Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide contain extensive descriptions of racism, xenophobia, racist violence, mental health crises, addiction, suicidal ideation, suicide, murder, police corruption, and organized crime. The source text also makes use of racist slurs, which this guide obscures.

In September of 1980, Ma is shot by a stray bullet while she is in the kitchen. Ma grabs a paper towel and presses it to her armpit to help with the bleeding. By the time the ambulance arrives, Ma is joking about the whole incident. The next morning, when she comes home, Ma says she escaped from the ER and went to a club called The Emerald Isle instead. She is determined to know who accidentally shot her, and she learns that the culprit was a 17-year-old named Packie Keenan, who had been high on cocaine and discharged his gun while walking up the stairs. 

Crime continues to increase in Old Colony throughout the fall. MacDonald writes that “[e]ven taxi drivers didn’t want to go into our neighborhood anymore” (160), and his efforts during this time were consumed with “complicated schemes for coming and going safely through the project” (160). One night, there are knocks on the door, and a neighbor tells Ma that Kathy either jumped or fell from the roof.