Chapter 12 #2
though, to think of how much I could shake the table!
I nodded off with excitement and anxiety warring in my chest, but I was woken up soon after by my door slamming. I was ready
to assume Vinny had left the room until I saw a blinding orange glow flaring near the door. My heart stalled as I took it
in—a fire in the corner of my room, flickering and flying like a growing demon.
And there laid Vinny sleeping in the bed beside mine, not yet aware of the smoke that filled our room.
“Vinny!” I shouted, thrashing up in bed. “Vinny, there’s a fire!”
Vinny opened his eyes and leapt into action. He was not paralyzed by the sight of the flames like I was. He started fanning
the flames with a shirt, only raising the temperature on the heat.
“Stop!” I ran over to grab his arm and pulled him back from the flames. “You’ll make it worse.”
The alarm blared as we evacuated the room and ran into a smoky hallway. The Blue boys flooded out of their rooms, coughing.
More than one fire had been started and they were eating the whole building! It was not a coincidence but an act of arson.
We ran to the staircases on either side of the building and rushed down until we were outside. Several people, including Artie—the
RA on duty—raced to the telephone booth at the front of campus to alert the fire department. The rest of us were left standing
outside, most of us in our pajamas. We were without our belongings except for the small things we’d each chosen to grab before
we left. For me, it was my notebook.
Vinny was losing his marbles about his stuff and wanted to go back inside. James had to hold him from running in and pulled
him back screaming, “It’s over!”
I felt sort of numb thinking about the outfits and supplies in my room. I had more where that came from and had lost it all
once before. I already didn’t miss the mildewy bathrooms of the Blue House. But what about the boys who were here because
they had nowhere else to go?
Usually, when the fire alarm went off accidentally, we would wait outside until the firefighters came to stop it. Within ten
minutes, I would walk tiredly back to bed.
That was not the case tonight. In the event of an actual fire, no one came.
The flames left a black cloud rising into the air, its smog so thick it traveled over to the manicured side of campus—the
side you saw in the pamphlet.
Our dorm building was made of something so flimsy and flammable I couldn’t believe it supported us in the first place. But I’d met fire before. I’d met it head on.
I went back to that place as I watched the flames . . .
This boy from my neighborhood, Ronald, came banging on the door so hard one night that it startled Pa. He opened the door
just to hear “There’s a fire at the hospital!”
We sped downtown in the car, both of us in silence, and arrived to find the fire had eaten the exterior of the hospital, and
where solid walls had once been, the bricks had crumbled away, exposing structural beams and metal. That was the hospital
where my mother, her face bright and her steps light, once lifted me onto a doctor’s table—the same place she turned to for
work after leaving her job as a teacher. She spent long nights there, making sure birthing mothers received the care they
needed.
I ran inside to find her, and Pa called after me to stop me, but I got past the flames and started screaming, “Mama!”
By the time I realized it was a lost cause, the smoke had blocked the exits and my airways. Pa came in to save me and scooped
me up, but he couldn’t find my mother. He was stuck with only me. And the way he only said a few words to me in the years
after, unless they were for discipline, proved he wished he could’ve saved her instead.
A fire had taken my mother. A bullet had taken my father. And one fire had come for me. How had I escaped these fates?
I could hardly feel a thing in the days that followed, but my head thumped with this anxious thought I couldn’t get rid of—Where were the firefighters?
I hadn’t been protected a day in my term at that school. It made me wonder why I even tried. If excelling would put a target
on my head, what reason did that give me to excel?
It was like Mr. Wallace said on his final day, They’re afraid. That if we rise, we’ll do to them what they do to us. But I didn’t want to rise in violence! I only wanted to rise in truth!
I found three different headlines on a newsstand at the corner café, just down from Auntie and Uncle’s, and brought them home.
Coverage on the fire flooded the Harlem presses, but it seemed there was barely any investigation into who’d done it. No one
even cared who the culprit was. Headlines read:
Integrated Schooling Effort Goes Up in Flames
Where Will the Blue Boys of West Egg Go?
Arsonist Targets Elite West Egg Academy
I couldn’t think straight until I knew more.
The timing, the suddenness—it ate at me. My paper hadn’t sat well with everyone. I’d torn the veil, exposed the truth! Discomfort
was inevitable. But then the fire, right after it hit the halls . . .
Had my words done this? Was this my fault?
The thought made me sick—the thought that something I wrote could’ve driven someone to try to kill me. But wasn’t this what
happened to writers? Wasn’t this why Pa had warned me away from it? Keep your head down, or risk flames licking at your door.
This wasn’t some accident. I was a target. And the same hand that fed me at this school—it could just as easily choke me dead.
Days later, I sat frozen in my room at Daisy’s house, trapped in my thoughts. When she came home, she invited herself through
my open door and dropped a stack of poster board and cardboard onto the bed.
“The UNIA and the NAACP are organizing protests,” she said. “They think it was a hate crime. The UNIA’s even making space
for some of the boys to sleep—for now, at least.”
There was no time to waste before joining them, and we immediately started to paint signs in the driveway of the house.
Daisy had been wanting to protest for some time now. New York liked to pretend it was different, but it still shut doors in
our faces. Lots of stores were denying Colored girls access in Manhattan, so there was a bar for fashion that Daisy wanted
to reach but the city was denying her.
“Nobody better buy my jacket before we break their windows,” Daisy said as she painted an A into the cardboard sign. Her sign was going to say Free Education.
“Nobody’s breaking any windows,” Auntie Lorraine said firmly.
She’d spent the whole weekend in overalls. The Wash ’N’ Fold would be closed for the protest, because Auntie had other work
to do. She was busy loading up a wagon with coats and socks for the boys who’d lost everything in the fire.
I was sitting beside Daisy, pressing the button on my pocket watch and clicking it closed. Despite everything that happened, Mr. Wallace would be proud I was taking charge of my own sovereignty. In spite of everything, Pa would be proud I didn’t let fear stop me from saying what I felt!
“I told Jordan it was happening,” Daisy whispered, careful to lower her voice in case Auntie was listening in. “In case we
need muscle.”
“How bad do you think it can get?” I asked.
“Depends on our numbers. The more people that show, the more cops show. And if they’re able to get the word out, people will
come from East Egg too. It’s the same way there, you know. The white girls are on track to become teachers and nurses. And
the Colored girls . . .” She sighed deeply as she painted another letter on the sign. “We become maids.”
“We can print flyers,” I said. “I could ask Jay, and he could use the mimeograph at school.”
“Tom’s got one,” Daisy said, offhandedly. “I’ll use it at work.”
“Won’t he be suspicious as to why you’re making flyers for a radical protest at his house?”
Daisy laughed with sudden amusement, as if the irony hadn’t occurred to her. “I suppose it would be suspicious, but I don’t
intend for him to find out. Tom acts nicely but he doesn’t seem interested in me, unless it’s time to boss me around or throw
his virtuous ideas at someone. He notices me when he needs me. Otherwise, I have free rein of the house.”
“And if you attend the protest . . . aren’t you afraid it might get you fired?” I asked.
Daisy looked amused again as she painted. “I’m not tied to one job. I’ll find another rich man to work for if I lose it, but enough about that. We need to make a scene for the protest. I say we take the Whites Only signs down from every business in Manhattan.”
“Nick?” Auntie called, dropping two lumpy burlap bags beside me. “Can you give these to your friends who need them when you
see them next?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered, half distracted. Late autumn was here, with winter soon approaching, and the Colored boys of West
Egg were waiting in lines at shelters or spending their last dollars on bus tickets back down South. I was fortunate enough
to have relatives here. Not everyone was so lucky.
I still couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched and targeted. It took a lot to make it through the days, but somehow,
I was doing it, with the help of frequent escapes to gather my thoughts in private.
I was picking up the bags to walk around to the front of the house when I found Jay standing at the bottom of the stoop.
I dropped the bags to my side. I hadn’t seen him since he’d disappeared into the crowd at the dance. It felt like a lifetime
ago. But here he was in a wool coat, breath misting in the air, the cold paling his chiseled features.
“Nick . . . thank goodness,” he exhaled, relief washing over him when he saw me. “Oh, thank goodness.”
“Thank goodness what?” I questioned, not knowing what to make of this visit.
“Well . . .” Jay pulled out a crumpled piece of newspaper from his coat pocket and began reading off a statement, his voice