"'God took her life and she took yours.'
'You shut up, Weaver! You don't know anything about it!' I shouted, the tears spilling."'
Since Weaver knows about Mattie's promise to her mom, he is trying to help her through the grieving process. He doesn't want to see her abandon her dreams because of an obligation to a dead person, no matter who that person was. For her part, Mattie can't see through her grief. The only thing of her mother's which she has left to hold onto is that promise which she made, even though it spells the end of the life she'd hoped for herself.
"I knew he'd say no. Why had I even asked? I stared at my hands -- red, cracked, old woman's hands -- and saw what was in store for me: a whole summer of drudgery and no money for it. Cooking, cleaning, washing, sewing, feeding chickens, slopping pigs, milking cows, churning cream, salting butter, making soap, plowing, planting, hoeing, weeding, harvesting, haying, threshing, canning -- doing everything that fell on the eldest in a family of four girls, a dead mother, and a pissant brother who took off to drive boats on the Erie Canal and refused to come back and work the farm like he ought to.
I was yearning, and so I had more courage than was good for me. 'Pa, they pay well,' I said. 'I thoguht I could keep back some of the moeny for myself and give the rest to you. I know you need it.'"
Mattie wants to get a job so she can save up for college. She feels trapped out of obligation to her father, though, in her mom's absence. Since her brother won't do the job which he should do as the only son, she feels that the responsibility is all hers to help her father keep the farm running smoothly. The sacrifice here is all of her personal ambition. If her dad would only agree, she would give him some of the money she'd earn at a job and benefit both of them in the process of fostering her own growth.
"He would smile at her, and then she was running down the path to him, crying because she was so glad he was home with his hands and feet and arms and legs all still attached. He'd hold her face in his hands, keeping her at arm's length, and wipe her tears away with his dirty thumbs."
As Mattie tries to navigate her relationship with Royal, she wonders if he truly lovers her. She recalls the beautiful relationship which her parents had. They really loved one another. Using this standard, she wonders whether the same is possible between herself and Royal.
"I did not laugh. 'I am never going to marry,' I said. 'Never.'
'Oh no?'
'No. Never.'
'Well, we'll see about that,' Mrs. Crego said. Her face softened. 'The pain stops, you know, Mattie. And the memory of it fades. Minnie will forget all about this one day.'
'Maybe she will, but I surely won't,' I said."
Mattie has just witnessed the traumatic pain of the birth of Minnie's twins. Upon seeing this, Mattie is terrified, never wanting to allow the same to happen to herself. Since marriage and childbirth are both necessarily intertwined in this culture, she decides then and there never to marry so that she never has to experience the pain of childbirth. If she marries, her husband will demand children of her as a wifely duty, but she cannot see herself bearing the pain of it all. Motherhood will forever look different in her eyes.
