twenty-two

I began to move, first back toward the door, feeling the heat of it against my hand. Too hot to open. How had this happened so quickly?

I went one way and then the other along the edge of the roof. Had the air shaft window been open, I could have let myself down that one story. But someone down below saw me. Face upturned, he cupped his hands against his mouth. “Don’t go back into the building,” he called. “Candles in the first-floor apartment caught fire. It’s a powder keg now. Use the side stairs.”

Behind me, the door burst open with a great roar and flames shot across the roof, sending fire to lick the tar and ignite the wash in the basket.

My heart pounded in my chest and in my ears as I scrambled over the hot tar to the stairs with the black wrought-iron railing that snaked its way down the side of the building. Terrified of the height, but more afraid of the fire, I threw myself over the side of the wall and onto the steps. They moved with me, the metal warm against my stockinged feet. I could hear someone screaming and realized the sounds were coming from my own mouth.

But then I had no breath left. What came into my lungs was searing heat, and I flew down that uneven stairway, jumping the last few feet into the arms of that kind man who had told me the way down.

I ran toward the group of people who were gathered on the corner under the streetlight. Kristel, the girl from the apartment below ours, sat on the ground holding two of her brothers by the hand, her hair snarled and down to her waist, her legs bare, her shoes unbuckled on her feet. Her mother was there, too, her shawl over her head; her hands, pressed against her cheeks, were trembling. Their faces were black with soot. The woman from the first-floor apartment sat in the filthy street, hunched over, rocking back and forth, dazed. “My fault,” she said. “The candles were too close to the curtains. My fault.”

My hand went to my mouth. I turned, twirling in the windy street, looking for Maria and Barbara and the Uncle. Not there. Still in the house, then.

In front of me was the door to the building. I reached down. “Please,” I said, and took Kristel’s shoes off her feet. “I have to . . .” I pointed. “My family . . .”

My family. It was the first time I had thought of them that way.

Kristel’s head was on her raised knees, her hair covering most of her skirt. “What are you doing?” she asked.

I crushed my feet into the shoes, which were much too small, wondering if I could get through the front door, hearing the sound of bells in the distance—not church bells, perhaps a fire engine coming with water.

I was through the door in an instant, looking up at the stairway, which seemed to be covered in a dense fog, like the bridge over my river on an early spring morning. But this narrow bridge that led upstairs had tongues of fire running along the banister and across the top two steps.

I put my hand in the band of my skirt, not bothering to unbutton it, but pushing out as hard as I could so the buttons popped. . . . Mama’s voice was in my head: Dina, always you make the buttonholes too wide.

I stepped out of the skirt and the petticoat Barbara had spent hours trimming, two pools of fabric to burn on the bottom step.

I saw Mama’s face. What will people think?

I took the stairs two at a time. My head felt fuzzy now. I was coughing, trying to find breath.

By the time I reached the top step of the first floor, I could feel the heat through Kristel’s shoes and on my legs. And as the banister turned onto the second floor, through the smoke, I could see Barbara, almost a shadow, and behind her, guiding her with one hand and holding Maria in his other arm, was the Uncle. The bottom of Maria’s blanket was smoldering.

Steps above me, he leaned over the banister and put the baby into my arms.

I turned, went down the steps, down, toward the door. Maria was still sleeping, had slept through all of this; otherwise why would her eyes be closed, and why would she be so still?

I reached the door with a man guiding me, such a large man, and I remembered vaguely that I had seen him sitting on the steps next door during the summer. Then I sank down into the street with the baby in my arms.

A voice that sounded like Mama’s said, “Did you see that? Did you see what she did?”

And I realized she was talking about me.