The story opens with our narrator, Esch Batiste, attending to China, her brother’s pit bull, who is preparing to birth puppies. She is a “crazy” dog, according to the narrator, because she will only let Skeetah touch her. The narrator reminisces about her mother giving birth to all of her siblings in the house; she recalls the last birth her Mama had in “her bed, under her own bare burning bulb” (2). Junior had come out blue and Mama refused to go to the hospital. Their father had dragged her out of the room, “trailing her blood, and [they] never saw her again” (2). China, the pit bull, is fighting while giving birth, like she was born to do.

While the family starts making preparations for a possible hurricane, there is a description of the family’s poverty: how “scraps” were used for their entertainment, like an old cow tub for a swimming pool, and a homemade basketball hoop screwed to a tree. While Randall didn’t really believe a hurricane was coming because “ain’t nothing hit [them] in years” (5), Manny, Randall’s friend, believes something serious is happening, as does the children’s father.