by Randi Pink
She lifted herself from bed and peeked through the crack in her curtains. She found herself staring into a bright blue eye. A wide-eyed man pressed his face on the outside of her bedroom window, holding a handmade torch in one hand and a large baton in the other.
Angel screamed without trying to and ran to her mama and papa.
ISAIAH
Isaiah never entered his mother’s room without knocking, but that night, he did. When he opened the door, he saw her lying atop the covers, curled in fetal position. A slight smile lifted her face in her dim room.
Isaiah wanted nothing more than to let her sleep. He wanted to shut the door behind him and allow his sweet ma to bring her last pleasant dream to a close. He didn’t want her to know what he now knew—beloved Greenwood was burning. The only space for Black Tulsans in the white imagination had become too successful. Too much of a threat, so now it, too, was being taken away, just as his father had predicted.
In the distance, he heard a wailing and knew he should wake her. But instead, he quietly closed the door and then glanced at his watch.
“Two minutes,” he whispered into darkness. He would give her two more minutes to smile in her sleep.
In the front room closet, Isaiah found his father’s extra-large military duffel bag hanging on the inside hook. He wasted a moment to breathe it in. It smelled like strange oil and sweat. The fabric of it was soft like it had been dragged around many places, and it was empty except for his father’s clanking dog tags.
Almost instinctively, Isaiah bowed his head and put them on, as if knighting himself. He wanted to fight. For his smiling, sleeping mother. For his benevolent, bright angel. And for his sweltering Greenwood.
Moving quickly around his house, he began collecting necessities—dried beans, rice, and six loaves of fresh-baked bread. Then he turned his attention to the memories over the fireplace.
Photographs of himself as a baby, then a toddler, then a child, and then now. Fragile newspaper clippings of his saluting father’s obituary and funeral program. His father’s medals carefully lined along the mantel like hand-tall soldiers. Isaiah rarely allowed himself to look there. It was too hard to remember, but now that he was forced to, he realized there was nothing representing his ma. Not even a photograph with her in it. He glanced at his watch to see that his two minutes were nearly up. He needed to find something sentimental for her sake. Something representing the quiet power of her love. The bag of food and memories simply was not complete without that.
Isaiah took one last look at his small, quaint home. “Thank you,” he whispered in the darkness. He wished he could grab it all and stuff it in the bag. The wool knit throw with blocks of bright colors folded on the arm of the couch. The side table he hit his head on when he was learning to walk. He still had the scar to prove it. This, he knew, was probably the last time he’d see it all. “Thanks for everything,” he told his sweet home.
Gently opening her bedroom door, he found her still smiling in her sleep. He glanced over her to see a wedding collage framed at her bedside table. Within it was his mother and father’s singular wedding-day picture, a swatch of lace from her dress, and the handkerchief from his suit. Peeking from the borders were their vows, handwritten on thick, expensive paper.
Isaiah lifted it into his bag, then squatted at her side.
“Ma,” he whispered, wanting to wake her with as much calm as possible. “Sweet, sweet Ma.”
She stirred and grinned, still dreaming what seemed to be the sweetest dream. He placed a gentle hand onto the top of her scarfed head. “Ma,” he said a bit louder. “My love, you need to wake.”
Her eyes slowly snuck a quick look through long lashes and closed again. Then she burst awake as if realizing the strangeness of his presence at her side. “My God,” she said in panic. “What’s happened? What’s the matter? Are you hurt?”
“Not me,” he said as calmly as possible. “Greenwood.”
She shook the remainder of her sleep away and asked, “What could you mean, Isaiah? How is Greenwood hurt?”
Instead of answering, he rose to his feet and opened her white curtains to reveal their scorching community. At first, her eyes squinted in confusion but then widened with knowing.
“We need to go,” he told her. “Now.”
“Where?” she asked him as if he were the parent and their roles were reversed. “If not Greenwood, where do we flee to?”
It was a good question. As Isaiah stood there holding the heavy duffel bag, his thoughts jumbled into themselves for the first time since he’d smelled the scorched juniper. Where could they go? How would they coordinate with everyone else? How would they know they weren’t running toward the enemy?
His hands began to cramp from being clasped into such tight fists. His knee buckled a bit, weak from the weight of his father’s absence. He shifted his gaze to the twirling flames in the distance and attempted to place them.
The flickers burned brightest to his east. From the smell of the juniper, they’d gotten to that early in the night, which meant they should avoid Mrs. Tate’s house at all costs. Then he realized Mr. Morris’s woodshed would serve as exceptional kindling for the flames, and the old man would surely need help getting out. And they were just down the road from Vice Principal and Mrs. Anniston and their newborn. Isaiah briefly closed his eyes and said a small prayer for their new family.
And then it hit him. “My God,” he said to his ma. “Angel.”
In response, she stood and looked out the window. The flames shone brightest near her street. “It could be too late.”
Isaiah ignored the comment, even though he absolutely had heard it. “Get dressed quickly. I’ll go get cloth to cover our noses from smoke.” He hurried toward the hallway pantry. “I’ll be waiting by the front door. And, Ma…” He paused, staring into her shocked, twinkling eyes. “I love you.”
He hurried to his duties before she had a chance to say it back.
ANGEL
The sinister blue eye staring into Angel’s private bedroom terrified her into near hysterics. Heart pounding, she cried out and ran to awaken her parents. Making her way down the hall, she picked up the sight of converging torches surrounding her small home. The house should be dark, she thought, but instead, it was a radiant orange and as hot as a skillet.
She burst into her parents’ bedroom, startling them awake. As soon as their eyes opened, they began to understand. The smell of burning buildings overwhelmed Angel’s nostrils, and the orange was as bright as the first flash of sunrise. The worst of all, however, was the chorus of screams.
Those screams belonged to her church members, her classmates, her teachers, her doctors. They belonged to the people who made up the beautiful and complicated periphery of her lovely life. The loudest one, though, came from the mouth of her mama when she saw the blue-eyed, torch-wielding man standing directly behind her only daughter. He’d made it into the house.
Angel turned to see a scrawny man hardly taller than herself. Without the torch and steel bar, he would surely be unthreatening, Angel thought. A paper tiger with no power to speak of if it wasn’t for his race. Angel hated this man without knowing him.
He grabbed her forearm and threw her to the floor toward her parents. “Time to go.”
That was all he told them. Time to go. That was all they got from the trespasser in their home in the wee hours of the morning. Angel stood back up tall, facing him with as much strength as she could muster.
“Where are you taking us?” she asked, fighting to keep her voice from shaking.
“None of your goddamn business is where,” he replied, the heavy stench of liquor filling the room. “Now get up ’fore I burn it down with you three in it!”
Angel’s mama stood to the left side of her ailing husband. “Angel,” she said with surprising calm. “We will have to lift him.”
Dutifully, Angel crouched underneath her father’s right shoulder and together she and her mother lifted his limp body from the bed.<
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“Please,” he managed to say. “Leave me. Please.”
The intruder stood in their doorway, grinning with snuff-black teeth. “He’s right, you know? Ain’t no use trying to move him. We’re burning this whole damn place down. You two need to run if you got a chance in hell of surviving this night. And can’t run holding dead weight.”
“Leave me,” her father said, staring deep into her eyes. “Your mother won’t. You have to.”
Angel’s mother looked at her. “Don’t you dare do it, Angel. We can all make it out of here together. You hear me?”
Both of her parents were pleading with her. Both asking the unthinkable. One, to leave her precious father and let him burn. And the other, to defy him because he couldn’t put up an adequate fight otherwise.
“I can’t hold him myself,” her mother said, crying intensely. “I need you or I’ll drop him. Please, Angel, please.”
Then Angel looked at her father. He was smiling at her. His was a smile that could light up a dull room and bring joy back when there was none to speak of. The same smile she’d seen on every Sunday afternoon when her mother set his heaping plate of food in front of him. The exact same one Angel had seen when she sat for hours listening to his philosophies and wisdoms. The smile that gave her hope when the whole world seemed to think she was too strange to exist.
She leaned in to kiss his grinning cheek with as much tenderness as she could find inside of herself, and she did as he told her to do. She released him, giving the whole of his weight to her mother, who buckled underneath it.
Angel hid her face behind her hands, attempting to veil her pain from witness of the white man in her doorway, but her chest betrayed her, bobbing from crying as she watched her parents’ embrace. There was no air between them, and Angel could hear them whispering I love yous back and forth into one another’s necks.
“We don’t have all day,” announced the man in the doorway. “I’ve given you more than enough time to say goodbye. Now get!”
As Angel’s mother released her father, to her surprise, he stood on his own. With both feet firmly planted, he took two impossible steps forward, accompanying his wife and daughter safely past the intruder. Angel’s mother walked ahead, crying hysterically, and disappeared out the front door.
“I love you more than life,” her father said to Angel, who had just made it to the living room. “Watch those sneaky gray clouds for clues.” He winked to his daughter and then turned his gaze to the prowler who was just a few feet away from him.
Angel watched as her father grabbed the intruder’s torch and lowered it to his face, burning the white man’s mouth into a screaming blur.
“Angel! Go!” her father yelled after them. “Run!”
She ran into the yard, found her mother, grabbed her shaking hand, and ran toward darkness, away from all of the orange.
ISAIAH
“Mount Zion!” Isaiah announced as his now-dressed mother reached the front door. “I think that’s where everyone will go. And surely they won’t burn down the Lord’s house. They call themselves Christians, after all.”
Down deep, Isaiah knew his words were empty and false. He’d read enough to know that the hypocrisy of such evil provided no cover even for sanctuaries of worship. Still, he needed to provide some comfort to his mother. True leaders projected confidence, even in the most hopeless of places. Mount Zion was the best his own frazzled brain could come up with.
He placed his hands on her shoulders. “Ready?” he asked.
She nodded without words, and they exited their spotless home for what they knew would be the last time. Crossing the yard, Isaiah looked up at the leggy tree outside of his bedroom. For a fleeting second, he prayed for God to spare that tree for its beauty and memories.
When he was small, he’d used the enormous rocks at the base of it as lifts to reach the lowest-hanging branch. When his calloused palms caught good grip of it, he swung his legs atop, and from there, climbing was easy. He remembered the first time he built courage enough to stand, hands free, on the highest branch. You’ll break your neck, his father had said, never actually telling him to get down. He saw pride in his father’s smiling eyes. He saw that his father was honored to have a son so brave.
“Please, God,” Isaiah whispered to the burning wind. “At least save the tree.”
The feel of the night was strange since the darkness had been forcibly stolen by bright flames. Isaiah and his mother felt eerie calm as they ran down the center of the street. Aside from a few figures in the distance, his side of Greenwood still slept. The reflex to stop at crosswalks crept into Isaiah’s gut. The pull to raise his hand to wave at neighbors, and maybe pick a stem of verbena for his ma was strong. Such instincts were ingrained into him, coursing through his veins as a part of his being. He wondered if he’d ever be able to shed them fully. Then, memories came.
Passing elderly Mrs. Edward’s mailbox, the light from the not-so-distant flames illuminated the permanent scorch left after he and Muggy had blown it up. It had been Muggy’s idea—Muggy brought the supplies, Muggy devised the plan, but it was Isaiah who’d lit the final match. He thought of poor Mrs. Edward, cozy under one of her handmade blankets, waking the moment she was about to burn.
To his left was Dorothy Mae’s house, the only two-level tower on their street. Dorothy Mae’s parents valued opulence, and the grange house told the tale with its pointed shrubs and crisp shutters. Isaiah thought of Dorothy Mae stealing from him, upending his life as he knew it. He thought of her as sinister, sneaky, and crafty, using her beauty and soft lips as keys to locked kingdoms. But then he remembered. She wanted to fly. How she got up there didn’t matter, she’d said. A product of Greenwood, she, like Isaiah, was desperate to be set free.
Next door to Dorothy Mae was the small, eclipsed home of Bloody Mary. A few down from her was Annie Carlson, the bad poet from his English class. Directly across from her was Scott Hall, who he’d cruelly locked in the filthy bathroom stall back in middle school.
Isaiah let go of his ma’s hand and stood frozen in the midst. “You need to go ahead,” he told her.
“What?” she asked, stunned. “No!”
“These people have no idea what’s coming,” he said, nervously fiddling with his father’s hanging dog tags. “I need to at least wake them so they can have a chance.”
His ma nodded at her late husband’s tags, recognizing there was no use trying to stop her son. She knew him better than anyone else on earth did. And she knew when he’d made up his stubborn mind.
“I’ll help you,” she said.
“No,” he objected, handing her the loaded duffel bag. “You need to get to Mount Zion and gather more supplies from the kitchen and stockroom.” She stepped forward to interject. “More than that.” He reached his hand to her soft cheek. “You need to tell everyone I send to you what’s what. They will be frazzled and confused when they get to you. Maybe even still in their nightclothes and slippers. You have to help them be ready for many difficult days as I know only you can.”
She looked him over, first skeptically, and then respectfully. “Where did you come from, my sweet, sweet boy? You shouldn’t have to be a man yet.”
“You shouldn’t have had to be both for so long,” he replied. “Now go! I need to wake these people up before they die in their beds.”
ANGEL
“How could you?” Angel’s mama kept yelling as neighbors ran away from their smoke-filled homes with only the clothes on their backs. “Angel! We could have all made it out.”
Her mama was in a full mania, absolutely unable to be consoled with words or touch or anything else Angel could think of. Angel then turned her attention to the approaching men with torches. They’d already made it past Mrs. Tate’s home. She couldn’t see the house from there, but she could smell the juniper burning stiff on the air.
“We have to go, now,” Angel told her mama before grasping hard on her upper arm. In response, she violently twirled herself onto
the grass and into a weeping, unmovable bulge.
A mix of people were running in the streets. Neighbors she knew from as far back as she could remember. Loved ones who sat in the same pew at church jogged past her and her mama, searching out which direction to go. Then there were white men in the crowd as well, menacing. In direct comparison to her neighbors, who looked completely caught off guard, to Angel the intruders looked prepared for the chaos. They approached an strategic clumps of three, and others hung back for an alternating ambush.
That’s when Angel entered a strange headspace, somewhere between daze and shock. Her mind went blank, and there was no hope left within her. She couldn’t tell how much time had passed, but the smells strengthened. Swirling within the burning juniper was now the smell of cooking meat. Human flesh, she realized. Or maybe unfortunate pets caught in the charred massacre. Intense, panicked thoughts began to swirl in her head.
She had just killed her father.
She’d released him to crumple. Against the will of her precious mother, who now hated her. Of course she did. Angel had allowed the singular love of her life to burn in her childhood home. She may as well burn with the rest of it.
Then, piercing the veil, were familiar screams. Baby Michael! It was as if someone had stuck Angel in the side with the tip of a brooch pin. She spun to search for him. Mrs. Nichelle stood stunned on her front porch, holding wailing Michael like he was her only piece of treasure left in the world.
Angel squatted to her weepy mama’s side. “I have to check on Michael. Cry now, but when I get back to you, we’re leaving this place together. You hear me?”
Her mama didn’t respond. Angel hurried to Mrs. Nichelle.
“Where’s Mr. Anniston?” Angel asked, out of breath.
“I-i-inside … collecting supplies.”
“There’s no time,” Angel told her. “Michael’s yells are making you all a target. You need to go.”