Chapter 4 introduces Deck’s new girlfriend, Carmen, who is African American. Carmen becomes a role model for Cole, who meets her when she is stuck at her father’s house for a week during a snowstorm. Carmen dotes on Cole but shows irritation when Birdie joins them. Cole secretly passes some of Carmen’s gifts on to Birdie, but Birdie understands that Deck, Carmen, and Cole are slowly becoming a black family and that Cole wants a black mother figure.

One day, Sandy unexpectedly takes the girls to visit their grandmother. The choice confuses Birdie, because Sandy’s relationship with her mother, Penelope Lodge, is tense. Penelope disapproves of her daughter’s bohemian lifestyle, her political activities, and the fact that she is overweight. Sandy resents that her mother is racially tone-deaf and gave Cole a Golliwog doll for Christmas. Penelope bought the doll because Sandy had one growing up. Deck found it hilarious that the girls loved the doll, which is commonly known as a racist caricature (98). Penelope is a proud descendent of Massachusetts’s famous Puritan minister and witch hunter, Cotton Mather. She has always favored Birdie for the same reason Deck favors Cole.

Birdie describes the contrast between the two sides of her family.