Fire in the Streets (15 page)

“You okay, girl?” Rocco says.

“You're the one got shot.”

Rocco shrugs. “A bullet is a bullet is a bullet,” he says. “I been expecting this day for a while now. Least I ain't dead yet.”

“Sure, but don't you want to aim a little higher than that?”

“Welcome to the revolution, girl.” Rocco smiles sadly. “We ain't in it to survive.”

W
ALKING HOME ALONE, I'M FRIGHTENED.
I flinch at every little sound, my courage evaporated.

It's not in my head, entirely. Something about the very streets has changed. I feel the pavement through my shoes pushing back at me, fiery and fierce. It sets me nearly running to get to someplace safe.

The apartment is empty, silent except for the strained beating of the fan blades in the window, struggling to churn a breeze out of the thick autumn air. I knock it aside, slam the window shut. Drop to the floor beneath it, tug off my shoes to let my feet breathe.

I lean against the wall, closing my eyes. I don't want what's outside to come in. The air grows so still, the sweat on my skin can't even cool. It dries to a thick muck in the creases of my arms. I need to shower.

It's a long, slow path, me crawling to the bathroom.
It's a good thing I'm on my knees, in the end. I hiccup the remnants of my lunch into the toilet. The images flash like a slide show. Cherry flying into the room. The pulse of shattering glass. Blood pooling under Rocco's pressing palm, staining his sleeve. Jolene's desperate face as she dove atop me.

I don't understand it, really. I've seen worse things. I've seen Mama's face after one man struck her with the base of a bottle. Bucky Willis lying broken in the street. I've seen a shot-dead body two different times—once out the window and once on the way home from school. I've been pretty sure I can handle anything, all this time, after everything.

I reach into the bathtub, run the water cold. Strip. Roll into the damp pool, let it cool my skin of this ache. The soap bar is skinny. We're running low. It's one of those times when I just want the big, new bar, the way it feels in my hand, the abundance of lather and the knowledge that it'll be easy to get plenty clean. Today I have to work harder. The little bar slips and slides. I scrub for a long time. Everything is harder today.

R
AHEEM COMES BARRELING THROUGH THE
front door. “Maxie,” he calls. “Oh, there you are.”

“Here I am.” Standing in the kitchen, staring at the fridge.

He rushes up and hugs me, all worried and real. “Are you okay?”

“Sure.” But the tears come out of nowhere. I close my eyes and wrap my arms around his middle. I let him cup my hair with a big hand and remind me that he loves me, without so many words. “Jesus, Maxie” is all he says. He holds me close.

Nothing can erase the memory, the slice of terror that slammed its way through me, sure as any bullet.

He draws back, finally. Brushes my hair off my forehead, smudges tears off my cheeks. Looks at me. I'm expecting words of comfort, though I can't imagine any.

“Let's eat,” he says. “I'm starving. Have you eaten?”

I cock a brow at him, like “that's the best you can do?” He shrugs, and a moment later we are both laughing.

It's no surprise that Mama also flies home, worried. Nothing big that happens stays secret for long around here. “I knew I didn't like this,” she says for about the fortieth time, pacing the living room rug.

I'm not really caring what she has to say about it. I've planted myself in the green armchair. Arms crossed, legs tucked in. Basically turning my limbs into as much of a wall as I can make them.

Wil is here too. Sprawled out on the couch, pants unbuckled like he owns the place. I've got my eye on him.

“I hear them chanting, you know,” Mama says. “‘Live for the people. Die for the people.'” She huffs her breath. “That's not for you, you know. That's for someone else.”

It could have been me today. I stare at the rug beneath her feet. Stare at its burned edge. It is badly burned, recognizably burned. But in the year since it happened, I've never heard Mama take notice.

“The Panthers are doing their thing,” Wil says. “I think it's cool, Maxie.”

“This is my daughter,” Mama says. “Stay out of it.”

I want to laugh at that one. Stay out of what? Not our home, not our lives, not my every waking fear. Just this
conversation. I would laugh, but my laugh place is stuck somewhere pretty deep at the moment.

I stare at the rug, at all the things she doesn't see. Doesn't understand.

“Raheem is eighteen now,” she says. “If he's drafted . . .” Her voice trails off.

I glance up at her then. I'm scared of it too. The thought of him dead in some distant jungle, like our cousin, like the guys down the block. The thought of him even being over there, fighting. We've never been out of Chicago. I don't know what the rest of the world looks like, but in the newspaper pictures Vietnam seems like the strangest, most horrible place you can imagine.

But why doesn't Mama get it? Raheem is in the war already. Right this minute he's on duty, policing the police. The threat is real. The threat is here in front of us. I have the scent of fired gunpowder in my nose and in my lungs as ready proof.

Her foot catches on the rug's charred edge, but she doesn't glance down. Doesn't react, beyond knocking it back with her toe. An afterthought.

She doesn't see. Doesn't understand.

E
VERYONE HAS SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT
what happened. But it's what Rocco said that lingers with me.
“We ain't in it to survive.”

It sticks with me and it makes me jumpy under the skin. I can't make myself go to school the next day. Can't make myself stay in. I linger in the park in the morning, sit on the wall and eat an apple for lunch, walk the streets through the afternoon. Thinking about the bite of bricks on the backs of my thighs, the strange autumn sun, and the kinds of things like those that you tend to miss if you're dead.

Surviving the shooting gives me street cred. The guys tip their hats to me; it seems like they're for real. Not mocking. I think. It's not like I'm a hero or anything. Just, I've stood on the front line for a moment and lived to tell the tale, and that means something to people around here.

I know it's after-school time when the light is right and
I start to see kids coming, wearing their book bags and the regular look of boredom that it always takes a few minutes of freedom to shake.

Sam appears among them, rushing toward me with his arms up like “Where have you been?”

“Here you are,” he says, stopping a foot away. Why is he stopping?

I cross my arms over my chest. “Here I am.”

“I heard what happened. You okay?”

There was a time I would have wanted to run to him, tell him the yes and the no and everything in between. A time that hasn't quite passed.

“I'm okay.”

He touches my arm, the way he used to. “Really?”

I hold it together, tell myself that Sam, too, has faced bullets. Only for him, it all ended a lot worse. No right to complain in the face of that.

“Sure.”

“I'm glad you're okay.” He shuffles his feet.

“Thanks, Sam,” I say. “I guess I'll see you around.”

“No,” he says.

“What?”

“I want to see you. I don't want to guess.”

My face turns warm. “I want to see you, too.” But there are reasons . . .

Sam puts his arm around me, hugs me. I let my face rest on his shoulder for a moment before I pull away.

Are we together, or not? We don't talk about it. We linger near each other, walking, not talking, and there's solace in his presence. In our presence together.

E
MMALEE AND PATRICE JUMP OFF THE WALL
when they see me crossing the park toward them.

“You weren't in school,” Patrice says, stating the obvious.

“Are you okay?” Emmalee says. They hug me, both at the same time. Lots of limbs and awkwardness.

“Yeah.” I'm prepared to tell them all of it, about the ache in my stomach and the trembling in my heart. The feeling like everything is broken, and what I know I have to do.

“Do you see now, why we can't go there?” Patrice blurts.

I shake loose of them. “I'm on my way there now.” Anything else I was going to say stalls.

“Maxie, I'm really not sure—”

I slice in, cutting on top of Emmalee's voice of reason. “You don't have to go, but I'm going.”

“We're not coming,” Patrice says. “And you shouldn't either.”

How can I explain? The shooting made me want it more, not less. It scared me down deep, but it also freed something there. Something I can't put back in place.

“The Panthers are everything,” I say. “You know that. We all know that. We talked about it.” A while ago, after Steve died. We sat together and cried, and swore we'd do whatever we could to stop it happening to anyone else we know.

“You could have
died
,” Patrice says. “It's not fun anymore.”

“Fun? It's not supposed to be fun.” I feel my voice rising. My energy.

“We'll still come to the Freedom School with the rest of the kids,” Emmalee says.

Patrice shakes her head. “I'm not allowed to ever do anything with the Panthers again. My dad said.”

“Just don't tell him. Like before.” But I can see in her face that blaming her dad is only an excuse. She doesn't want to come with me. Not anymore.

Emmalee takes our hands. We stand in a familiar little triangle. Nothing more has to be said. There are tears now. In my eyes. Patrice's. Emmalee's.

“Please, stay,” Patrice cries, but I wish she'd said
nothing. Emmalee just looks at me, already knowing. Everything's different now. For the first time ever we can't find a way for it to be us three, together.

They're holding my hands, will hold them as long as I let them, but I can't say no to this call that is digging inside me. When the bullets flew I wanted to fight. I don't remember choosing; it just happened.

I pull my fingers free, step back. Look at the girls. My dear friends, my best friends. Without really knowing how it happened, I find myself walking away.

I don't want to stand alone. But as long as I'm with the Panthers, I'll never have to.

I
KNOW WHAT I HAVE TO DO NOW. I GO DOWN TO
the Panther office. The window holes are all boarded up with plywood sheets. Someone has started stacking sandbags near the door. They'll go up behind the new windows once they're in place, so that what happened yesterday won't ever happen again. Sandbag walls are already up in other Panther offices.

Jolene's at her desk working, like usual, with Little Betty bouncing on her lap. “Maxie? I didn't expect to see you today.”

She shifts in place, scooping the baby closer with her arm. I have to tell her, before she hands off Betty to me.

“I want to be a member,” I say. “A full Panther, with a gun and everything.”

“You will,” she says. Little Betty flaps her arms and coos.

“I don't want to wait. I want to fight.”

“Honey—”

“Please?”

Jolene shakes her head. “You're so young, Maxie, and you're doing so well with the recruitment at school. And Raheem would have my hide, for another thing,” she adds.

“You don't know what it felt like,” I blurt. “They shot at us, and I couldn't do anything!”

Jolene looks at me, seriously this time.

“I'm part of this thing now. It's part of me, too.” I lean on the desk, trying to make her understand. I know what it's about now. I know what you have to give up. “It's like Fred says: ‘You can kill the revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution.'”

“Honey, you don't just wake up one morning ready to die for the revolution.”

“I'm ready.”

“No. Maxie, no one wants that for you.” She smiles, that grown-up way that makes me feel like such a kid. But I'm not anymore. I've seen the bullets. I know how it feels, know that I can handle it.

She touches my hand. “There's time. When you start your training—”

“I'm ready now.”

“We have training for a reason.”

“They came for us, and I hid under the table.” Tears well up in my eyes.

Jolene throws her free arm around me. “Honey, we all did. We had to.”

“Cherry was brave.” The image of her leaping through the window, gun drawn and blasting as the last of the shots rang out, stuck in my brain. How she'd stood in the street screaming after the pigs.