"There was something real breakable about Mary Ellla and I was always afraid if I touched her in the wrong spot, she'd crack."
Ivy has a deep affection for her sister. What she observes as a kind of fragility is actually Mary Ella's resilience to trauma. She has experienced a great deal of trauma, especially surrounding the birth of her son, but the most profound incident was her sterilization. After that she carried the weight of someone having robbed her of something so innately her own that she must exercise immense emotional energy to remain sane and open and to function in the world, presenting her sister with a somewhat vulnerable face.
"Sometimes coloring outside the lines can cost you. Only you can figure out if it's worth it."
Jane finds herself in a precarious ethical dilemma, forced to choose between Ivy and her professional responsibilities. This is a frequent situation in social work. When she takes a step back, Jane can appreciate that the decision is hers alone. It will cost her either way, so she looks for which option may benefit the most people most profoundly. She's a courageous woman.
"I used to wish I look like her, awful pretty. But if that prettiness comes with being stupid, I don't want it."
Ivy's relationship to Mary Ella is complicated. She admires and is sometimes jealous of her sister's physical beauty, but she fears the responsibility that comes with it. Additionally, Ivy holds onto her intellect with zealousness because she is not the smartest, but she uses her wits to help her family, something which Mary Ella just doesn't have the capacity to do; hence her living as a proverbial dependent of her fifteen-year-old sister.
"You don't know nothing, that's what I figured out. You don't know nothing, but you act like god anyway."
When the conflict between Ivy and Jane comes to a head, Ivy strikes out at Jane. She decides that Jane's job has made her into a deceptive person, drunk with her power over people's lives. Of course this is not a fair representation of Jane, but it is Ivy's perspective and perfectly understandable. After all, Jane is the one to tell her that she's supposed to be sterilized like her sister, and Ivy views this as a deep betrayal after all the vulnerability the two women have cultivated between them.
