In chapter 5, Leona is walking home from the grocery store when she sees three people gardening in the dirty vacant lot near her house. They remind her of her grandmother, who used to lay goldenrods on the graves of the doctors that she outlived. She decides that she must help these people clean an area that she describes as having "trash piled as high as your waist."

The smell's enough to curl up a crocodile’s nose, especially in the summer. The gardeners had made some trails through it. But I knew precious few would join 'em until that mess was hauled away. Looking at it, I knew this wasn't a job for no wheelbarrow. This was a job for the telephone.

She begins to make some phone calls as soon as she returns home. She is on the phone for six and a half hours until someone finally tells her that the lot is owned by the City of Cleveland.

Progress is equally slow the next day. Each department she phones denies responsibility for the lot and sends her to someone else. "I had the feeling I was getting farther from the key I needed instead of closer," she says.

On the third day, she decides to visit the Public Health Department with a bag of garbage she'd picked up from the lot. As she waits in the reception area, she opens the bag. "The smell that came out of it made you think of hog pens and maggots and kitchen scraps from back when Nixon was president." A few minutes later, she is called into a meeting.