This happens in Chapter 2 of the story. T. Ray and Lily have just arrived at home from the police station, where Lily and Rosaleen have been jailed when Rosaleen spits snuff on the feet of three white men in the town. T. Ray orders Lily to stay in her room, so he can go pay the peach pickers. But before he leaves, Lily challenges him, saying he does not scare her and that the spirit of her mother protects her from him.  He laughs bitterly and suggests that her mother did not care about her at all. Lily screams that she hates him, and it is at this point that he tells her her mother left her, saying,

You listen to me.... The truth is, your sorry mother ran off and left you. The day she died, she'd come back to get her things, that's all.  You can hate me all you want, but she's the one who left you (39).

Lily is crushed by this information, understandably.  Her loss of her mother and her understanding that she was somehow responsible for her mother's death haunt her.  To hear that her mother had left and had come back for things, not for her, was almost more than she could bear to know.  It is not until much later in the story that she comes to understand the circumstances, the problems in the marriage, her mother's depression, and that her mother had come back to get her, too. T. Ray had told her only part of the story, to strike back at Lily out of his own pain and anger.