On the way to school one morning, the narrator and her cousin Lou encounter the "painter lady" working on their wall. The wall "belongs to the [residents] of Taliaferro Street," and has been theirs for years; the bigger kids play handball against it, the "old folks" sit in its shade, and the narrator and Lou chiseled their friend Jimmy Lyon's name on it when they found out he was never coming home from Vietnam. To make things worse, the painter lady is not even from the area; the license plates on her battered car indicate that she is from New York. Angry at the intruder, the children voice their displeasure, but the woman pays them no mind.