“Don’t you see, Helena? You are my dream. I did that for you. For you to be free and not live here and become like Josephine, like the rest. And you’ve grown bigger and better than I have imagined.”
“Iris, you wanted to kill me.”
“Never.” Iris took one step forward, and Helena took one back. “The plan was never to kill you. The plan was that you would never be useful in that way to our family ever again.”
“Do you know how much pain I went through that day?” Helena screamed through her tears.
“Does it outweigh what you would’ve gone through here as a prisoner?”
“That should’ve been my decision to make—not yours!”
“But aren’t you happier?”
“That’s not the point!”
“But it is,” Iris said sweetly, her tone more resembling honeydew than its usual cold intensity. She continued with conviction, “A mother will do whatever she has to, to ensure her child’s happiness, even if it has to hurt. You always wanted to be free, Helena. I sensed it in you even as a baby, when you would scream for hours and no one knew what to do. Or how you always squirmed in anyone’s arms. How the only time I got you to calm down was if I nursed you near the window, and I always had to draw up the curtains. You were always looking beyond this place. I didn’t make the decision impulsively, but when I knew, I didn’t second-guess it.”
“You are sick.”
“I’m a mother.”
Helena brushed past Iris’s shoulder to go back upstairs while Iris repeatedly called out to her. Iris followed her daughter upstairs to the second-floor corridor, where there was an uproar coming from outside and fires aglow near the front-facing windows. Josephine was in front of Maman’s door, calling out her name and twisting the doorknob until she knocked it clean off its spindle. When the door wouldn’t budge, she kicked it down and rushed to Maman’s bedside. Maman was facing the wall where the cracks now resembled large tree branches that stretched border to border.
“Maman? Maman? Come on, we gotta go. Maman?”
Josephine pushed Maman’s left shoulder down to get a good look at her and Maman was mindlessly smiling at the ceiling.
“Ma?” Josephine shook her head.
“Don’t you understand?” Maman curled a pointy fingernail underneath the last bit of caul on her chest.
“Mom—”
“I told you that I’m gonna live and die here, didn’t I?”
“Don’t!” Josephine cried.
Maman tore the caul away with one sharp yank, and her breath began to get shorter and labored just as a Molotov cocktail flew through one of the front-facing windows. The curtains were in flames within a matter of seconds. Helena ran into the room and struggled to pull a resistant Josephine away from Maman.
The three women ran out the back door, kicked down the balusters of the fence, and started on foot. Before they could decide which corner to turn down next, Josephine fell on her ankle but urged them to keep going and that she’d try to catch up with them later. Helena and Iris ran until they couldn’t hear their breaths in the wind or the cheering of the large crowd back at the brownstone that had been set ablaze. Ran until they couldn’t feel their feet or the heat scorching the nape of their necks. Ran until their knees wobbled and their feet gave out. Ran until a person opening the door to a multistoried building gave them a means to enter and hide there. Ran several flights of steps to the rooftop, where the fire from the brownstone illuminated the night. There were puddles of water beneath their feet here, and they finally saw their reflections—damp, sooty, and sweaty faces—and perhaps that camouflage was how they were able to get as far as they did. The cheers from the crowd stretched higher than the ambulance sirens once the roof caved in and sparks became shooting stars in the evening sky. The scene was elegiac and glorious.
Iris and Helena stood huddled next to each other in the bitter cold, getting the last bit of their coughs out and nursing the wounds they gathered while running.
“Why didn’t you just leave me there, Helena? You could’ve left me there.” Iris resumed crying.
“Didn’t you want to be free too?”
Iris abruptly stopped crying. She wanted to wrap her arms around her daughter but refrained. Instead, the two women continued watching the fire as if it was the starkest of endings. Now they were both free—no home, no origin. The possibilities were grand, but for that moment, they quietly mourned for their family and the uncertainty of their lives now that they had nothing else but each other.
28
People were shocked that the brownstone took less than thirty minutes to burn down and that the fire did not spread to other homes, though the neighbors had fled nevertheless. They found Maman’s body in her bed. She looked mummified yet not burned beyond recognition, which provided the community with gossip fodder for days. When her body was brought to the morgue, the coroner noticed that her right hand was closed into a fist. He opened it to find that there was a piece of caul in her palm.
The people of Harlem could smell the smoke and ash in the air for days. There was less chatter and activity on the streets. Whatever needed to be said would be said within soul-food restaurants, the church pews, or at home. They didn’t know what to think about the Melancon women anymore now that the matriarch was gone. Though no one wanted to admit it, the burning of the Melancon brownstone was worthy of documentation in the Studio Museum or the Schomburg. It was a powerful beacon in the neighborhood, and many imagined what life
