Jan Willis begins her memoir with a dream. In the dream, she enters the kitchen of her grandmother’s house and finds her sister, San, and her brother-in-law, James, sitting at the table. San produces a chocolate cake and then sits it down in front of James, which deeply hurts Willis. As she prepares to leave over the perceived slight, Willis hears the voice of her mother, warning that “it’s dangerous out there.” Sweating, Willis leans out the door and is then transported to a dry, dusty place. There are cages all around her, and inside one she notices a lion; she notices his bloody mouth and massive paws and is immediately frozen in fear. The scene shifts again, and Willis finds herself inside a barn with hay underfoot. A lion awaits her, and Willis begins running down a long, red-dirt road. She perceives that lions are chasing her and that there is no one to turn to for help. 

When a building appears out of nowhere, Willis scrambles up some stairs and begs for help from a cowboy who leans against the building. The man only rearranges his hat in response. Willis hears voices and turns through a set of swinging doors, where she is transported to a bar which looks like an old New Orleans Cajun club. Still desperate to escape the lions, she pushes herself into the crowd until she finds herself in a dark room in the back. As she pants, a white man approaches her and offers Willis some money. He asks, “Did you bring them?” and Willis knows that he is referring to the lions. 

The chapter ends with Willis’s introduction of herself. She identifies as a Black Southern woman who teaches Tibetan Buddhism in an elite and mostly white college in the Northeast. She reflects that she has come a long way since leaving home and that her experiences have been costly in some ways.