to bed. When Heidi wakes, she tears the pages from her notebook, no longer caring about what she knows and does not know. She says Mama’s words to herself: “Done, done, done” (227).

Heidi spends the next several days at Ruby’s and Roy’s house, not wanting to talk or care about the funeral arrangements for Mama. Roy and Bernie decide to send Mama’s body to Liberty for burial there. Heidi comforts herself by wrapping up in a quilt and lying in the hammock in her nightgown.

The day before the casket arrives, Ruby suggests that Heidi clean up and offers to cut her hair for the service. Heidi goes to the mirror and begins to chop at her own hair, angry and upset. She cries. Ruby hears and finishes the haircut on the porch. She tells Heidi to leave the quilt behind to see the result; in the mirror, Heidi is “some other girl.