The epigraph describes west as the direction of endings and tests and calls it “the doorway to the ancestors” (110). It also represents learning to find one’s way in the dark.

At 16, Harjo meets a Cherokee student several years older, and they begin a relationship. At the behest of a fellow student, she signs up for an acting class. When their troupe is set to go on tour, her stepfather denies permission without explanation. The school interprets his actions as abuse and attempts to put Harjo in the custody of the school, though this does not happen. Her mother then gives permission against the wishes of her stepfather. They perform on tour across the West Coast. Once people throw rocks at them and yell “Dirty Indians,” yet together they form a “creative, coherent family” (115). After the tour, Harjo returns to her stepfather’s house, secretly pregnant by her new boyfriend, with “no idea at all as to where I was going or how I was going to get there” (115).

After her boyfriend does not send a bus ticket so she can get to his town, Tahlequah, as he promised, Harjo borrows the money from her brother and goes there herself.