A young African-Carib girl's mother dies when she is born. Her father gives her to the woman who does his laundry to raise her. She only sees her father rarely, when he comes to get his laundry, and she doesn't understand either him or his relationship to her. He sends her to a school, where her teacher and peers bully her for her Carib looks. The teaching style is incredibly punitive. She learns to write letters. She writes a bunch of letters to her father, not intending to ever give them to him, and leaves them under a rock at school. A classmate finds them and gives them to the teacher. The letters said nobody but her father loves her and were a plea to her father to come save her. The teacher gets angry, interpreting herself to be the everyone who doesn't love the girl. The teacher sends the letters to the girl's father as a consequence. The girl has been having dreams about her mother—however she only sees her mother's exposed heel. The girl's father comes to collect her from school. He has remarried. He takes her to live in a nicer house than the girl has ever seen, with his new wife. His wife hates the girl because she can't conceive and thinks the girl will make the father think of the girl's mother more than her, his wife. She tries to feed the girl moldy food, so the girl becomes someone who cooks her own food. The girl has her own room, with privacy. She learns to masturbate.