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toward central Greenwood the jukejoint is warming up as the night ever so slowly cools. The ramshackle building with its single, blinking red florescent letter, R for Regent’s Club, vibrates with the sound of drums and trumpet.
    â€œDiz is playing,” Frangie says wistfully. “I’d give just about anything to be able to play a horn like that.”
    â€œJazz,” Dorothy says dismissively. “Devil’s music.” But there isn’t a lot of intensity behind that judgment, and Frangie notices her mother has a tendency to move in her chair in response to the rhythm coming down the street.
    â€œI’m going to do it,” Frangie says, as if waiting for an argument.
    Her mother does not argue, and Frangie thinks, My God, I am actually going to do this . There’s something familiar in the sense of abandonment that wells up within her, and then she remembers the day when her mother first dropped her off at school. She turned and walked away while little Francine—as she was called then—bawled her eyes out and got a smack on the butt from her teacher. “Well, maybe it will be no worse than school,” she tells herself.
    â€œI’m going for a walk,” Frangie says. “Can I bring you back anything?”
    â€œNo, sweetheart.”
    There is something final about that word coming from her mother. Sweetheart . It’s a word she uses whencomforting Frangie. She used it when her grandmother, Meemaw, died. “People die, sweetheart, even the ones we love.”
    Frangie passes her father, asleep now in front of the ancient radio that only gets two of the four available stations. The program has shifted to a mystery.
    Frangie goes first to her “hospital” in the backyard. It’s not much—a sort of doghouse constructed out of bits of this and that. It has a chicken-wire “yard” in front with a dish of water and one of food scraps. At present there are two patients—a cat recovering from burns and a pigeon with a broken wing.
    Neither patient is happy about the presence of the other. But they are separated by some chicken wire on sticks.
    â€œHow are you doing, Cleo?” Frangie kneels and reaches in to pet the understandably jittery cat. “I am going to get you both out of here if I’m going away.”
    She fishes around in the small toolbox that is her medical kit—lard for salve, rags for bandages, half a bottle of iodine—which the cat really does not enjoy, no, not even a little—Popsicle stick splints and a carefully wrapped needle-and-thread kit for stitches. She takes the lard, picks a bit up on two fingers, and soothes it over the cat’s exposed skin.
    â€œThere you go. Now do not lick that off! And do noteat Mooch. Mooch, you squawk if Cleo bothers you.”
    Frangie wipes her hands, checks the chicken wire to make sure her charges are safe, and sets off toward Greenwood Street. There half a dozen two-story brick buildings have replaced a segment of what was destroyed in the riot but which give way on all sides to vacant lots, fire-scarred derelicts, low bungalows, and intermittent sections of storefronts featuring a malt shop, pawn shops, dress shops, drinking establishments, a pool hall, and a church.
    It’s always busy out on Thursday nights when maids who work for the rich white folk get their traditional night off. Busier even than usual with this muggy weather that threatens tornadoes. Frangie wears a faded-green floral-print sundress and walks barefoot. The riot and the Depression both linger on in Tulsa, especially in Greenwood. Frangie owns a pair of shoes, but they’re a size too small and reserved for church, school, and bad weather. She figures she will put on her shoes when she goes to enlist, and the army will give her a good pair of boots. They’ll probably take getting used to, the boots, after so long running around barefoot or else wearing her size-too-small