by Erin Bartels
“I don’t mind at all,” I said, knowing I’d won him over. If he wanted to bring along an interpretive dance troupe or Chinese shadow puppeteers to tell the story, I would have agreed.
And now, next Sunday, he would be here.
I stirred the cream into my coffee and tried to calm my racing heart while Nora waited for me to talk. “I’ve arranged for a visit from someone who has information about the family to come and talk with us. I figured since we’re both so interested in family history, it might be beneficial to hear some parts we don’t know much about.”
“My, my, that sounds intriguing. Where did you find this person?”
“He found me. He happened to notice the Balsam name in the newspaper and realized he knew someone with the same name.”
“Who is this mystery man?”
“I can’t say yet.” I stood up to avoid Nora’s suspicious gaze and tried to change the subject. “I should put this pot back on the burner so it doesn’t get cold.”
Nora followed me into the kitchen. “I have to say I’m pleasantly surprised at how interested you are in this sort of thing.”
“Why?” I said as I replaced the carafe. “Isn’t everyone interested in their family’s history?”
“Plenty of people don’t give it a second thought, and some would rather keep it under wraps.” She looked thoughtful. “Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better that way.”
I said nothing. Give the subject space.
“I remember talking to my old Great-Aunt Margaret about her experiences in this house,” Nora finally said. “It was like pulling at a loose thread, trying to release it from the past so that this thread at least would not be lost to the ravages of time. I tried to weave it into my own story, to see how then fit into now.”
Nora seemed to be looking through me as she spoke.
“You get to my age and you wish you had a chance to step back to see the whole, to see what you’ve made of your life and what you’ve made of theirs, to see if you’ve honored their memories or redeemed their faults. But you never can. Time never stops and allows you to know anything.” Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears.
“If you don’t want to talk about it—”
“Don’t be silly. If we don’t share what we know, it dies with us. And ultimately that’s not fair.” She seemed to be trying to convince herself. “The more we know, the better.”
One week later, I sat at the front window and stared at the gap in the pine trees where I knew a car would soon appear.
“That won’t make our guest show up any sooner,” Nora said as she set the table in the dining room.
“I know. I’m just excited.”
Actually, I was anxious. I was nervous that he wouldn’t show up. And nervous that he would.
“Help me with the salad and take your mind off it.”
Chopping vegetables did little to allay my anxiety, but it did manage to pass the time. At one o’clock, just as we had arranged, Mr. Rich rang the doorbell.
“Go sit down in the parlor,” I commanded. I slid the pocket door between the front hall and the parlor closed and tried to quiet the voice inside me that was whispering, This is a very, very bad idea. I opened the door and found myself eye to eye with a well-dressed James Rich and, behind him, an even better-dressed Linden Rich holding a dingy old cardboard box with a yellowed handwritten label.
“Hello,” I said quietly, but with a smile on my face. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Have you prepared her for this?” Mr. Rich asked in a low tone.
“I told her someone was coming to tell us about some family history.”
“But you didn’t tell her who?”
“I didn’t think I should. I didn’t want her to tell me to cancel it.”
He and Linden exchanged a glance. I heard the pocket door slide open behind me.
“Elizabeth?”
Nora stood in the parlor doorway and looked past me to the two men in her foyer.
“Aren’t you going to invite them—”
She put a hand on the door frame to steady herself. “William?” she whispered. Her eyes were fixed upon Linden.
“Why don’t we sit down?” I said.
I took one of her arms and guided her back to the settee. The men situated themselves in chairs across from us.
“No, you’re not him,” Nora said.
“No, ma’am,” Linden said kindly.
“Nora,” I said, “this is James Rich and his son Linden. I believe you know James?”
She furrowed her brow a moment, then her contemplative look became one of furious resentment. “Yes. I know him.”
Mr. Rich looked down at his hands. “I know I’m the last person you want to see, Nora. But your niece was adamant I come talk to you.”
“Elizabeth, what would give you the idea that I would ever want this man in my home?”
She stood up, so we all did.
“Wait, Nora. I think you need to hear what he has to say. I think it would help.”
“Help what? All you’ve done is dredge up something that would have been better left buried.” She walked out of the room. Across the hall the bedroom door slammed.
“Please sit down,” I said to the men. “Let me talk to her.”
I entered Nora’s bedroom without knocking and shut the door behind me. She was sitting on the quilt she had told me she never sat on, her face in her hands.
“I’m sorry,” I said as I sat down next to her. “But I’m concerned about you. You talk half the time as if William is dead and half the time like he’s still living in this house. I thought that if you would just listen to what Mr. Rich has to say, it would help you. Wouldn’t it be better to know the truth and have closure than to keep wondering?”
She dropped her hands. “Elizabeth, I know he’s dead. I’ve always known.”
It was my turn to be confused. “Then why lock yourself out of the darkroom? What were you afraid of seeing in there?”
“I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t go in because I knew it probably contained the last photos he would ever take. That once I saw those, there wouldn’t be any more. He’d never run up those cellar stairs again with a handful of prints and ask me what I thought of them. And that man sitting in my parlor right now is the reason. He’s the reason William went to Detroit that day. He’s the reason he never came back. He’s the one who destroyed my life. Everyone said it would be William. But it wasn’t. It was J.J.”
I sighed. “I just wanted to fix this.”
“Some things cannot be fixed—they can only be endured. I’m not upset with you. But I don’t want to talk to him. I know everything he has to say.”
“No you don’t. He’s the one who gave me the camera to give to you. And that’s not all there is. Something else turned up, something of William’s that has been buried in an evidence room somewhere. He came all this way so he could give it to you.”
She was shaking her head.
“Nora, please. That man out there has been wanting to be reconciled to you for fifty years. He’s the one who has been paying Tyrese to cut your lawn, not some stupid government program. He wants to apologize, make amends. Would William have wanted you to be at odds with him for the rest of your life?”
“No,” she admitted. “He wouldn’t have wanted that.”
I plucked a tissue from the box beside her bed and handed it to her.
She wiped her nose, took a deep breath, and stood up. “I’ll let him say what he’s come to say, but that’s all. I can’t promise forgiveness.”
I hugged her gently. “Thank you.”
She sniffed and smoothed out her clothes. When she walked into the parlor, Mr. Rich and Linden stood up.
“I’m sorry, J.J.,” Nora said. “That was very rude of me. You came a long way today, and it’s only right that you have a chance to say what it is you’ve come to say. We have lunch ready, so please follow me into the dining room.”
When everyone was seated and served, Mr
. Rich took a sip of water and cleared his throat. “This isn’t an easy story to tell, and it won’t be an easy story to hear.”
fifty-three
Detroit, July 1967
The shattering glass sounded like freedom. Like breaking out of an exhibit at the zoo. J.J. had always resented the way the city treated his neighborhood. Like a beast that needed to be contained. If they wanted to treat him like an animal, he’d show them what an animal did when it was on the loose.
“C’mon!” Arnold shouted. “Let’s hit the liquor store.”
J.J. looked through the large picture window he had just broken. “Hang on, man! I’m gonna get me some new shoes.”
They climbed through the window and picked their way across the shards of glass to the stockroom. Arnold began pulling shoeboxes off the shelves at random, dropping them on the ground in a heap.
“Don’t do that!” J.J. said. “You’re mixin’ them all up. How am I supposed to find my size?” J.J. ran his finger along a row of boxes until he found a size 10. He opened it up and pulled out the shiny black leather shoes inside. “Dang. I ain’t never had a pair of shoes this nice before.”
“Man, you can’t run from the cops in those. Them some church shoes.”
“I don’t care,” J.J. said as he removed his old sneakers. “I’m sick of secondhand. C’mon, hurry up and take some.”
“Psh! I ain’t out for shoes. I’m gonna get me some beer and make me some bombs.”
J.J. retrieved the brick he had thrown, and they stepped out onto the sidewalk. The mayhem to the south sounded closer. People were milling around now, nervously looking down the street to see what they were in for.
J.J. noticed a woman watching him from a porch. “Come on in and shop till you drop!” he called.
She narrowed her eyes. “Ain’t you Bianca’s boy?”
J.J. let out a low curse. “Let’s go!”
Around the corner they came upon Arnold’s target and heaved their bricks through the glass. It came crashing down in a sparkling shower.
“Love that sound!” J.J. shouted.
Inside they stuffed their pockets with candy, cigarettes, and lighters, and filled one box with liquor bottles and another with beer.
“Don’t we need a bunch of cloth to stick in them?” J.J. asked.
“I know where we can get some.”
They hid the heavy boxes in the tall weeds behind some trash cans and took off running again.
“There!” Arnold shouted.
They hopped a fence and landed hard on the other side, where sheets and baby diapers were strung on a clothesline. Arnold started to pull a diaper off the line.
“Not that,” J.J. said. “That’s cold, man. Use the sheet. We can tear it up easier anyway.”
They yanked the sheet down. On the other side of it hung a yellow floral sundress and a line of women’s undergarments. For just a moment, J.J. was distracted.
“C’mon, help me with this,” Arnold called from the ground. He was biting at the sheet and tearing off long strips. They looked like the bandages J.J.’s grandma rolled with the church ladies for the Red Cross.
“That’s enough,” Arnold announced a minute later, and he grabbed up the handful of fabric strips. “Let’s go.”
When they were back on the sidewalk, Arnold took off at a run for the stashed liquor bottles. J.J. looked back at the house, where a girl he knew sat in the front window. They locked eyes for a moment before J.J. turned and ran after his friend.
Heart pounding in time with his new shoes hitting the pavement, J.J. thought about the girl and the brassieres he’d seen hanging on the line next to that yellow dress. He tripped on Arnold as he came around the back of the liquor store. Rum splashed out of the bottle in Arnold’s hand and onto his bare arm.
“Watch it, man!”
“You sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Sure. I seen it on the news.”
They opened up four bottles, soaked the strips of torn-up sheet, and inserted them into the necks.
“Let’s go,” Arnold said.
“No houses,” J.J. said.
They ran back out to the street and scanned the shops.
“That one,” Arnold said, pointing.
He found a potted plant by the door and chucked it through the store window. Then he lit the fuse and tossed it through the open space into the little grocery store. It broke against a shelf and sputtered into nothing.
Arnold cursed and shouted. “Gimme another one.” He tried again with the same ineffective result.
“I thought you said you knew what you were doing.”
J.J. heard the sound of laughing behind him and turned to find a boy not much older than himself grabbing his stomach in scornful delight. “Fool!” he shouted. “You need gasoline to make a Molotov cocktail!” Then he kept walking up the street with a spring in his step.
J.J. leveled an exasperated look at Arnold.
“Shut up. How was I to know?”
“You saw it on the news,” J.J. mocked.
“Forget the Molotov cocktails then.”
Arnold sent another brick sailing through the window of a record shop. The boys worked their way down the street until J.J.’s throwing arm was sore. Then they went back for the beer. The street teemed with people shouting and looting and throwing rocks at the line of police that had moved up from their spot near Clairmount where the rioting had begun more than twelve hours earlier. In full view of the police, young men, black and white, and even some women were carrying off televisions, speakers, boxes of laundry detergent, coats, couches, guns, and loaves of bread. Shots were fired here and there, but none of them came from the police.
“Why ain’t they doing nothin’?” J.J. asked a man emerging from the liquor store with his own box full of booze.
“Can’t shoot back. Orders. So get what you want while the gettin’s good!” The man walked on down the street, bottles clinking all the way. J.J. wondered if the man knew about needing gasoline.
“C’mon, J.J.! I’m gettin’ me a color TV!”
Arnold ran into an electronics store they had spared on their earlier tour of the street because they liked the guy who ran it. But someone else had broken in, and now hordes of people jostled for the goods inside. J.J. swallowed down a pang of conscience. That guy never did anything to him.
A few minutes later Arnold resurfaced carrying a turntable. “TVs all gone, but I got this!”
“You already have a record player.”
“So?”
J.J. shook his head. “You stealin’ somethin’ you don’t need from someone you like.”
“Hey, I didn’t break the window, man. Everything’s gonna be gone from that place anyway. Why shouldn’t I get my piece?”
“That ain’t what this is about.”
“Yeah, what’s it about then? You so smart. What’s it about?”
“It’s about Rod. Remember? It’s about black power. It’s about showin’ them we ain’t gonna take it no more. It’s about takin’ control of our own destiny. Didn’t you ever listen when we was at those rallies with Derek? This is bigger than gettin’ some stuff for free.”
“Oh yeah?” Arnold looked at J.J.’s gleaming shoes, which were already scuffed from climbing fences and running down cracked sidewalks.
“That’s different. That guy makes you feel like scum every time he catch you lookin’ in the window.”
“Oh, I see how it is. Even when you steal you’s better than me, huh? Go home, J.J. Go on home to your mama and show her your shiny new church shoes. I bet she’ll be real proud of you and your principles.”
Arnold turned away. J.J. looked at his feet and wished he had his old sneakers back.
The riot closed in around them, enveloping them in a smoking cacophony of sirens, screams, and shattering glass. To the south, the sky was black.
As the sun set late Sunday night, J.J. stared at the smoking rubble of his house. Up and down the street, chimneys rose up like factory
smokestacks, like that photograph of the aftermath of Sherman’s march to the sea he’d seen in his history textbook. While he and Arnold had spread the mayhem north, others had spread it south. His house was gone, and he had no idea whether or not Mama and Grandma had escaped or if they’d been consumed by the flames. He sat down hard on the garbage-strewn street, pulled his knees to his chest, and wept.
“J.J.?”
He looked up to see a tall man closing in on foot. “Will?”
“Thank you, Lord,” William said into the smoke-choked sky. He threw his arms around his nephew.
J.J. stuffed his tears back inside. “Where’s Mama and Grandma?”
“Aunt Dee’s. I’m taking you there right now. Had to leave my car a few blocks away. But we’re not far. We can get there on foot. Better get going. It’s getting dark.” William put his camera up to his face and snapped a few photos of the wreckage.
“What you doin’?”
“Capturing history, kid. Nora’s idea. Already got three rolls done. Got three more ready to go. Hey, back up a minute.”
“Don’t take my picture.”
“C’mon.”
“I said don’t take my picture.”
William let his camera hang from the strap around his neck. “Okay, man.”
“Let’s go,” J.J. said.
“We can skip over to Linwood on Virginia Park. Better avoid Twelfth.”
They trotted down Seward and took a jog in the road, William stopping to snap a photo every few minutes, then catching up. When they turned the corner onto Linwood, they stopped short. The conflagration that had started three blocks to the east was already consuming that street as well.
“I don’t know, man,” J.J. said. “You really think we can get through all that?”
“I guess we have to.”
“What if they had to leave Aunt Dee’s?”
“We won’t know until we get there. But they’re expecting us. And I need to call Nora.”
They hurried through streets flooded with people—concerned neighbors checking on each other, looters bringing their stolen goods home to their families, police officers watching over the proceedings with anxious eyes and itching trigger fingers. The man with the box of liquor was right. The cops offered little resistance to the rioters, who were taking full advantage of this mandated restraint.