by Randi Pink
Mrs. Nichelle stared into Angel’s eyes like she hadn’t slept in months. “What’s happening, Angel? Why are they doing this to us?”
Angel knew she had no time but couldn’t resist the urge to comfort her. “The why is of no importance here,” Angel said, forcing a smile and placing a gentle palm over Michael’s sweaty forehead. “All that matters is that you get your little man to safety. That’s your only job, Mrs. Nichelle. The burning doesn’t matter. Not even Greenwood matters. You just survive to raise this little boy into a man so he can build a better Greenwood one day.” Michael halted his sobbing and calmed as if accepting the charge. Angel glanced around to see men, only three houses down, lighting shrubs ablaze. “You have to go.”
“My Lord,” said Mr. Anniston, just appearing on the porch, holding an overstuffed pack. “Where will we go?”
“Mount Zion,” said Angel, knowing well from her readings that nowhere would be safe, not even the Lord’s house. “We’ll meet up there.” She looked around at the destruction. “Those of us who make it, I mean.”
Just then, her mama’s voice rang through the chaos. “Angel,” she said, not quite shrieking but not in a normal tone, either. “How can I…? What should I…?”
“No time for apologies,” Angel told her pleading mother. “You need to get to the church. Mr. Anniston, will you ensure my mother makes it there safely?”
“You have my word.”
Angel locked eyes with her and said, “I love you, Mama. See you very soon.”
“I love you, too, baby.”
Before her mother could fully gain her bearings, Angel headed in the opposite direction, away from Mount Zion.
“Where are you going?” her mother yelled after her. But Angel kept going without answering.
In the distance, she heard her mother again ask the same question. And then a third time. Her mother could have done it a fourth, too, but Angel was out of earshot. She needed to go. She needed to help.
ISAIAH
Isaiah banged on elderly Mrs. Edward’s front door and, after a few short minutes, circled the small house to bang on windows instead. Easily pushing seventy, Mrs. Edward was hard of hearing, he remembered.
“Mrs. Edward!” he screamed, bashing the glass.
Like a chorus, the neighboring houses’ lights flipped on from his yelling. He was killing multiple birds with one stone. Encouraged, he began to holler even louder. “Mrs. Edward! Wake up!”
From surrounding houses, Isaiah heard the repeating chorus of What’s that racket?, followed closely by knowing sighs of astonishment toward the approaching flames. He didn’t have to tell them a thing. Within seconds, they smelled and saw the destruction for themselves. Isaiah’s job was to startle as many residents awake as he could so they could see for themselves. But Mrs. Edward wasn’t responding, and he wouldn’t dare leave her to burn.
Though she never knew he’d lit the fuse to blow up her mailbox, he’d wronged her. She was always kind and quiet, never bothering another soul with gossip or worry. Mrs. Edward deserved better than to spend money she didn’t have on a new mailbox and lawn. She deserved better than to burn herself. And Isaiah owed her. The day after he’d done it, Isaiah waved and smiled at Mrs. Edward like he hadn’t ruined one of her possessions. Back then, he’d felt a mixture of shame for doing it and cleverness for getting away with it. But now he was desperate to save her.
Numerous households were awakened by his screams, but Mrs. Edward’s home stayed dark and quiet. Wake up, he thought in his frantic mind. Wake up so that I may make amends. So that I may be freed from your debt.
ANGEL
Angel watched from a far distance as Mr. and Mrs. Anniston took her mama and baby Michael in the direction of Mount Zion. The inferno around her had spiraled into utter confusion and terror. Lavalike, liquid heat dripped from dead streetlamps while shadowy figures, some holding children and elderly parents, scattered without instruction. Windows burst from the pressure of the flames, turning loving homes into what looked like fiery demons spitting their inhabitants into the streets. Within hours, her exquisite neighborhood had taken on the heat of hatred and been transformed into hell.
“Lord help” was the best she could do for prayer, and then she ran.
Her night slip was drenched in sweat and clung to her body. Even in the scramble of loss and impending death, she was horrifyingly aware of her near nudity. Surely the good Lord would grant her forgiveness under the circumstances. He’d put her on this earth to help, and if this wasn’t her opportunity to do just that, she couldn’t say what was.
As she ran, she passed gone houses with families standing lost in what used to be their yards.
“Mount Zion!” she screamed whenever she caught sight of another paralyzed group holding on to one another. “We’re all meeting at the Mount!”
The dark, thick smoke left behind by torches choked her dust-filled lungs as she ran. She needed water, but still, she never stopped running and yelling the best destination she could think of, hoping it was the right one.
Hyperaware of her surroundings, she kept catching the enemy in her periphery. Peeking through bushes, congregating between burning houses, and some even walking down railroad tracks without care, grinning and pointing at the destruction they’d caused. How could they burn such a place? she thought between coughs. Du Bois was right. Isaiah was right. And her beloved Booker T. Washington was more wrong than she ever could’ve imagined.
There was no way to live peacefully alongside the foe. No building by one’s own bootstraps or rising from ashes. Washington had been guessing, just as she was about Mount Zion. Leading Black folks toward something he didn’t truly know existed, and watching the fire seep through every crack of Negro Wall Street, she instantly recognized he’d guessed wrong.
“Mount Zion!” she hollered over her anger, seeing another tightly grouped clump of terrified neighbors. “Go to the Mount! Mount Zion!” she said, spotting the shadow of a little girl, all alone in her yard. Squinting, she tried to make out the obscure figure of her, shaded and outlined with angry orange as her backdrop. A quick flicker of light passed the young girl’s cheek. “Truly?”
Angel jogged toward her with arms wide. The closer Angel got to Truly, the more she saw her, heavy with pain. She didn’t want to ask, because she could read the answer on Truly’s face. But Angel had no choice at all.
“Where are your parents?”
Truly didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she hung her tiny head and sobbed like no child should have to. “Daddy went back in to help Mommy.”
Angel crouched to her knees, eye level with seven-year-old Truly. “How long ago?”
“Too long,” Truly replied.
Angel briefly toyed with the thought of trying to save them. She saw her papa, standing again before scorching that intruder’s mouth shut for good. She felt a selfish gratitude for having her mama and papa for sixteen whole years, while this poor child, in the span of a few minutes, was likely orphaned. Angel leaped to her feet and began running the circumference of Truly’s house, searching for any sign of life left inside.
Nearly the entire home was engulfed; the only entry point was a raised window in a tiny back bedroom. Peering inside, Angel saw a figure and blinked. Surely there could be no way.
“Mrs. Arnold?” Angel yelled into the black smoke. She had to be dead in the midst of such swirling smolder. “Mrs. Arnold!”
No response to her voice. The sounds of wood creaking above teased a cave-in of the roof, but still, Angel stepped out of her slip and wrapped it around her face, and climbed into Mrs. Arnold’s bedroom.
ISAIAH
Streaks of blood were left behind with every new knock on Mrs. Edward’s door, but Isaiah wouldn’t abandon her. He owed her, and if he let her burn, he would owe her for as long as he had left to live. In the distance, Isaiah heard a confused crowd growing.
“Lord have mercy, tell me I’m dreaming this.”
“How could they do it?”
Isaiah wanted to turn around and tell them all to shut up their complaining. Of course here. If not Greenwood, where? It’s textbook. Stamp out the most prosperous among us, and the rest lose hope. Eliminate the talented tenth, and there you had it, eternal servitude. Did these people not read Du Bois? A gentle hand startled him. Hyperalert, he’d assumed it was the white folks and swung at the eerie figure.
“Calm,” the familiar voice said to Isaiah, who still hadn’t placed it. “It’s just me.”
Muggy, he realized. Isaiah hadn’t thought once of Muggy at all in the midst of this.
“This is no time for games, Muggy,” Isaiah said through shaking teeth, his continuous knocks leaving small clumps of skin behind on Mrs. Edward’s door. “Go away.”
Muggy grabbed Isaiah’s wrists and held them in the air from behind. “Her hearing, Isaiah. She’s nearly deaf.”
Isaiah snatched his wrists out of Muggy’s grasp. “So leave her behind, huh? Run for your life while this poor woman burns with the rest of them. But who cares, right? She’s just an elderly, hard-of-hearing old fool, isn’t that it, Muggy Little Jr.? Well, you go. You run! I’m staying here. I owe this woman.”
Muggy lifted a large, crisply sharpened butcher ax from the leather bag crossed over his shoulder. “I owe her, too, Isaiah.”
Muggy drew the terrifying weapon back and brought it down hard and fast onto Mrs. Edward’s wooden front door, breaking it open.
ANGEL
Angel grabbed ahold of Mrs. Arnold’s limp feet and began to drag her toward the wide-open window. To Angel’s surprise, she wasn’t heavy. Her weight in the chaos seemed lighter than baby Michael’s, and lurching her dangling legs over the sill and out of the frame seemed easier than it should have.
She heard Mrs. Arnold fall onto the porch in a heap, and then she heard the creaks of faltering wood above her. Her body easily slipped through the window after Mrs. Arnold, and Angel grasped her underneath her armpits and began to scream for help, expecting no one to come.
The whole of Greenwood was consumed with their own infernos. Angel kept dragging her until she reached the middle of the backyard. Her tired, dry lips met Mrs. Arnold’s, and she began to blow as much fresh air into her lungs as she could breathe in. Then she pounded her chest with flat palms, praying she was doing this correctly.
As she pumped, she thought of Truly, alone in the front yard. Truly’s little life flashed before her. There would be struggle. More than any child should ever have to endure. She would have to navigate this horrible world with only her tiny hands and not-yet-developed female body. A perfect target, she was. Without protection from men, she would be ravaged, and soon. Angel began to cry tears onto Mrs. Arnold’s still cheeks. This was Truly’s mother lying on the ground before her. The child’s singular hope for a life worth living.
“Mrs. Arnold,” Angel said as she pumped her chest as hard as she could. “I need you to come back from wherever you’ve gone. No time to dawdle; you’ve got a baby girl standing alone. A girl is never an easy thing to be, Mrs. Arnold, you know that. Especially a Black one. You, ma’am, need to walk away from the gates and come back here to raise up your Truly. If you don’t, she will be spit out.”
Again, Angel breathed in new air and leaned over to share breath. She blew until her lungs emptied and she felt a rising in Mrs. Arnold’s chest. Then she repeated this, as many times as God told her to. There was nothing and no one else in the world at that moment. Just Angel and Mrs. Arnold, Truly’s last hope. The thought of giving up never crossed into her mind. Not once. She would breathe for this woman until this woman breathed for herself.
And all of a sudden, like a spark catching fire on a rock, Mrs. Arnold’s body came alive, shooting up and gasping for its own air. Angel yelled out incoherently, and someone appeared by Mrs. Arnold’s side to help.
In the slight light, Angel recognized Miss Ferris’s green glasses. She’d brought a large glass of water and held it to Mrs. Arnold’s dry lips. A few other neighbors surrounded Mrs. Arnold, and Angel nearly fainted from giving away most of her own oxygen.
She fell away from them into a heap and stared at Mr. and Mrs. Arnold’s home giving way to the fire. It went down with a dramatic crash, as if deciding to go out with a bang. The sparks made Angel squint, but she didn’t close her eyes to it. Her eyes were wide open.
While she was catching small sips of burning air, someone covered her body with a large, white fitted sheet. Somewhere in the bedlam, she’d lost the slip she’d wrapped around her mouth. It was likely burning with the rest of the Arnolds’s home. But thank the Lord, Mrs. Arnold was coughing and alive. She couldn’t see her, but she could hear the loud rattle of her lungs breaking phlegm free to clear her airways.
Still heaped on the ground, Angel caught sight of Truly running through the back gate and screaming for her mother. She ran like she was running toward hope and away from sorrow. The crowd parted for her, and she met her mother with a promise never to let her go.
Angel—put on this earth to help people—rose from the ground, wrapped herself in the sheet, and began to run.
“Where are you going?” asked Miss Ferris, who was still crouched next to Mrs. Arnold and Truly.
“To get Blue,” she yelled, coughing. “I’ll use Blue to carry people. Is your home—”
“Not yet, but it will be. A heaviness came over Miss Ferris’s shaded eyes. The back door’s open; go in and get clothes.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Angel coughed out.
“And, Angel,” Miss Ferris yelled after, “you’re the best of us.”
ISAIAH
Muggy went into Mrs. Edward’s first, still holding his large butcher’s ax. Together, they fanned off in different directions to find her.
“In here!” Muggy yelled out to Isaiah.
Isaiah quickly followed Muggy’s voice into Mrs. Edward’s sitting room, where she was very much awake, watching the flames grow. Rocking back and forth in her chair, she hummed “A Charge to Keep I Have” as if she weren’t panicked at all.
“Mrs. Edward?” Isaiah approached the strange sight slowly and cautiously. “Why haven’t you come out?”
She glanced around to them and smiled, pointing to her left ear. “You’ll have to speak up, young man.”
Isaiah crossed the room in two strides and crouched at her feet. “If you stay here, you’ll die. We need to run. Now.”
Mrs. Edward again smiled and placed her age-wrinkled hand over the top of his. “The arthritis has taken the whole of my body. My running days are done.”
“Well,” injected Muggy with a familiar air of grandness. “I’ll carry you.”
“You’re sweet to offer,” she started. “But you need to help somebody worth helping. My life has been full and lovely, you see? Contentment is my most cherished possession, and I’m just fine with dying here today.”
“I won’t hear of it!” yelled Muggy.
“Young man,” she said, not smiling anymore. “You don’t speak to your elders like that, not even in this.” She motioned toward the flames. “You’ve got to get where I’ve gotten to. Walk the hard journey I have walked. I deserve your respect, do you understand me?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Muggy softened, to Isaiah’s surprise. “I do.”
But Isaiah understood Muggy’s anger. She wasn’t allowing them to save her. More so, she wasn’t allowing them penance for destroying something that belonged to her all those years ago. She was blocking freedom from them.
“We’re the ones that burned your box,” Isaiah blurted out, and then hung his head as low as it would go.
“I know that,” she said. “I wondered when conscience would catch.”
“How did you know?” asked Muggy.
She laughed. “You know so little, don’t you? You pretend well, but at your core, you know only bluster. Young man, I sit here most days. Rocking, looking out, waiting for the Lord
to walk up my front steps and take me home. I saw you when you did it.”
“So why not tell anyone?” asked Isaiah, knowing he was wasting valuable time but unable to leave without knowing.
“Contentment is an earned thing,” she replied. “Not something you get without accumulating years’ worth of scars. The way I figure it, bombing my box and regretting it were on the path to yours.” She looked wide-eyed out the window at an airplane circling in the night like a bird locking onto prey. “You two need to go. Help as many folks in this town as you can.”
Isaiah stood and walked to the doorway, knowing she couldn’t be convinced.
She grinned again. “Don’t worry. I forgave you the moment you did it. Now get.”
Muggy and Isaiah left Mrs. Edward alone in her home.
ANGEL
As promised, Miss Ferris’s back door was open. As Angel crossed the threshold, she stepped out of the sheet. Again naked, she went searching for Miss Ferris’s closet. Angel quickly found it and threw on the first thing she saw, a pair of gardening overalls and a long white shirt.
As she went to leave, she passed the stocked pantry and gathered an armful of canned fruits and as many loaves of bread as she could tuck underneath her chin. As Angel crossed the back door, Miss Ferris’s tiny library caught her full attention. Actually, just one book within the library did—The Secret Garden.
She hurried to the bike, loaded it with food, and ran back inside to collect the book. Then, almost instinctively, she gripped Up from Slavery, Peter and Wendy, The Negro, The Philadelphia Negro, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Story of My Life, and The Talented Tenth from their shelves. The other two, The Souls of Black Folk and Harriet Tubman, were at Angel’s and Isaiah’s houses, unreachable. She couldn’t bear leaving the books she and Isaiah had chosen so carefully and meticulously for their shared summer job. She couldn’t image them scorched and unrecognizable. She carried them to the side basket and took the few moments to organize them in the back of the bike by category.