“No, I wasn’t, and I did try to go to the police when I learned about the arrest.” Sister Frankie frowned over her teacup. “You see, Harmony and I were marching next to each other when she suddenly collapsed. I thought at first it was the heat. You have to understand, the noise was so intense, and the heat, and the hate . . . We couldn’t hear each other, let alone any individual voices from the mob. But all the young men from the neighborhood, all those gangbangers, they were clustered around the leadership—Dr. King, Al Raby, and so on—near the front of the march.”
She flashed a wry smile. “We women were at the back . . . Women and children last, you know, when it comes to public action or recognition . . . Harmony got hit from the side. At the moment, it was so shocking, I couldn’t think at all, let alone analyze what happened or even think about looking for a killer.
“Later, though, after the funeral, after the horror of the march and Harmony’s death subsided a little, I started thinking it over. The missile had to have come out of the mob, out of the crowd surging around us. All the gang members were up front, you see, around Dr. King and Al Raby. The person who killed her was at the side, and that meant it couldn’t have been a black person. The mob would have murdered any black man if he’d been in their midst.”
I felt let down. I’d been pinning my hopes on something substantial, an explicit identification. “So you didn’t see who hit her?”
She shook her head. “I offered to testify at the trial, but Steve Sawyer’s attorney wouldn’t put me on the witness list. I tried to insist, but my bishop called me and told me I was out of line. The cardinal was trying to calm passions in the city, and, there I was, stirring them up.” She smiled sadly. “Nowadays, that wouldn’t stop me. But then, I was only twenty-six, and I didn’t know how far I could go before the hierarchy would stop me.”
“What was it you thought you could add, your opinion about where the gang members were standing relative to you and Harmony?”
“No. It was something else. One of the boys had a camera. He was taking pictures of us, and I hoped—”
A loud bang cut her off midsentence. A rifle report . . . an M-80? Glass splintered and jangled, a large starfish-shaped break now in the window over the flowers. Sister Frankie sprang to her feet as a bottle filled with liquid sailed through the break, the telltale rag in its mouth.
“Get down! Get down!” I screamed.
She was bending down to pick up the bottle when a second bottle flew in. It hit her in the head and burst into flames. I grabbed the throw from the daybed and flung it and myself on her, wrapping her up, rolling her along the floor. I heard a third bottle land, and then screams from the street, car tires screeching, and, above it all, the hissing of fire, the snapping of flames, as fire grabbed books, bookcases, my own jacket. Choking on smoke and gasoline fumes, I rolled myself on top of Sister Frankie, trying to put out the fire licking at the arms of my jacket. Nun, throw, detective—an ungainly bundle—rolling to the door. I stuck up a quickly blistering arm, fumbled for the knob, tumbled into the hall.
25
ALPHABET VISITORS FBI, OEM, HS, CPD
IT WAS THE DEAD OF NIGHT, AND MY FATHER WAS STILL out on patrol, still facing rioters someplace in the midnight city. People were throwing Molotov cocktails at him. I could see the bottles flying at his head, and I cried out, trying to warn him, which was stupid because he was miles away and couldn’t hear me. My mother mustn’t know I was frightened. It only made her worries harder when she had to comfort me as well as herself.
Our house was never truly dark. Flares from the mills created a ghostly light even at two in the morning, and the sky, always yellow from the sulfur vapors, gleamed dully all night long. Light seeped through the curtains and made my eyes hurt. My arms ached and my throat was sore. I had the flu. And, somewhere in the background, my mother was talking. A doctor had come to the house and was asking me how I felt.
“I’m fine.” I couldn’t complain about being sick, not with Papà out fighting a riot.
“What’s your name?” the doctor wanted to know.
“Victoria,” I croaked obediently.
“Who is the president?” the doctor asked.
I couldn’t remember who the president was and I started to panic. “Is this school? Is this a test?”
“You’re in the hospital, Victoria. Do you remember coming to the hospital?”
It was a woman’s voice, not my mother, but someone I knew. I struggled to come up with her name. “Lotty?”
“Yes, Liebchen.” Relief flooded her voice. “Lotty. You’re in my hospital.”
“Beth Israel,” I whispered. “I can’t see.”
“We’ve bandaged your eyes to protect them from light for a few days. You got a bit scorched.”
Fire. The Molotov cocktails hadn’t been flung at my dad but at Sister Frankie.
“The nun . . . Is she . . . How is she?”
“She’s in intensive care right now. You saved her life.” Lotty’s voice quavered.
“My arms hurt.”