Spring 1989, Chapter 25 Summary

Pharoah warns his friends of human-headed cats in the building's basement. It is not a far stretch of the imagination considering what Gwen Anderson, the newly appointed housing manager of Horner, finds down there. The smell of rotting animal carcasses and feces is so powerful, she vomits. She writes a memo to her superiors at the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) about all the appliances, some still in cartons, that are rusted from being in pools of water or have been vandalized in the fifteen years since they were stored there. All the locks to the storage areas have been broken. There are rodents, live and dead cats, filthy clothes, rusted kitchen cabinets, garbage galore, roaches, and fleas. She mentions that despite intensive efforts to secure the storage areas, they are accessible to anyone.

For fifteen years the residents have been living...