I stopped at the landing in front of the Virgin of Guadalupe. She was barely visible in the dim light. I stroked her rough-carved wooden cheeks. It would be so wonderful to think she could protect me, to believe Sister Frances was even now clasped to her bosom. I crept on up to the second floor and turned right toward Sister Frances’s apartment.
The hall was even darker here because the windows facing the street were boarded over. Each step was a gamble, like walking on a rocky beach in the dark. I couldn’t tell what I was stumbling across: wallboard, wires, parts of light fixtures. I ran my fingertips along the wall to steady myself but lost my footing when the wall disappeared. I grabbed at open air and found myself on my knees in the rubble.
Even to my damaged eyes, the yellow crime scene tape across Sister Frances’s door gleamed dully in the dark. I found the knob and turned it. Unlocked. The door was sealed, but it gave way to a firm shoulder push.
Inside the apartment, the air was so acrid that my eyes started to tear. I put my plastic glasses on to protect my eyes, then took them off. The thick lenses meant I couldn’t see anything at all.
I stepped backward, catlike, from the heart of the damage. Sister Frances had brought tea in from the kitchen, and I was hoping I might find a flashlight in there. In the dark, there is no sense of distance or space. I kept banging into furniture until I found a wall that I could follow step by cautious step.
I finally found the swinging door that opened into the kitchen. It seemed like the gate between normalcy and hell. On one side were the charred, sodden remains of Sister Frankie’s life, on the other was an Ozzie and Harriet set, everything clean and tidy. The windows weren’t boarded over, and, in the lights from the back stairs and the alley streetlamps, I could make out the shapes of stove, refrigerator, cabinets. The nun’s breakfast cup and bowl were on the counter with a box of cornflakes, set out for the morning meal she wouldn’t be eating. I tried the lights, but the power had been turned off to this part of the building.
I couldn’t find a flashlight, but I took a spatula and a ladle from a jar by the stove. I saw matches and a candle, but as my hand hovered over them my whole body shuddered at the idea of more fire.
Moving cautiously back to the front room, I could see enough in the ghostly light sifting in from the kitchen doorway to start picking through the debris. I wanted to find my handbag. But what I really wanted was glass from the Molotov cocktail bottles.
I’d been in a chair near the door when the barrage had started. I’d put my bag on the floor next to me. I squatted on my haunches and shuffled forward. My fingers pressed against a damp, matted mess. It felt like a clump of rotting lettuce, but when I forced myself to delve more deeply I realized it was a book. The floor was thick with dead books, and I shuffled past them on legs that shook with grief as much as fatigue.
I found a damp, revolting mass of Styrofoam that might have been the chair cushions, and bits of the frame of the chair, but I didn’t come across my bag. However, in the middle of the room one of my clumsy hands closed on a piece of glass. It took several tries with the spatula to lift the shard from the floor and into the ladle and then into one of the plastic cups in my bag. Feeling around the area, I found bigger pieces: the neck of a bottle and a chunk that might have been part of the base. I collected these in my makeshift containers as well.
I had no way of photographing the spot where I’d found this evidence or labeling the evidence bags, which, anyway, weren’t certifiable as free from contamination. And while this evidence could never be used in court, it might tell me something helpful about the assailants.
I pushed myself to my feet. I was spasming up and down my body with fatigue. I longed to lie down where I was, on the pile of soggy books, and give way to exhaustion. I groped for a wall to steady myself. My mother’s face came to me, the day she came home from the doctor to tell me there was no hope, no treatment, no help, her dark eyes large against skin turned transparent and luminous with mortality.
“Victoria, my darling one. Grief and loss and death, they’re part of life on this planet. We all mourn, but it is selfish to turn mourning into a religion. You must promise me that you will embrace life, never turn your back on the world because of your private sorrow.”
My grief had come in the loud sobs of adolescence, and then in shouting matches with my dazed, helpless father.
“Your papà is not as strong as you and me, carissima. He needs your help, not your anger. Don’t turn against him now.”
The words had brought no comfort then and brought no comfort now. They were a burden, a load I had to carry, that of needing to be stronger than the strongest person near me. Sister Frances had died. I had to be strong enough to look after her in death since I’d been unable to look after her in life.
I picked my way backward, slogging through books and boards and cushions like an Arctic explorer who’d never reach the Pole. I was nearly at the door when I saw a light dance underneath it and dance away. I held my breath. A phantasm of fatigue? It came again, a flashlight poking along the jamb. OEM? FBI? Punks? I had nothing to defend myself with except a kitchen spatula and no strength to use it.
The door opened. A tall figure stood there hesitantly, playing the flashlight around the room, and then turned to look over the shoulder. The movement swept the light upward so that it played on the figure, revealing spiky hair.
“Petra Warshawski!” I said. “What are you doing here?”
28
THE FLASHLIGHT CLATTERED TO THE FLOOR, AND MY cousin screamed. As I stooped to pick up the light, I thought I heard retreating footfalls. I pushed past Petra and looked down the hall but didn’t see anyone.
“Who was that?” I demanded.
“Vic… It’s you!” She was breathless and frightened. “I thought you were in the hospital.”
“I am. What are you doing here, and who came with you?”
“No one. I’m on my-”
“You’re not a very convincing liar, Petra. You don’t have the guts or experience to come into a burned-out building on your own. Who was with you?”
“One of the guys who works on the campaign with me,” she muttered. “He took off when I screamed, and I don’t want him to get in trouble, so don’t ask me his name, I won’t tell you. Anyway, you shouldn’t be yelling at me. I came here for you.”
“Did you, now?” I was so weak that I had to lean against the charred wall. “What noble deed were you doing on my behalf?”
“Uncle Sal told me you’d left your wallet and everything here. I thought I could find it. He said neighborhood punks would break in and help themselves to anything that wasn’t nailed down.”
“That has the ring of authenticity,” I said applaudingly. “I can believe Mr. Contreras would use exactly those words. You’re doing better.”
“Why do you have to act like a bully?” Petra demanded. “Why can’t you believe me?”
I retrieved her flashlight and swept its beam around the room. “I believe you. Go look for my handbag. I’m too exhausted to move, but I’ll hold the light for you.”
She glowered at me but moved gingerly into the room. She was wearing her high-heeled boots and wobbled on the uneven surface. I pointed the light toward the place where I thought I’d been sitting.
“If it’s here, that’s where it should be. Try each step before you put your full weight on your leg. You don’t want to go through a burned floorboard.”