Fire in the Streets (12 page)

Emmalee's limbs spider over me. I pluck them one by one and slide from beneath the sheets. I sit on the edge of the bed for a while, looking at the curtain, listening to Raheem and Emmalee breathing in off-kilter rhythms.

The dream has left me mind sick, heartsick, belly sick. A storm of icky feelings.

When I lie back down, Emmalee automatically rolls to hug me in her sleep. Her arms coil around one of mine, the way I might hold Little Ralphie, who is tucked safe in his drawer at the moment. Her cheek touches my shoulder.

I'm glad she's here. I'm glad not to be so alone, but I can't make myself close my eyes. I study the spots on the ceiling, wondering if sleep will hit me by accident between now and when the sun comes up.

I
ARRIVE LATE TO POLITICAL EDUCATION CLASS
because I've been all the way on the other side of the neighborhood, putting up flyers for the health clinic. When I slip in the door, it appears as if all hell has broken loose.

“Guns, shoot!” someone yells out. “Y'all cowards when it comes down to it. Ain't no one gonna ever pull a trigger?”

“All police are pigs!” someone else shouts over the din.

“No,” Leroy says sharply, cutting through the stew of voices. “We respect police officers who respect us.”

“They just happen to be few and far between,” Hamlin calls out.

“I ain't never met one!” Gumbo tosses in. People chuckle.

“I hear that,” Leroy says. “But you've also got to understand the principle. We defend ourselves against actions that are unjust. Cop tries to cuff you, let him cuff you. But
if the cop tries to beat you, pull your gun and hope he backs off. See the difference?”

“I ain't getting cuffed for no crime I didn't commit,” Gumbo declares.

Leroy shakes his head. “That's what the legal defense fund is for. We don't resist arrest, rightful or wrongful. We do resist brutality. We need to show them we respect the law, but won't stand for them stepping outside of it. You dig?”

“What's going on?” I whisper, sidling up beside Sam, who's standing in the back. Possibly waiting for me. I hope.

“Oh, they saw someone get picked up during policing rounds today. People don't understand why the Panthers let him get arrested.”

“The cops beat on him?” I think of Bucky.

“No, he just got collared for stealing batteries out of the corner store.”

“Did he do it?”

Sam shrugs. “No idea. The point is, it was a lawful arrest, so the Panther policers had to let it go. On principle.”

“And some people want blood anyway,” I say, looking around at the couple of people who are still leaping out of their seats, shouting out that the Panthers are cowards.

“Off the pigs!” someone yells.

Sam nods. That's the way it goes, I guess. There are always some people who want blood. Maybe it's the same
people who always end up ripping up storefronts during riots, people who think doing anything is better than doing nothing and don't care about doing it smart.

Tonight Raheem is one of the guys at the edges of the room, all suited up and with shotguns. He's standing between Lester and Slim. I wave and he nods.

Eventually Leroy regains control of the audience. “Okay,” he says. “We're going off script. Let's talk Self-Defense Theory 101. Answer me this—Why do Panthers pack guns?”

“To off the pigs!” someone shouts from the back. The whole class murmurs in agreement, a rolling wave of angry whispers.

“Wrong,” Leroy says. “Why do Panthers pack guns?”

Hamlin calls out, “Because the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution entitles citizens to defend themselves and their homes and their families against tyranny.”

“Correct,” Leroy says. “We're citizens, and for us the tyranny isn't coming from outside; it's coming from our country itself. Why else?”

“Because when we're stripped of our rights, as black people have been for centuries in America, they start to see us as less than human,” Gumbo says.

“And?”

“And then they treat us like we're less than human.”

“And?”

“And now we have to remind them.”

Leroy nods. “Because we need them to know we won't stand for it anymore,” he says. “We won't stand for what happened to Bucky Willis. We won't stand for what happened to Steve Childs.”

Beside me, Sam flinches. I reach for his hand.

“The pigs know we are watching,” Leroy says. “We're watching, we're listening, and we're taking a stand.”

I
'VE SEALED SO MANY ENVELOPES THAT I THINK
the sponge has molded to the shape of my palm. The door to the office is propped open to let in a breeze. The muggy summer weather has cooled to early fall pleasantness, but the air in here is still warm.

Jolene sits at the typewriter churning out letter after letter, and I fold each and every one and put it in an envelope ready to mail. Leroy's making phone calls. Rocco and Slim are hanging on the sofa, waiting to lay some knowledge on anyone who walks in.

A good thing about being here all the time is that I always get the skinny on everything. No one really notices me when I keep my head down and stay on task, so I hear it all.

First, it's Cherry. She comes in dressed in a tight skirt and bangles and gets up in Leroy's face. “Give me a shift,” she says. “I'm tired of this newspaper-selling bull.” She slams a sack of coins on the desktop.

“Come on, Cherry,” Leroy argues. He picks up the money. “You bring in more cash than anyone.”

“So?” she snaps. “Someone else can look good standing on a street corner. I've done my training and I want a shift policing.”

“You'll get a shift,” Leroy says. “But we can use the cash.”

Cherry crosses her arms. “I'm not selling another paper until I get a shift.”

There's a silence. Leroy looks at Jolene like she's going to bail him out, but she just keeps on pecking the keys like she don't even notice him. Oh, snap. She's on Cherry's side in this one.

“You can come out with us,” Rocco says after a moment. “You can trade off with Raheem and Gumbo. They have to cut out for their regular jobs a lot.”

Cherry tosses him a look. Maybe a little grateful, but also a little annoyed. Like she wanted it to come from Leroy. “Great,” she says. “When?”

Rocco shrugs. “I think Raheem is working tomorrow. The afternoon/evening shift.”

“Fine. See you then.” Cherry flounces out, gracing Leroy with a last glare as she goes on her way.

Leroy turns to Rocco. “I don't think she's ready.”

Rocco shrugs. “It was gonna be just the two of us tomorrow. Everyone's working.”

“You really want to sit in a car with her for six hours?”

Slim grins ear to ear. “I sure do.”

“We all know you do,” Jolene snaps. “And Cherry will be fine.”

Hamlin comes in a few minutes later. He calls a small side meeting with Leroy, drawing him to the front desk, where I suppose he imagines they are out of earshot. Maybe he's right. Jolene's keys click loudly; Slim and Rocco are chatting up some new guy who strolled in wanting to join up. But my ears are honed.

“I followed up about the talk we had during the convention,” Hamlin says. “Bobby says they're having some trouble with informants in Oakland. Pigs paying people off to report on what the Panthers are doing.”

“You thinking we should be worried?”

“I'm thinking we should be careful who we let in new.”

Leroy shrugs. “Everyone wants in after the convention mess. Can't stop people from joining. How we going to screen for that?”

“Pigs are always gonna have their ways.”

“Exactly.”

“We just gotta let everybody know the punishment for traitors is—” Hamlin draws a finger sharply across his throat. “Once that's out there, people might think twice about messing with us.”

I
LIKE HOW IT WORKED OUT FOR CHERRY WHEN
she came in and told Leroy straight up how she wanted things to go. But Leroy knows I screwed up on the quarters. I don't know if anything I've done since then can make up for it.

Instead, I try talking to Jolene. “I want to do more,” I tell her. “I want to go to Panther training.” Raheem has been, and Sam is going, along with most of the other guys I know. I don't want to get left any further behind.

“You'll go when you're older, Maxie,” Jolene says, handing me the letters. “What you do around here helps too.”

“It's boring,” I confess.

“Honey, it's work. Trust me, you'd get just as bored of policing after a while.”

Somehow I find that hard to believe. There's danger out there on the street, riding in the wake of the cops. You
have to keep on your toes. Get to be a hero sometimes. That doesn't sound boring at all.

“No,” I start to say. But Sam comes in the door right then, followed by a couple of guys I recognize from the clinic. I know he sees me, because his gaze passes through mine, but then he sweeps right along into the back room with the others. No greeting at all. Not so much as a second glance.

It confuses me when he turns so cold. Moments like this make it true what the girls always say, that Sam only makes me want to hide away and cry. It adds to my feelings of wanting to run, wanting to fight. It makes me want to pound the desk, mad that I still look for him, still want to talk to him and walk with him. I don't know why I can't forget him.

I try to shove Sam out of my mind, try to stop my voice from breaking. “Please,” I tell Jolene. “I'm ready to start now.”

“There is something we need done, Maxie,” Leroy says. I spin around, because I didn't see him come over or realize he overheard anything I was saying.

“What?” It comes out breathless. “I can do it. I can do anything.”

“The youth classes have been looking a little lean the last few Saturdays,” he says. “You know the neighborhood kids. Make some rounds and get them over to The Breakfast and the Freedom School.”

The little girls turning double Dutch on the flat concrete playground watch us approach out the corners of their eyes. I can see them peeking more, the closer we get. Probably think we're coming to cause trouble. Some of the older kids like to mess with them. I remember how it was.

The watching girls exchange glances and, almost as one, start chanting, cheering on the girl skipping ropes. “Go Lizzie. Go Lizzie.”

Solidarity, sisters. I smile, try to look friendly.

“Can we join?” Emmalee says. They giggle.

Shenelle Willis, Bucky's little sister, is one of the girls turning the ropes. “Are you any good?”

Emmalee fixes a look on her that might have frozen the ropes in the air. “Girl, we were skipping before you were born.”

“Don't mean you're no good,” pants Lizzie, leaping out of the center. The girls keep turning. The empty ropes slap the concrete. These girls really know how to turn. The rhythm is perfect—it rocks something within me, lulls me back to the time when this was all there was in the world for me.

Emmalee and I look at each other. It has been a minute since we did this, but I can feel it all coming back. We shrug off our book bags, roll our shoulders to loosen up.

“Ready?” I say.

Shenelle grins. “Yeah.” They open their arms, creating a larger pocket within the ropes. Emmalee is taller than any of them, plus there's two of us going in.

Emmalee rocks to catch the rhythm. We had a bunch of routines together back in the day, but only a few we came to consider classic. I can tell by the way she's standing which one we're starting in on. I turn my back, wait till I hear her rhythmic footfalls, then leap between the ropes to join her.

We're jumping back to back for what feels like an eternity before Emmalee cues me to start the turns. All she does is suck in a breath in this certain way, and I know it's time. Sure as the sunrise. To this day, it's our little secret, something we stumbled upon by chance. No one could ever figure out how we both knew to turn at the same time.

This routine is our most impressive-looking, when it goes right. I concentrate hard on the timing. Hop in a circle, hop in a circle. Hop half a circle. Hands, clap. Hop in a circle, quarter turn, stop. Reverse. One hand slap. Quarter turn, stop. Reverse. Quarter turn, quarter turn, quarter turn, stop. Hop in a circle, double hand clap. Double spin, double spin, double spin. Jump! Regular rhythm. Hands clap. Hop turn, hop turn, hop turn, slap.

Yes! Our right hands clasped, we face each other, breathing hard. Jumping. The little girls cheer around us.
We tighten our grip for the grand finale. Emmalee breathes and whoosh! We pull each other's hands, switch places. Jump a moment longer, back to back. Leap out on opposite sides. We dismount with our fists in the air, triumphant.