When a person is buried, he or she is dressed in white and wrapped in a woven mat made of long leaves or blades of grass. ... If the family can't afford a casket, the corpse is buried in the grass mat. ...
Now that Janie has turned sixteen, her "glossy leaves and bursting buds" transform her like "a pear tree-any tree in bloom" (11). ... Tea Cake and Janie would talk "from grass roots tuh pine trees" without caring what anybody says (106). ...
