When the first of the month came, commas once again returned to Sherrena’s bank account. It wasn’t any ordinary month either; it was February, when tenants received tax credits and wrote big rent checks. One had cashed her tax return and paid Sherrena $2,375. Doreen came up with $950, as her stipulation dictated. Lamar paid $550 but, since his painting job had earned him nothing, was still behind as far as Sherrena was concerned. He would have to be evicted.
Maybe to fully efface the recent memory of being broke, or maybe just for the hell of it, Sherrena and Quentin took themselves to the casino on a Wednesday night. Sherrena put on a Rocawear sweatsuit, maroon and gold. Quentin sported a G-Unit leather jacket, a straight-billed black cap, and a large pinky ring. He found a handicapped parking spot near the main entrance of Potawatomi Casino and hung from his rearview mirror the necessary permit, a gift from a handicapped tenant.
As they made their way to the bar and grill, past the robotic jungle sounds from all the machines, Sherrena smiled impishly and said, “I hope you don’t have nothing planned for the morning.” She could pass entire nights at the casino, staying until three or four a.m., long after Quentin had gone home to sleep.
After dinner, where they discussed Sherrena’s upcoming presentation on “The Art of the Double Closure” over burgers and Long Island iced teas, they headed to the blackjack section. Sherrena walked slowly through the tables and decided on the one with two white men, one alone and smoking, the other jittery with a high-fiving blonde on his shoulder. Sherrena placed $100 on the table—the minimum bet was $25; she rarely played for less—and pulled up a stool. She stayed quiet at the table, tapping her finger for a hit and slicing two through the air to pass.
Across town, at Eighteenth and Wright, Lamar dealt the cards as Luke, Eddy, Buck, and some of the other neighborhood boys gathered around the table. It was a bitterly cold night, and the warmth of their bodies was fogging up the kitchen windows. The game had a different rhythm, slower and less boisterous, because Kamala was there. Lamar had been asking Kamala to join him at spades ever since she moved upstairs, and she finally said yes, arranging for her father to stay with her daughters as they slept. Kamala had a man, Devon, the father of her children, but Lamar flirted softly with her all the same. The presence of a woman had a way of altering the house’s chemistry. Before she was pregnant, Natasha once had caused so much tension at the spades table, solely by being beautiful and desired, that Lamar cut the game short and kicked everyone out. But the boys were on their best behavior around Kamala. They didn’t talk much about girls and refrained from calling Lamar a “monkey’s ass” as they had been doing since he shaved his mustache. Kamala was only a few years older than Natasha but seemed much more of a woman to them, encased as she was in a hard shell of dignity and world-weariness.1
Lamar’s New Year’s resolution was “to honor God, stay clean, and find a new place.” Sherrena had been ignoring his requests for repairs: the kitchen sink had been leaking for the better part of a week and was now running onto the floor. Lamar figured Sherrena would not let him stay much longer anyway. Maybe it was for the best, he thought. Maybe his next place could also be a safe haven for all his boys. Lamar didn’t understand why Sherrena treated him like she did. “Why would you fuck someone that’s not trying to fuck you?” he wondered. Sherrena wondered the same thing. Lamar said the sink was broken. Sherrena said he broke the sink.
Quentin didn’t join Sherrena at the blackjack table. He never did. Instead, he watched from a distance and made sure nobody got angry or fresh with his wife. Whatever pleasure he took from being at the casino had to do with seeing Sherrena happy. Quentin hated gambling. “Bam, there goes fifty dollars right there,” he murmured after Sherrena lost another hand.
Cards fell. The night unfurled. Quentin took a phone call, hung up, and approached the blackjack table. He brought his face next to Sherrena’s and whispered that Eighteenth and Wright was on fire. She immediately collected her chips and followed Quentin out the door.
“Doreen’s?” Sherrena asked when she caught up to Quentin.
“No. The back unit.”
“Lamar’s?”
“No. The upstairs. Kamala’s.”
Quentin sped away from the casino. “Lord, please, please let this be something minor,” Sherrena prayed, holding on to the door handle as the Suburban careered through the back roads that lead to Eighteenth Street. Lifting her head, she fretted, “Shame on them….I hope my shit ain’t burnt to a crisp.”
When Quentin tried turning down Eighteenth Street, he met a roadblock. “Already that motherfucker lit up like Christmas down here,” he said. He could see fire trucks in front of the property, their red and white lights shooting out in every direction, but not the house itself. Quentin tried another route, then another, but fire trucks and ambulances had blocked off the surrounding streets and alleyways. As he maneuvered the Suburban, Sherrena caught brief glimpses of the scene as it flashed up through breaks in the neighboring houses. Finally, Quentin tried a back alley a block behind Eighteenth Street. Through the Suburban’s window, the shadowed rear of a garage gave way to a snow-covered abandoned lot, and the property showed itself in full view.
Sherrena lost her breath.
“Damn! That’s real bad, Sher,” Quentin let out.
The house was engulfed. Flames were leaping from the roof and disappearing into a milky column of smoke and steam towering into the winter sky. Quentin and Sherrena watched firefighters’ silhouettes dash around what had been Kamala’s apartment, now a gutted, charcoaled shell. What was not burning was slicked in ice from frozen hose water.
Quentin headed toward the house. Sherrena stayed put. The fire reminded her of the time a disgruntled mortgage customer tossed a homemade bomb through her office window. Since then, the sight of fire disturbed and reduced her.
Quentin recognized Luke as Lamar’s eldest son, even as he was crying with his head between his knees. A teenage girl consoled him on Doreen’s steps. It was hard to hear over the noise: the grumble of diesel engines, the jackhammer whirring of the water pumps, the sizzle of water meeting heat, the splitting of wood under axes. Patrice was outside too, shivering in only a T-shirt and jeans. She motioned to Quentin and, lifting her voice, hollered in the direction of a firefighter, “He the landlord!” The firefighter nodded and approached Quentin. Bystanders’ faces glowed orange out of the darkness when the flames burst upward. Patrice allowed herself one more look at the paramedics gathered at the rear of an ambulance and went inside.
The Hinkstons’ house, separated from the back house where Lamar and Kamala lived by only a small patch of mud and weeds, was crammed with people. Doreen was sitting near the front door, cradling her youngest granddaughter, Kayla Mae. Natasha was on the floor next to Ruby, draped in a blanket. The rest of the Hinkston kids sat in a row on a mattress, wide-eyed at the weight of the moment. Lamar was slumped in his wheelchair, rubbing his head and drying his eyes. Eddy and Buck stood by his side. White people in hard hats milled through the crowd, apologizing and collecting information. “I’m sorry. Can I get your name?”
Patrice, who had seen a firefighter carry something to the ambulance under a white sheet, looked to Kamala. She was writhing on the floor, screaming, “My baby! My baby!” Her hair had been burnt off on one side. She arched her back and pressed her face into the ground. An older woman nobody recognized tried to hold her. “Whoa!” she would say as Kamala lurched. “Whoa.” When the old woman grew tired, she let go, and Kamala collapsed onto the floor, wailing.
Devon walked into the house, carrying two of his daughters, both toddlers. He pushed the scared girls past the crescent of police officers who were surrounding their mother. Kamala sat up and pulled the girls in. She clung to them, kissed their faces all over, and pressing her head into theirs, spilled her tears onto their hair.