Her dress was on fire.
She smoothed her hair back and stepped off the ledge as if she were stepping off the curb and crossing the street. She plummeted and her skirts rose up around her, a flower of flame. She landed only six feet from me. A cinder hit my cheek and bounced away before I could move.
Three women stood on another window ledge together. They linked arms, closed their eyes, and jumped, and their aim was good, but they tore right through the bottom of the safety net, and the firemen holding it were splattered with blood.
“I didn’t know, I didn’t know they would come down three, four at a time, arms wrapped around each other’s waists,” the fire chief wept when Ruthie interviewed him later.
I searched the faces of the women pouring out of the building, running to avoid being hit by the falling girls, their friends, but I didn’t find Shayna there. I ran through the street, pulling away from the men who tried to stop me, looking at the fallen, but I could not find my sister among them either.
I looked up at the flame-filled windows. There was no more jumping now.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” I whispered.
I wept while the building flamed with girls burning, burning here in America.
Copyright (C) 2013 by Veronica Schanoes
Art copyright (C) 2013 by Anna & Elena Balbusso
Burning Girls Page 6