Eve. We were caught without any warm blankets. All we had were the school blankets of thin green wool, worn almost threadbare by years of use.
I don’t know how long I had been asleep when Roberta Jean woke me up crawling under the covers.
“Too cold to sleep alone,” she said, and her breath floated in the air.
She brought her blanket with her and snuggled up close, but she was freezing cold from being out of bed for just a minute. She rolled over, facing away from me. The soles of her feet touched my calves. They were so cold I shivered, but I kept my mouth shut and rode out this little sliver of cold, knowing that in a few minutes her body warmth would feel good and we could sleep like the Choctaw sisters we were.
I soon drifted off to dreaming, dreaming about the most beautiful Sunday of my life. I was maybe five years old. The snow fell overnight in fat, light flakes, twisting and dancing outside my window when the moon peeped through. I pulled up the quilts, propped myself up and watched for hours, moving my palms in a snowfall hand-dance, all to the rhythm of the snow.
I heard my grandfather creak down the stairs to light the fire. I leapt out of bed, wrapped the lightest quilt around me, and went to visit with him, just me and him. We could have a good talk.
“Rose, baby. What you doing up so early?”
“Just come to see you, Amafo.”
“Well, ain’t that nice. You come set your blanket on the floor here by the stove.” Amafo was stoking the fire and, sure enough, he found live embers where nobody else would even think of looking. He pushed and poked ’em to burning, then turned to fetch more wood from the dog-run.
“I’ll have it warm ’fore you know it,” he said. I curled up on the floor and fell asleep till he returned with two armloads of stovecut logs. I struggled to my knees to help, but Amafo said, “You just lay on back. I can do this.”
When the fire was cracking and warming through the metal, he said, “Now, what we need to talk about, my Rosebud?”
“Ummmm.” I stretched and yawned, smiling at him calling me Rosebud. “You think we’ll go to church today?”
“Well, I think we will. Let’s take a look outside.” He scooped me up, blanket and all, and carried me to the front window. We could hear Daddy and Momma stirring in their room, but Amafo just looked their way without saying anything. This was our time. He held me over his belly with his left arm and pulled the curtain back with his right.
“Oh! Amafo, look!” The snow made hills and valleys in the front yard, swoops and dips of purest white, halfway up the tree trunks of the nearby evergreens. To the west the moon still hung yellow, but the sun was coming up. It colored the snow banks, pink and pretty as a puppy’s tongue. The pine limbs hung heavy with icicles, sparkling and dripping.
“Yes, Rosebud, I believe we going to church. Snow’s gonna melt by noon, be mostly gone when church gets out. Be a purty good ride getting there, don’t you think?”
“I think so, Amafo,” I said. “Yes, I think you probly right. Looks like we’ll be going to church. We better tell Daddy when he gets up. Maybe you can tell him?”
“I ’spect I better,” said Amafo, carrying me to a nice warm spot by the stove. “Now, you take a little nap while I make the coffee. How ’bout that, hon?”
“Okay,” I said, and in less than a minute I was sleeping sound.
The Burning of New Hope
In my dream I was curled up on the cedar floor, next to Amafo. The icy chill of morning was gone and my cheeks now felt the sweet bath of fire. I pulled my quilt down. The fire lapped hot.
“Wake up, hon,” Amafo called, shaking me hard.
I did, but I was not at home anymore. I was at school, at New Hope.
“I musta been dreaming,” I said, stretching and yawning.
“Wake up! Get up, hurry!” Roberta Jean leaned over me hollering. Smoke swirled about her head. “Fire! Everything’s on fire!”
I was on my feet and we started running, our blankets wrapped around us. We shouldered down the stairs with the other girls. The teachers pushed us aside and ran upstairs against the flow.
“Is everybody out? Is everybody safe?” They said it over and over, but no one answered. We all just ran.
Once outside, I stood clinging to Roberta Jean, shivering and watching the skeleton of our schoolhouse crack and fall, bone by bone. It finally heaved a shuddering breath and fell into itself. A flock of small flaming boards flew in our direction. We dashed to the woods, brushing embers from our blankets.
This was not the fire I knew. There was nothing warm and calming in those yellow and blue flames. I was watching ice, cold bitter ice, come to life, rising from the frozen flames to claim our school.
We were driven by fire to freeze in the ice.
“Lillie! Lillie! Lillie!” The calls rang out through the mad darkness and fiery light. “Lillie!”
“Why does that lady keep screaming Lillie’s name?” I asked, covering my ears. “Make her stop.”
“It’s her mother,” said Roberta Jean.
“Then she knows Lillie can’t hear her.”
Those words floated back at me and I heard them for the first time. I stared at my own breath. Beyond my breath I saw the flames, like flicking and mocking tongues.
Lillie Chukma, good Lillie, was deaf.
She could not hear her mother.
She could not hear the calls to leave the building.
She slept like the seven-year-old baby that she was.
So watchful and eager to please––so very, very deaf.
I dropped my jaw and my face quivered. I tried to scream. Tears flew down my cheeks, tears that will never stop flowing till I see her at Judgment Day and wrap my arms around her. I will tell her how sweet she was and is and how much I loved seeing her every morning, how much I loved kneeling by her bed for prayers each night.
“Lillie,” I finally sputtered when I had the breath to sob.
Roberta held me closer and we pulled the blankets over our heads. Our knees shook and buckled and we drifted to the ground to sit in the melting snow, a dark green cone of wool and skin and bones and life while all around us swirled children and teachers and Nahullos and Choctaws and Cherokees and Christians all. But their running meant nothing.
Death by fire had claimed Lillie Chukma.
It was the Bobb brothers, Efram and Ben, who lifted the rafters from our fallen, smoking room and found Lillie’s body. Efram raised the roof while Ben kicked aside the still-burning boards to find her charred and fetal-tiny body. They gave it over to the Reverend Henry Willis and he carried Lillie Chukma to her mother.
Roberta Jean tugged me after her and we shuffle-stepped to stand behind Mrs. Chukma. She took her daughter, Lillie
