All Souls: A Family Story From Southie

In September of 1980, Ma is shot by a stray bullet while she is in the kitchen. Ma grabs a paper towel and presses it to her armpit to help with the bleeding. By the time the ambulance arrives, Ma is joking about the whole thing. The next morning, when she comes home, Ma says she escaped from the ER and went to a club called The Emerald Isle, instead. She is determined to know who accidentally shot her, and finds out that it was a 17-year old named Packie Keenan, who had been high on cocaine and discharged his gun while walking up the stairs.

Crime continues to increase in Old Colony throughout the fall. MacDonald writers that “[e]ven taxi drivers didn’t want to go into our neighborhood anymore” (160), adding that “[t]he only order I could make in those days was in my complicated schemes for coming and going safely through the project” (160). One night, there are knocks on the door, and a neighbor tells Ma that Kathy jumped or fell from the roof. Kathy goes into a coma. Neighbors say that they heard Kathy arguing with a man named Richie Amoroso on top of the building, just prior to going over the edge.