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you learn or else and ever since, me and Mom, my bad—Mom and I, have took to sneaking a tour after the tour is officially closed.
    Mom’s hunched outside her job, outside her normal perk, her uniform drooped over her shoulders and off her waist, her bag gripped by the handle, the long strap looped to concrete. She climbs in and wilts with her head leaned back.
    Looking kinda beat there, Grace, I say. You sure you still want to go?
    I do if you do, she says. Do you?
    Don’t you know it, I say. Today’s the day for my ladies. First you. Kim later.
    We strap in and hit the road. This year they built it up in theWest Hills, way up past where Burnside becomes Barnes Road, up where you make a few turns and
boom!
it’s a whole new universe, a cosmology of its own. The tour’s been done (yes, we’re still on that) for weeks, but the sign is still up: WELCOME TO THE STREET OF DREAMS. You can see the first house, stories upon stories high, looming behind what must be the gates of heaven, see a sand-colored Mediterranean joint with a fountain out front, a landscape crew tending what’s damn near a forest in front of another. Most years Mom and me would be oohing and aahing by now, but we won’t and I know it and I pull over feet past the sign.
    Nah, this ain’t it? I say.
    What isn’t? she says.
    Let’s make it a new start, I say. A new tour. And my vote’s for Northeast.
    There? she says. But what’s to see?
    Everything! I say.
    Mom’s dull eyes brighten. She sits up. We strike a deal and the deal is, she has to show me spots from her day.
    We float back to Northeast and get off on Kerby. We ain’t but about to hop out and hoof it, but if we did, no hype, on this side we could reach any place worth being in minutes on foot. I ask Mom where to first.
    Well, since we’re close, she says, let’s start with the school.
    Mom’s old high school is my old high school. She tells me in her day everyone she knew wanted to go there. That the ones her age, whose older brother or cousin or sister took them to visit the campus, would come back bragging of cool kids who were swaggered outside the gym, or by the bricked front entry, or near the bleachers by the track. Mom says when she went there(like when I did), the school was known for what happened in its back halls, for throwing the livest school dances, for basketball and football and track teams that were always among the best, for being the school every year that entered a black princess in the Rose Festival courts.
    Let’s see, she says. Where should we go?
    I’m thinking we should roll by where ya’ll used to kick it, I say. Where ya’ll went when it was time to shake a leg.
    Mom titters, tells me she never snuck in the clubs before her time, not because she didn’t want to, but because she never had a fake ID nor looked old enough to not need one. But my friends though, she says, now they were a whole other story. She says they’d steal or borrow ID, hit a hot spot all dolled up, tell her to hold tight, and leave her iced in a car for hours while the partied. That’s exactly why when I turned twenty-one, I was everywhere, Mom says. All the trendy spots in Northeast and North, the one or two in Southeast, even the ones in the boonies: Earthquake Ethel’s, Turquoise Room, The Cattle Yard. I’d waited too long, she says. No one was going to stop me from having my time.
    We cruise down Williams and stop outside the building that used to be a bar and lounge. Mom says this was where you went after a day at the beauty shop, where you’d go when you wanted to flash a new dress or jewels. She tells me the owner wore a uniform: a sailor cap, double-breasted big-buttoned blue sport coat, and wing tips polished to mirrors. He’d tip his cap and flash a smile, Mom says, that made you feel like you were the star.
    We cruise by what was The Social Club and Mom tells me to stop. Now this