trembling, otherworldly groan.
“He killed my baby!” Kamala screamed, convulsing. “I’ma kill him! I’ma kill him!”
Devon began pacing the room with clenched fists. Over and over, he whispered, “That’s the second one. That’s the second one.” At one point, he stopped and stood over Kamala. The room hushed and looked on. Devon looked to be on the verge of violence. But the moment passed, and he resumed his pacing and mad chant. “That’s the second one.” They had lost a baby just a year earlier, a daughter who was stillborn. Kamala and Devon wore her ashes around their necks in matching lockets.
“Oh, God,” Sherrena said when Quentin told her. “I hope they didn’t leave that baby at home by herself.” Sherrena’s mind drifted back to earlier years, when she was a fourth-grade teacher and Kamala her student. “She was always a good girl in school,” she said.
Back at home, Quentin and Sherrena tried putting the pieces together. “Devon and Kamala—” Quentin began.
“Was downstairs,” Sherrena followed.
“Playing cards with Lamar. And maybe left something on….And by the time they realized it was a fire, they tried to run upstairs, but it was too late.”
Quentin keyed the computer to see if the fire had made the news. It had. “Firefighters did not hear smoke detectors when they arrived,” he read. “There is a smoke detector in the kitchen,” he said.
“There’s supposed to be one in each sleeping area,” Sherrena replied. “I thought we had put some smoke detectors up there. I can’t remember right now.”2
—
The following day, Sherrena heard from the fire inspector. He said the fire had started when one of Kamala’s daughters climbed out of bed and knocked over a lamp. Kamala’s father had either fled without grabbing the baby or, more likely, left the girls alone earlier in the evening. Both Kamala and Luke had tried to rescue the child, but the fire was all-consuming. Kamala’s other two daughters walked out themselves, before the fire got out of control. Nobody had heard a smoke detector go off.
The fire inspector told Sherrena she “didn’t have anything to worry about.” She wasn’t liable for anything that had happened. Sherrena then asked if she was obligated to return Kamala’s and Lamar’s rent, since the fire happened a few days after the first of the month. The fire inspector said no, and that settled it in Sherrena’s mind. “They are not getting any money back from me,” she said. Sherrena figured both Kamala and Lamar would ask for their rent to be returned, and she was right.
Sherrena planned to tear the place down and pocket the insurance payout. “The only positive thing I can say is happening out of all of this is that I may get a huge chunk of money,” she said. That—and “getting rid of Lamar.” The Red Cross would find Lamar and his sons a new place to live, giving Sherrena one less eviction to worry about.
Earlier that morning, loud knocking had pulled Doreen out of bed. She opened the front door in her nightgown to find reporters with cameras and microphones. After a few questions, Doreen shut the door and told herself not to answer it for the rest of the day. She walked through the kitchen and looked out a back window. Kamala’s second-floor apartment looked like a dark cave. The windows had been broken out and a large section of the roof was gone, leaving only support beams. Runoff had left the siding streaked with gray grime. The snowy ground was blackened with ash. Scattered about were roof shingles, long pieces of wood, the skeletons of furniture and other household items—a gnarled junk heap all charred and coated with hardened foam from the fire hoses. Water had frozen into thousands of icy bulbs that appeared to drip off the tips of surrounding tree branches. Doreen lowered her eyes and saw, on the house’s front porch, six white lilies tied with a cream ribbon. Spring in the dead of winter.
PART THREE
AFTER
17.
THIS IS AMERICA
Arleen was in the living room at Thirteenth Street, shivering. She didn’t have a winter coat, so she pulled on another T-shirt and an oversized hoodie. The Milwaukee weathermen had been working themselves up. They said it was going to be the coldest week in a decade, that the temperature could bottom out at forty below with the wind chill. The local news kept flashing a warning: FROSTBITE TIME: 10 MINUTES. People were urged to stay inside. Arleen had three days to find another apartment.
Sherrena was done
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