The Fire This Time

by S. Frederic Liss

  CHAPTER 12

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 1981

  -1-

  Wednesday morning, the seventh or seventeenth or seventieth day of the heat wave, Boston had lost count, Silvy phoned Hannah and suggested she join her and Mabi walking the Black Heritage Trail.

  “In this weather,” Hannah said. “Don’t see the point.”

  “History’s the point.”

  “Not my history.”

  “All black history’s your history,” Silvy said.

  “All black skin’s not the same shade,” Hannah said before she relented.

  Later that morning, Mabi, Hannah, and Silvy, climbed the north slope of Nigger Hill, so named by proper nineteenth-century Bostonians because it was Boston’s first black ghetto. By 1981, the National Park Service had whited out the epithet of Nigger Hill from the history of African-Americans in Boston by referring to Beacon Hill in its pamphlet on the Black Heritage Trail. The pamphlet sanitized Boston’s black history in other ways. It did not inform tourists that a nineteenth century missionary society dismissed Nigger Hill as a “horrid sink of pollution,” for example, or that an eminent Harvard historian writing in the middle of the twentieth century characterized its black population as not being “of high order”. As a result, the few tourists who wandered the Black Heritage Trail were as ignorant of Beacon Hill’s past as Mabi, Silvy, and Hannah.

  With its narrow streets, narrower even than the narrow streets of the south slope, with its four- and five-story walk-ups crowded together like slum tenements, with its base bordering on the miasma of Cambridge Street rather than the sylvan elegance of Beacon Street, Boston Common, and the Public Garden, Nigger Hill was clearly the less desirable side of Beacon Hill. Yet, because it was walking distance to the new office towers being erected in Mayor Charlie’s Boston, the elites, predominately white, now lusted after homes abandoned decades earlier by Boston’s blacks when they moved to Roxbury.

  If tourists who wandered the Black Heritage Trail in 1981 paid attention to what they saw, they would notice that the buildings on the north side of Pinckney Street, the street dividing the north slope from the south, stretched in an unbroken barrier from West Cedar Street near the base of Beacon Hill on the west to Joy Street on the east with one cross street, Anderson Street, to provide north/south passage for the nineteenth-century blacks who walked over the crown of the hill to work as servants or hired hands, cleaning houses and stables, cooking and serving meals, for the rich whites living on the sunny south slope.

  If those tourists read the plaques installed here and there on exterior walls, they would learn that Massachusetts was the only state that recorded no slaves in the Federal Census of 1790; that as Boston’s black population grew after the War of Independence and the War of 1812, it moved into the area of seventeen oddly shaped West End blocks bounded by Pinckney, Charles, Cambridge, and Joy Streets; that in this enclave, the barber, John J. Smith, gained fame as an abolitionist and the shopkeeper, Lewis Hayden, stored gunpowder in his cellar to blow up his house rather than return the fugitive slaves he sheltered to their southern owners, as required by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. They would learn as well that Boston’s first school desegregation suit occurred in 1850 when Sarah Roberts, age five, was denied admission to five schools convenient to her home on Nigger Hill because in nineteenth-century Boston blacks, if they went to school at all, went to all black schools, an arrangement blessed by Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in his 1850 opinion upholding the segregation of Boston’s public schools.

  As the nineteenth-century advanced toward the Civil War, Boston’s growing population of “colored persons, the descendants of Africans,” as Chief Justice Shaw labeled Boston’s black population in his 1850 opinion, continued to concentrate on Nigger Hill, caring for each other and sheltering southern blacks who survived the trip north on the underground railroad. Tourists who were both students of history and well attuned to present-day Boston would appreciate that the more Boston changed, the more it stayed the same.

  The emotional and geographic heart of Nigger Hill was the snub nosed alley known as Smith Court, the location of the African Meeting House, journey’s end for Mabi, Silvy, and Hannah in 1981 as it had been for thousands of Boston’s blacks in the nineteenth century. Number 3, a double house built of wood, which survived every Beacon Hill fire since 1799. Number 5 where the deacon of the African Meeting House lived on the second floor with his nine children so he could rent out the first floor. Number 7A, a double house built in the backyard of Number 7 in 1799 and connected to Smith Court by Holmes Alley, one of many pedestrian alleys connecting the backyards of south slope homes to streets on the north slope. Number 10, built as rental income property in 1853 by a black chimney sweep. Number 8, the African Meeting House, dedicated on December 6, 1806, as the home of the First African Baptist Church, the Abolition Church. From an engraved wall plaque, Silvy read aloud the story of Cato Gardner and the building of that church.

  “What’s abolition?” Hannah asked in a frail voice.

  “How can you live here and not know abolition?” Silvy asked.

  Hannah threw the Black Heritage Trail Guide to the pavement. “This place used to be a Jew prayer house. I got no interest.”

  Mabi knocked on the door.

  “No interest,” Hannah repeated.

  Slowly, it opened. Its hinges, rusty with neglect, creaked and groaned. “We’re closed.” Virgil’s ancient voice was barely audible above the rasp of the hinges.

  “We came to see the African Meeting House,” Silvy said.

  “It’s not fit for visiting.”

  “We came special,” Silvy said. “Just a fast look-see.”

  Virgil eyed them with suspicion. “What for?”

  Silvy whispered something in his ear.

  “Be quick. I’m working Capablanca tonight.”

  Mabi helped Hannah into the foyer. Age and decay surrounded them. The paint on the window frames, yellowed by time, had the dried, cracked appearance of stream beds in a drought, their many layers of thickness still puffy with the humidity of past rainy seasons, the puffiness made soft to the eye, hard to the touch, by the desiccation of time. As they climbed the staircase to the meeting room on the second floor, vibrations dislodged paint chips from the railing and motes of paint rained down. Water stains discolored the ceiling and walls of the stairwell and the central meeting room, which was filled with pews. A balcony of pews encircled it on three sides. A raised platform jutted out of the back wall. In an arch recessed into that back wall two lions on their hind legs faced each other, each holding a tablet with two columns of strange letters carved into them. A lectern, its wood cracked open wide enough to insert a coin, graced the front edge of the platform.

  “Them lions look fierce enough to eat them tablets,” Mabi said.

  “The lions of Judah,” Hannah said. “Been a lifetime since I seen them.” She sat in the front pew, struggling to hold herself erect. “They holding the tablets of the Lord and opening their mouths to proclaim His word.” She moved her lips, silently mouth-reading the words on the tablets. She had a distant look in her eyes as if she were seeing beyond the walls of the African Meeting House. Mabi had seen that look before when Hannah prayed for Jim Ed’s return, when she lit memorial candles to Jim Ed’s memory on the anniversary of the telegram, when she made her annual pilgrimage to tend an empty grave.

  “Heat after you?” Silvy put her purse in the corner of the pew. “Lie down. Use this for a pillow.”

  “No need for lying down.”

  A small cloud crossed the sun. The room darkened. The shadow paused on Hannah’s face. Her eyes regained their focus. Their distant look dissolved as if the shadow had unlocked something deep within her and brought it to the surface. The cloud moved on, dragging its shadow with it. Hannah’s eyes glowed with a light that was not there before. She gripped Mabi’s arm.

  “I was born in Africa like that Cato Gardner,” Hannah said. �
��Gideon and I we born in a small village in Ethiopia name of Wallaca. When we came into this country, the immigration couldn’t speak our names so they wrote down Wallaca instead.”

  Mabi bit his tongue. He was skeptical like the Leroy Wallaca of his dream when the leprechaun on the Bill Russell poster tacked to the ceiling of the bedroom he shared with his brother, Jim Ed, came to life and whispered in his ear that he was descended from a thousand generations of leprechauns. He wanted to believe, but belief required letting go and he wasn’t ready.

  “What’s Ethiopia like?” Silvy asked.

  “Mud huts with thatched roofs shaped like upside down ice cream cones. No windows. One low door. Called tekels. My folks next to Gideon’s.”

  “How’d you come into this country?” Silvy asked.

  “Italian soldiers they occupied our village and stole all the food so everyone was starving and the children were dying and they brang in priests from Rome telling us we should all pray Jesus and those who did ate and the rest of us hungered.”

  All those childhood dinner hours when Hannah forced him and Jim Ed to finish their suppers so they could belong to the clean plate club crystallized in Mabi’s mind. Not wasting food was one of Hannah’s religions. He understood, now, why Gideon and Hannah gave each other food on their birthdays, their anniversary, other special occasions.

  “How’d you escape?” Silvy asked.

  “My poppa, Gideon’s poppa, they good at working metal so they earned money making things for the soldiers. They saved up for the bribes and when they had enough they sent us into this country. Nineteen hundred and thirty-eight. I was twelve and Gideon fifteen.”

  A door slammed in the balcony. “I’m fixing to leave,” Virgil called down. “You done poking ’round?”

  “Go up with him,” Mabi said to Silvy. “Distract him into storytelling ‘bout this place.” He took Silvy’s place on the pew. “What about the rest of the family?”

  “War came and the mail stopped. After the war our letters were never replied.”

  From the balcony, Silvy’s sing-song voice asked questions about the history of the African Meeting House, oohing and aahing when Virgil told her about the black barber, John J. Smith, the abolitionist, the black storekeeper, Lewis Hayden, and his gunpowder.

  Hannah paused. Her eyes flitted back and forth from Mabi’s face to the lions of Judah, to the ceiling, to other places. It was as if she were confronting things that frightened her and she was looking for a way to escape. She closed her eyes, then slowly opened them. Calm now, her eyes anchored on Mabi’s face, Mabi’s eyes.

  “Gideon and me we belong to a tribe called Falashas. That’s a word meaning stranger or people who got no land. We lived in Ethiopia long before people been writing history books.” Her eyes held steady, never wavering from Mabi’s. “Once there were millions of us, but now hardly none. We be persecuted by preachers taking texts teaching everyone to hate us because some say Falasha blacksmiths made the nails for the Cross and Falasha carpenters hewed the wood and made the Cross itself. All lies, but Christian folk taught lies be the gospel truth.”

  Jesus Christ Superstar, Mabi thought. “Where them Falashas from?”

  “My great-grandpapa he told stories about how we descended from Abraham.”

  Hannah recited Falasha history like Silvy telling Bible stories to her Sunday school class, beginning with the reign of Moses and continuing through the marriage of Solomon and Sheba, the conquests of Yehudit, the slow decline over the last thousand years, the virtual extinction of the entire tribe in the last decade.

  Mabi wondered if this was the same Abraham as al-Saffah’s. “You tell Jim Ed any of this shit?” She sobbed quietly and shook her head. “Why not?”

  “Same reason we never told no one.” Hannah paused and Mabi sensed she was gathering her strength, or her courage. “There’s a lot of Falasha kings name of Gideon,” she continued, “and he thinks he be descended. He’s fearing someone come from there to kill us if the Emperor know we here.”

  “You say I’m descended from kings?”

  “In name if not in blood.”

  Mabi sensed Hannah’s relief at finally telling him the secret of his heritage. Now, he believed because he needed to believe. He believed because he needed a past, a real past that went further back in time than the Trojans, a past which came out of real history, a history of people who once lived, not some comic book history of make-believe. He believed because he believed it had been pre-ordained by being written in Allah’s book that Hannah would make these revelations to him in this place on this day at this time. He believed because it made sense out of all the arguments he had overheard between Gideon and Hannah, because it explained the frizzly chicken and Gideon’s obsession with hexes and being hexed, and, most of all, why there was only one Wallaca in the Boston telephone book, why he had no grandparents, aunts or uncles, cousins. For all these reasons, he believed and because Hannah was his momma and his momma wouldn’t tell him things if they weren’t God’s holy truth.

  “Someday real soon,” Mabi said, “you and me we have a talk long and hard ’bout this Falasha tribe so’s I feel connected. When me and Silvy have a son, I want him to be a Wallaca and be told the story of Ethiopia as soon as he old enough to understand.” The words slipped out of his mouth as if Silvy had decided to come back to his bed.

  Hannah unzipped her purse. “I don’t want no gang-leading grandson so don’t be naming no son of yours Wallaca unless you be calling yourself Wallaca, and don’t be calling yourself Wallaca as long as you’re leading that gang. Between this gang business and this Allah business and this grandson business you night riding me to the grave.”

  She unzipped an inner compartment and withdrew an envelope cat-faced with wrinkles. “This came a few days after Jim Ed’s funeral.”

  Mabi withdrew a letter from the envelope. The writing scrawled across the pages, rising as it went from left to right.

  Dear Wallacas:

  I just back from the bush and if I don’t make sense it’s because I’m still too buzzed by what I seen which is why I’s writing you to explain how your son be dead.

  My name Roadkill, not my Christian name but my bush name. We all have new names here in the bush. It’s like our real selfs somewhere in the real world doing real world things while our other selfs in the bush fighting the NVA. If our other selfs be killed, maybe our real selfs still be alive in the real world. If this sounds insane, things be so insane here the only way to stay sane is to be insane youself. Jim Ed said that’s a Catch 22. His bush name Shanghai because of the way he ended up in this man’s Marines.

  Shanghai he was one righteous splib. Not many like him at the snuff level. Most of us snuffs, chuck and splib alike, too dumb or poor to evade Uncle Sam. That made Shanghai different, his going to college and all.

  Corporal Dickhead being a chuck from ’Bama didn’t like me and Shanghai because we city splibs. And we’s black. We called him Corporal Dickhead because that’s where his brains be sitting. A real gunjy, the corporal. A lifer, too. Nothing worse for us snuffs, splib or chuck, than being lorded over by a gunjy lifer looking to make sergeant.

  No need to tell you who Corporal Dickhead picked first to walk point or man the Loco Pocos outside the perimeter. Splibs like me and Shanghai and the other brothers. High body count for Loco Pocos being we out there with nothing but a radio and our ears listening for the gooks. That’s not how Shanghai got killed. Would have been his good luck if it were.

  We’s in the jungle. Lot of jungle. Real tropical. And the bamboo, thicker than . . . well, I won’t say because it ain’t decent talk for decent folk like you. Cheddar’s in the forward Loco Poco. Cheddar from Wisconsin and a big Packer fan. Not a bad guy for a chuck. Got along with us splibs which is why Corporal Dickhead assigned him point and forward listening post duty.

  Very dark night. Most nights dark because the jungle blocks out the sky ‘cept when firefights or mortars or tracers firework things up. Me and Shanghai re
sting in our holes, too tired to build hooches when we hear screams so God awful we could barely recognize Cheddar’s voice. Come daylight, Corporal Dickhead sends Shanghai out to investigate. Shanghai comes back with a lower leg, boot still on the foot, flesh all torn up like it was eaten. A tiger, Corporal Dickhead says. Who knew there was tigers here in the bush.

  Dickhead and Shanghai get into a big argument about going out to find the rest of Cheddar because Marines never never never leave their dead behind. Dickhead tells Shanghai if he wants to red dog it he can take volunteers, but not so many to deplete the squad. I volunteer and some other splibs, but none of the chucks because Cheddar nothing but a Mr. Shine to them.

  We hacking our way through the jungle with our K-bars finding pieces of Cheddar here and there, collecting them when Shanghai suddenly motions us down. Up ahead be this tiger munching on Cheddar the way you and me munch on ribs at the Q.

  Shanghai disperses us so we surround the tiger. Whichever way it runs, it be shot. Shanghai wormed his way forward looking so hard at the tiger he didn’t see the trip wire. The landmine so close it shredded Shanghai. A few of us inside its range was also wounded.

  Before we can retrieve Shanghai we hear tubing and the mortars come raining down bull’s eye on our position. They could have been 60 mike mikes, maybe 120’s, none of us experienced enough to tell the difference. We dee-deed it. God must’ve been awake because we all made it out. Except for Shanghai. Night came before we could go back. Damn if we didn’t hear that tiger all night long. Might have been two of them. Next morning, not a trace of Shanghai. Not even a scrap of uniform. And Cheddar, none of him neither.