Chapter 4 begins with Edie’s explanation of how her mother met her father. Edie describes her grandmother:

[she was] the sort of high-yellow woman who believed her fair complexion was the result of an errant Native American gene, but who was, like so many of us, walking proof of American industry, the bolls and shops and casual sexual terrorism that put a little cream in the coffee and made her family loyal to the almighty paper bag (65).

Although “cautious about fraternizing with dark-skinned men,” Edie’s grandmother married her grandfather, “a West Indian cad who was fresh off the boat” (65). She bore 11 children, the sixth of whom was Edie’s mother. A pianist, Edie’s grandfather abandoned the family and left her grandmother struggling to raise children who were “prone to disastrous dalliances with the arts and the things that make the fiscal wasteland of the arts worth the risk—the sex and drugs” (66-67). Some of Edie’s uncles and aunts find success around the world as artists, while others meet tragic deaths. Edie’s mother is promiscuous and begins to deal and indulge in drugs until she meets Edie’s father, “a gruff ex-navy man” (67). After they meet in a bar, Edie’s father pays for her mother to attend rehab (68).