and sisters? Burn them up like you burn garbage? What King and them be doing that give anybody the right to kill them? Wasn’t any trouble till people started coming at us. Then King start to woofing to keep folks off our case. Just woofing. Just talk. You ask anybody around here, the ones still here or the ones burnt out, if you can find them. Ask them if King or his people ever laid a hand on anybody. You find one soul say he been hurt by one of us he’s a lying sack of shit.
King had his ways. We all had our ways. If you didn’t like it, you could pass on by. That’s all anybody had to do, pass us by. Hold your nose, your breath if you got to, but pass on by and leave us alone, then we leave you alone and everybody happy as they spozed to be.
The boy?
Cudjoe is startled by his voice on the tape, asking the question he’s thinking now. Echo of his thought before he speaks it.
The boy?
Little Simmie. Simmie’s what we called him. Short for Simba Muntu. Lion man. That’s what Clara named him when she joined King’s people. Called herself Nkisa. She was like a sister to me. We talked many a night when I first went there to live. Little Simmie her son. So afterwhile I was kind of his aunt. All of us family, really. Simmie’s an orphan now. His mama some of those cinders they scraped out the basement of the house on Osage and stuffed in rubber bags. I was behind the barricade the whole time. Watched it all happening. Almost lost my mind. Just couldn’t believe it. I saw it happening and couldn’t believe my eyes.
Those dogs carried out my brothers and sisters in bags. And got the nerve to strap those bags on stretchers. Woman next to me screamed and fainted when the cops start parading out with them bags strapped on stretchers. Almost fell out my ownself watching them stack the stretchers in ambulances. Then I got mad. Lights on top the ambulances spinning like they in a hurry. Hurry for what? Those pitiful ashes ain’t going nowhere. Nkisa and Rhoberto and Sunshine and Teetsie. They all gone now, so what’s the hurry? Why they treating ash like people now? Carrying it on stretchers. Cops wearing gloves and long faces like they respect my brothers and sisters now. Where was respect when they was shooting and burning and flooding water on the house? Why’d they have to kill them two times, three times, four times? Bullets, bombs, water, fire. Shot, blowed up, burnt, drowned. Nothing in those sacks but ash and guilty conscience.
What they carried out was board ash and wall ash and roof ash and hallway-step ash and mattress ash and the ash of blankets and pillows, ashes of the little precious things you sneaked in with you when you went to live with King because he said, Give it up, give up that other life and come unto me naked as the day you were born. He meant it too. Never forget being buck naked and walking down the rows of my brothers and sisters each one touch me on my forehead. Shivering. Goose bumps where I forgot you could get goose bumps. Thinking how big and soft I was in the behind and how my titties must look tired hanging down bare. But happy. Oh so happy. Happy it finally come down to this. Nothing to hide no more. Come unto me and leave the world behind. Like a new-born child.
My brothers and sisters and the babies long gone and wasn’t much else in the house to make ash, so it’s walls and floors in those bags, the pitiful house itself they carting away in ambulances.
His mother died in the fire.
All dead. All of them dead.
But he escaped.
She pushed him and two the other kids out the basement window. Simmie said he was scared, didn’t want to go. Nkisa had to shove him out the window. He said she threw him and then he doesn’t remember a thing till he wakes up in the alley behind the house. Must of hit his head on something. He said he was dreaming he was on fire and took off running and now he doesn’t know when he woke up or when he was dreaming or if the nightmare’s ever gon stop. Poor Simmie an orphan now. Like my Karen and Billy till I got myself thinking straight again. Till I knew I couldn’t put nobody, not even King, before my kids. They brought me back to the world. And it’s as sorry-assed today as it was when I walked away. Except it’s worse now. Look round you at the neighborhood. Where’s the houses, the old people on their stoops, the children playing in the street? Nobody cares. The whole city seen the flames, smelled the smoke, counted the body bags. Whole world knows children murdered here. But it’s quiet as a grave, ain’t it? Not a mumbling word. People gone back to making a living. Making some rich man richer. Losing the only thing they got worth a good goddamn, the children the Lord gives them for free, and they ain’t got the good sense to keep.
You’ve talked to Simmie?
Talked to people talked to him.
Do you know where he is?
I know where to find somebody who might know where he is. Why do you want to know?
I need to hear his story. I’m writing a book.
A book?
About the fire. What caused it. Who was responsible. What it means.
Don’t need a book. Anybody wants to know what it means, bring them through here. Tell them these bombed streets used to be full of people’s homes. Tell them babies’ bones mixed up in this ash they smell.
I want to do something about the silence.
A book, huh. A book people have to buy. You want Simmie’s story so you can sell it. You going to pay him if he talks to you?
It’s not about money.
Then why you doing it?
The truth is, I’m not really sure.
You mean you’ll do your thing and forget Simmie. Write your book and gone. Just like the social workers and those busybodies from the University. They been studying us for years. Reports on top of reports. A whole basement full of files in the building where I work. We’re famous.
Why don’t you leave poor Simmie alone, mister? He’s suffered enough. And still suffering. Nightmares. Wetting the bed. Poor child’s trying to learn what it’s like to live with people ain’t King’s people.
Will you help me find him?
I don’t think so.
Can we meet again at least? Talk some more?
Saturday maybe. That will give me time to ask around. Not here. In Clark Park. I don’t like being in here with that machine sucking up all the air.
I’ll meet you anywhere. Anytime. Tape or no tape.
Saturday morning. Clark Park.
What time, Saturday?
Early.
I’ll be there.
I bet you will. Tell you a secret, though, my feelings won’t be hurt if you ain’t.
Clark Park. Forty-third and Osage. Saturday early. I’ll be there.
One more thing . . . is that damned machine still running?
Yes . . . no.
Click.
If the city is a man, a giant sprawled for miles on his back, rough contours of his body smothering the rolling landscape, the rivers and woods, hills and valleys, bumps and gullies, crushing with his weight, his
