Fire in the Streets (26 page)

I sit at the base of the wall, knees drawn up tight. The sweat that stings my skin doesn't quite jive with the fresh spring air. My pulse pumps beneath the skin of my throat like the flawed and ticking surface of an old forgotten clock. People come up, speak to me, but I'm locked here, unable to listen or respond.

I breathe toward a place in me that cannot be touched. I know I'm going to carry the weight of guilt for the rest of my days. Things I've heard, things people have said, do not sink in.
“It's not your fault. You did the right thing. Power to the people.”
Every attempt at forgiveness crashes like an ocean wave, never fading, just lulling to rise again. Over and over. Crashing. The sound and the clean mist spray, but I'm nowhere near the water. I can never be clean of this.

To live for the people, to die for the people. What about the in-between? What happens between the moment you decide to give up your life and the moment you actually die? It feels like suspended animation, this call to arms. Unceasing. I can't begin to say I'm sorry. I can't begin to believe there was a right thing to do, a way to play both sides against the middle.

I start to see Raheem's betrayal as a betrayal not just of the Panthers but of me. Everything I've worked for dashed with a sweep of his hand into the pigs' enormous till. I can't forgive him. He won't forgive me, either, and I can't forgive myself. It's a wash of anguish.

Perhaps that's what it means to be a Panther in the end. To do the unforgivable. Willingly, without flinching. The greater good is worth our sacrifice. Worth more than one life, more than my destruction from the inside out. The worst part is, it's Raheem who taught me that.

T
HE FIRST CHECK COMES A MONTH LATER,
made out in my name. I've never had my own check before. It takes me a while to work out what it is. When I do, I want to tear it to shreds. Don't want to live off the government anymore, off the pigs.

Instead I hold the envelope in my hand, sit on the edge of the bed, and cry. Raheem found a new way to sell out, and he did it for me. To take care of me, make sure I can eat like a person and dress like a Panther really should. He did it all for me. And I sold him up the river. Across the ocean, as it turns out. To a place called Vietnam. A place where people die, and maybe there are even real live panthers stalking the jungle.

“Raheem enlisted,” I tell Mama. “He's in the army now, headed to Vietnam.”

“That's from him?” she asks, looking at the letter in my hand.

“Yeah,” I lie. Let her think he's writing us direct, that it's more than his soldier's family stipend coming our way, that the words on the page are really from him and not generated by anonymous fingers in a typing pool someplace. “He says not to worry, and he promises we'll be taken care of.”

I
SIT ON THE WALL, WATCHING EMMALEE AND
Jimmy holding hands on a bench at the other side of the playground. Patrice is nowhere to be found. I don't even know what she's doing with herself these days. So much has changed.

Sam rolls through, in his leather jacket with the tape just so, like usual. I get it now. Because I long to wear the jacket Raheem gave me, to hold a piece of him close in case I never can again.

Sam turns my way. He's distant from me now, even as he approaches with a look on his face like it's time to talk at last. We've become buoys in the tide, sometimes drifting close, sometimes farther apart.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi, Sam.”

“How are you?” he says, and I know he really cares.

“I don't know,” I say. But I do know. I'm a Panther. Finally. “Okay, I guess.”

“Stop blaming yourself,” he says. “Raheem did what he did, and it's all on him.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” Sam crosses his arms, resting them on the wall beside me. Not exactly looking at me, like he's thinking out loud, and I just happen to be there. “The thing is, it's hard for me to imagine doing, you know”—he pauses—“what you did.”

“You wouldn't have, would you?” But the picture is so not the same.

Sam rests his chin on his arms. “I don't know,” he says. “That's the whole thing.”

“You wouldn't have.” Sam thinks before he acts, before he speaks. He would have seen past the moment, to everything that was going to come after. Nine times out of ten, I wish I hadn't done it. The last thing Raheem said keeps coming back to me:
“You do what you have to do, and then you learn how to live with it.”
It bugs me, because I don't know if he was talking about me, or himself, or both.

I look at Sam, in his jacket with the tape. I guess we all have stuff we have to live with, whether it was ever in our hands or not.

Here's the worst part. Raheem always wanted me to believe in him. He made all these promises, that he could take care of us and that I didn't have to worry. But I never could trust it, not all the way. I couldn't give him everything, the way he gave up everything for me. I gave up everything for something else. The Panthers are what I believe in.

L
EROY ENTERS THE OFFICE. EVERYONE
breathes in as if to speak, starts hurrying toward him with news, questions, updates. But then no one says anything at all. The solemn look on his face freezes everything, leaves it all hanging unsaid in the air above us.

“Bad news,” he says.

We hold our breaths, waiting for whatever it is to drop.

“Bobby Seale's been indicted. He's charged with conspiracy to incite the riots during the convention last summer.”

Everyone groans.

“They're really blaming all that on us?” Lester says. “We were barely even there.”

“Not entirely,” Leroy says. “Bobby's one of eight who've been charged. The others are white guys from the anti-war movement.”

“It was a white protest,” Hamlin says. “No way to spin it any other way.”

“They're saying Bobby's speeches helped inflame the crowd.”

“That's a load of hogwash,” Gumbo blurts out. “We were the only ones there not trying to start something.”

The mood in the room is sizzling. Tense. Everyone's struggling to take in the news; I'm struggling with it myself.

“We're going to take care of this,” Leroy declares. “I just wanted everyone to be informed.” His face drawn tight, he retreats to the rear room.

“Bobby was barely at the convention,” Emmalee says. “They think he caused the riots?” We're sprawled on the floor in the back room, where Little Betty's play pad is set up. It's just a blanket on the floor ringed in with boxes so she can't crawl all over the room, now that she's started trying to do that. Emmalee lies on her back inside the circle.

“It's stupid,” I tell her. “They're just out to get him.” I'm sitting on the boxes, letting Little Betty hold my fingers as she pulls herself up and tries to balance. Her short legs wobble, and one after the other she sort of waves her chubby feet; it's like she knows they're supposed to take her somewhere, but she can't quite make it happen yet. She's growing. She grins up at me with her two tiny front teeth.

We don't have that many photographs at home, but we have one of me with two front teeth, and we have one of Raheem a little bit older that was probably taken at the same time. Now Mama gets the pictures out most days. She sits with Raheem's picture and cries. I haven't told her the truth of why he left, just that Raheem is doing what he has to. For us. She can't understand why he didn't say a real good-bye, and I have no answers.

“Why did it take so long for this to happen?” Emmalee wonders. “The convention was months ago.”

I'm only partly thinking about Bobby's case. My mind is going in all different directions. “Um, Leroy said the grand jury had to review the facts and decide if there was enough evidence to have a trial. Apparently that takes a long time sometimes. I think it's weird too.” I feel proud to know the answer to her question. Usually Emmalee is the one who knows it all.

Little Betty places her fat feet on top of mine. Grins. Those two teeth can just break your heart. If it isn't already broken.

Jolene comes by and scoops up the baby. She cuddles and kisses her. I look away while it happens. It's just too sweet.

“Maxie, I want you here this afternoon,” Jolene says. “Bobby Seale's lawyers are coming by and we need some
people to sit in. Listen to what they're planning and what they need from us.”

“Me?”

“Yes,” Jolene says. “We'll be helping them with any research we can in preparation for the trial. Maybe reviewing notes and paperwork. I'm not sure what all. We'll find out this afternoon.”

“You want me?” It doesn't really register. The sole thought in my head is that I have to get better at reading.

“You'll be great,” Jolene says. She brushes the hair away from my face as she sometimes does. The touch makes me realize how bad I want her to go ahead and hug me, the way Mama won't do anymore now that worry over Raheem has driven her closer to the edge.

“Really? You think so?”

Jolene rests a hand on my shoulder. “Someone was always telling me you ought to be a lawyer.” Her soft tone holds no bitterness, even though the only someone who would ever say something like that has got to be Raheem.

“Don't you want some firsthand experience?” Jolene says. I've been quiet too long.

I sit up straighter. This is my chance.

“You'll have to alternate it with school and PE classes and your weapons training,” she continues. “So it'll be a lot of work.”

My mind snaps into focus. “Weapons training?”

Jolene smiles. “It's about time, don't you think?”

“Yes.” My eyes tear up. “I want to do it. Thank you for picking me.”

“We'll see you tomorrow morning. Six a.m., for the lineup,” she says, walking away.

For a while I'm just sitting there, gazing at the sandbags up against the windows. Thinking about things like bullets. Tiny pieces of flying metal. Broken shards of glass. Thinking about things like secrets. Bits of information, floating in the ether. Thinking about how one thing leads to another, and every day there are new bullets, new shards. New things to watch out for.

But it's happening. Everything I dreamed of, though not at all in the way I dreamed it. Maxie Brown, Black Panther.

I feel a hand on my shoulder. “Come outside with me,” Sam says. “I just heard.”

He leads me out to the sidewalk, just beyond the sandbagged windows.

“Congratulations,” he says. Grinning, he breaks into a little refrain: “For she's a jolly good Panther, for she's a jolly good Panther.”

I smile. Not so much at the song but at the fact that he's
singing. Making a joke. It has been a while since things felt light between us. I kiss him on the cheek. Can't help it. He's so darn cute.