Big Machine (29 page)

But it didn’t work. Being held was even worse than being seen. They’d stormed our sanctuary, and we hated them for it. Most of the older kids looked down, as if they were ashamed of their parents. Only Wilfred stood up and went to the window rather than stay with his surprisingly small mom and dad. He pulled at one of the blinds and peeked outside.

Karen spat, “Get back from there.”

His mother and father each grabbed a hand and pulled Wilfred over to the rest of us.

Gina spoke to the kids. “We’re going now. We’re ready.”

I thought we’d say a prayer together, but no one offered anything. Parents just held their children and led them toward the front door. The state maps on the walls showed their wrinkles now. Each one as rumpled as linen slacks. They weren’t coming with us.

Good-bye, Texas, Indiana, Idaho.

My mother clapped for Daphne, and my sister went to her. My dad knelt down next to me.

“Ready to get?” he asked.

He smiled, and his round face actually looked excited.

“You’re going to leave me behind,” I said.

He sighed, stood up. “Why’d you have to say that?”

“You did it before.”

He nodded and shut his eyes. It was an old story that I’d used against him plenty of times. A mistake my father once made. He’d dropped me someplace where he shouldn’t have. He’d left me.

“Not really worth talking about right now, little man.”

I frowned. He grabbed the top of my shoulder and squeezed it.

“I’m here,” he said. “I’m here.”

And this is really why I’d brought up Sargent Rice’s old mistake. He’d drifted too far from us, from me, to share love, but pain travels greater distances.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

And he dropped his hand. Stooped down. Looked into my eyes. Found his smile again.

Then we left the apartment side by side.

EVERYONE HAD ASSEMBLED
in the hallway. That’s not quite true, makes it sound too organized. We’d just gathered into a little mob. Half the parents in front and half in back, and in between the two stood the Washerwomen and the children. I ended up next to Wilfred. I peeked ahead, searching for Annabelle.

“Where are we going?” I asked Wilfred. As if he knew. Sometimes even I mistook his size for maturity.

“We not going anywhere,” he whispered. “It’s cop cars outside.”

“They were out there this afternoon.”

He looked down at me.

“It’s like ten of them now. Lights on and everything. Up and down the block. Even a truck.”

I didn’t believe him because I didn’t want to believe him. How were we going to get past a roadblock like that? Our parents had filled small
suitcases for each of us and handed them out. I was annoyed because my mother and father wouldn’t know what I wanted to keep. They’d probably just packed a bunch of clothes.

They had their own bags lined up against a wall. Even less stuff than us. Just book bags. We were traveling light, which I thought might help. We could probably go down and out through the laundry room, into the weedy backyard. There was a fence to climb, and then we’d be in the backyard of a store that sold Indian ingredients and saris, both. We might have to break in, but we could just file out the front of the store and get free. Disappear into the night. The adventure of this idea actually made me feel better for our chances. How could we get caught if we did something so daring?

A few of the parents went to the stairwell door, and then I felt even better. Better that than the rickety elevator. One last trip down the sanctified steps. It would be so quiet inside the stairway that I could say my little prayers, and God would even hear them because I believed He dwelled there.

The first set of parents went down, and the Washerwomen next. We kids mingled in afterward. The last of the parents followed in the back. But the staircase got crowded quickly. The space could hardly hold us. I thought I only felt claustrophobic because Wilfred stood next to me, but it didn’t take long to realize it was more than that. We weren’t moving forward, we weren’t going any farther down.

The parents in the lead stopped at the bottom of the landing.

Kids bobbed their heads trying to see the problem.

One parent broke off, went down to the third floor, but the others stayed and kept us from descending. And my own father, who was at the back, ran up the stairs, toward the fifth floor. For a moment we heard nothing, then this faint snap. It came from the top of the stairwell and from the bottom. Then the noise got closer.

The stairwell lights were going out.

Lightbulbs popped, and darkness came at us from both sides, a pair of rising waves.

My father finished first. Then the other dad, Mr. Ward, returned a little out of breath. Sweat ran down the front of his nose. I looked up, waiting for them to smash these last two lightbulbs so we could scurry away in the shadows. But they didn’t do that.

The fourth-floor lights stayed on.

“Consider this our lifeboat,” Karen said.

It wasn’t just me, but all the children, who looked down at the stairs, confused.

Karen hushed us, as if our stares made sounds.

At the far bottom of the stairwell I heard the door groan as it opened. A man’s voice shouted up at us from the lobby.

“Hello! Hello! Please be advised that the New York City Police Department has been ordered to enter your premises!”

We didn’t speak, not the adults or the kids.

The man at the bottom shouted again. “We are sending units up. If you are armed, you will be shot. Do not fuck around!”

I turned toward my dad, expecting what? I don’t know. An explanation. A solution. Even a wink. But he didn’t offer any. He, my mother, and the other adults only locked their arms in a way that penned the children in. The parents at the bottom did the same. I watched my dad. His eyes were shaking so bad I thought they’d spin right out of his head. Sargent Rice seemed even more scared than me. I never understood him so much as I did just then.

“It’s all right,” I whispered to him, but I can’t say if he heard me because Karen cleared her throat just then, and it drew our attention to the Washerwomen.

Rose spoke. “Get your backs up!” she shouted. “Stand straight!”

Which we did without thinking.

Gina smiled. She pointed down the stairwell, into the dark.

“They think we’re shipwrecked, but we know the song of the sea.”

Gina reached into her pants pocket and came out with her gun.

I lost my breath. I mean straight hyperventilated. I dropped my stupid little suitcase. Its clump echoed so it seemed like all the kids had dropped theirs too. The stairway seemed to get hotter, but it might’ve just been the fear inside me. I reached out for some hand, any hand, and found Wilfred’s. He didn’t pull away. He didn’t push me back. Wilfred held on just as tight.

Karen said, “It was two years before Reverend Cook’s death really hit me. Our part in it. The guilt became so strong my sisters and I, we about lost our minds.”

“Yes,” Gina said. The gray pistol looked feral in her veiny hand. Something that wouldn’t be tamed.

“By that time we’d built three houses right near one another, on property we bought with Reverend Cook’s money. I was sitting in my kitchen, snapping the ends off some green beans I’d just washed. I heard a woman’s voice calling my name from the parlor room.

“But when I reached the parlor, it was empty. Then I heard her calling from the entryway and when I got there, it was empty too. When she called for me again, I followed, but didn’t expect to find anyone. That voice led me through whole house, all three floors. Every bathroom, every closet, every bedroom. It took me so long to pass through every
room that when I ended up back in the kitchen, the beans I’d washed were bone-dry. I felt this shame come over me, so powerful and cold I thought my heart would give out. What was the point of all this space if there was nothing inside?”

Karen said, “I felt like I was standing on Reverend Cooks grave, and I finally faced the truth. We’d mistreated that man. Me, my sisters, those preachers we’d paid off. Their congregations. Even our families. We tore apart his church and used the timber in our hearth. Everyone who’d benefited shared the guilt. A guilt that would last for all their living days. That night we pardoned our families. But more was required of us. We were meant to build a new church. Save as many souls as we could from the corruptions of this world. The temptations we knew all too well.”

Karen lost her breath. She inhaled slowly. She whispered, “I hoped to rescue so many more. But I won’t be ungrateful.”

Which of the kids cried first? None. It was our parents. Some were scared, but maybe others felt relieved. Escaping this hard world is number one on many wish lists. Some grown-ups yelped, and the kids followed.

“Stop that shrieking!” Rose demanded. But who could listen to her now?

The stairwell door creaked down below, and I imagined a mouth opening as wide as it could go. How many cops were they sending up there? The same sound came from the roof, a door moaning there. They must’ve climbed up the sides of the building. I heard the shuffle of boots on the steps, but they weren’t coming too quickly. No one wants to run blind into a potential firefight.

Karen and Rose reached into their clothing now, maybe their pockets or their purses, I can’t say. It really looked like they pulled those guns out of their sleeves. They looked calm. I mean their faces. Flat and empty eyes.

I didn’t scream because it still seemed impossible. The Washerwomen weren’t going to shoot anyone. No, no, no. But then each sister put a gun to a child’s head, and those kids still didn’t run. Bernard Hub-bard. Greg Yarbrough. Altagracia Munoz. It sounds insane, I know, but we refused to accept that they’d pull the triggers.

Until they did.

The stairwell didn’t get loud, like I would’ve expected. It got quiet instead. My ears went fuzzy, like I was nearly deaf, and I couldn’t even make out my own voice. Not the voices of other children either. But I felt that we were screaming. I mean the vibrations of our cries hit my chest. The bodies of those three children slammed against the stairwell walls. I can’t say I saw Altagracia die. I guess I refused to see.

My sneakers squished in blood. I knew that’s what it was, but wouldn’t look down. The walls of the stairway stank with it. I felt as if the hall had filled with steam, a new heat that wet my hair, the side of my face.

The Washerwomen put their guns to the heads of two more children, Keisha and Olivia Broom. And now one adult, Mr. Ward.

-Sssswump!- -Sssswump!- -Sssswump!-

The pulse of those muddy gunshots felt like an unearthly heartbeat to me.

Now our meekness was beat by our fear. The first six victims had basically fed themselves to the pistols, but the rest of us kids would have to be caught. We went crazy trying to escape. We clawed at each other, climbed over one another. Beat at each other with our little suitcases. We did anything to get away.

The police finally reached us and scuffled with the parents at either end. Were our folks defending the Washerwomen at this point? Hard to say. The cops couldn’t be expected to differentiate. They wrestled anyone who’d hit puberty.

Then the last of the stairwell lights went out. I wasn’t sure if the police knocked them out or if they broke in the struggles. Each cop came down with gun drawn, one hand on his pistol, the other underneath to steady his aim. And in that second hand each one held a flashlight. As they moved in the total darkness, their flashlights threw bright spots onto us, onto the walls, onto the ceilings.

I didn’t register them as flashlights. Blame a boy’s imagination, but in my frightened mind something of the dead had been released by the bullets. Those weren’t lights. They were souls. The spots and flashes zoomed across our faces, and I felt I was being touched by holy kisses, my lost friends saying good-bye.

Rose stood right behind me suddenly. She pressed the muzzle of the gun against the left side of my neck. It was still hot from the previous shots. I felt that fiery bite and I knew what came next: bullet escapes the barrel, slug enters my head.

I kicked backward instinctively. Harder than I’d ever hit anything. And Rose fell back. Just a step, but it was enough. The lights continued to dance against the ceiling. It looked like a map of heaven. I moved hysterically. I didn’t run, I climbed.

I never doubted that our parents could do this to us. Tackling and smashing the cops who’d finally arrived. Even offering up their own children to the guns. I never doubted they could do this because they adored the Washerwomen too.

You should’ve seen me all those times when I ran errands for my family. If the cashier at the supermarket told me the bill was $3.25, I’d ask
her to go over the figures with me again, right there, even recalculating the tax on the back of the receipt. If the
DON’T WALK
sign flashed at me on the street, my first instinct was to ask, Why not?

Doubt is the big machine. That’s what they told us. It grinds up the delusions of women and men. Well, we doubted every damn thing the world could offer.

Except them.

Even though us kids heard snippets about what they’d done to their families. Even though we’d guessed at the rest. We didn’t want to believe it. That hadn’t been Gina, Karen, and Rose. Those were the Robins sisters. Three women we’d never met. What happened in Jacksonville had been the nightmare, but our community was meant to be the dream.

But now I fled from Rose’s pistol, practically flew over the girl in front of me. I grabbed at her hair and used that to pull myself over her. One of her hands tried to grip the railing, but the railing was slick with blood. I felt no remorse, only the grind to survive. But as I leapt forward, I looked down. The flashlights, those lost souls, illuminated this girl’s face.

I’d grabbed the back of my own sister’s head.

Daphne.

I didn’t see her pupils because they’d rolled into her skull. She looked blind and helpless. She screamed, but everyone was screaming. She’d been moving forward, but now bent backward because I pulled myself over her. Then Rose’s gun touched Daphne’s temple.