Detroit, July 1967
Nora settled an afghan around Margaret’s shoulders.
“Thank you, Evelyn.”
Nora didn’t correct her anymore. On her second and third visits it had taken so long to get through the exact same conversation about brothers and fathers and grandparents that she simply let her great-aunt think she was a nurse with time on her hands for long conversations. Sometimes she was Eleanor, sometimes Evelyn, and once Lisa.
No matter what Margaret called her or who she thought she was, the old lady loved having someone to talk to. Nora was happy to oblige. She had grown quite fond of Margaret, and with each visit she painstakingly put together the pieces of her family’s past. There were still gaping holes. But she felt certain that someday Margaret would reveal the key to unlocking her father’s mysterious comment years ago about black people ruining the family. It had to be more than mere resentment on the part of a few young boys who didn’t want to be teased at school for their unconventional living situation.
“The attic.”
“Oh yes, that’s right. I wasn’t supposed to be up there. The third floor was just for the men.”
Nora nodded as though she had not heard this part of the story at least three times already.
“But I sneaked up there one day.” The old woman wore a conspiratorial smile. “I went up there during the apple picking one year. The men and boys were out. Mrs. Farnsworth was busy making soup in the kitchen. And those boys had made me so cross. I was going to show them!”
She laughed, then seemed for a moment to forget that she had been talking. Nora’s heart fell as she realized she might need to start over and get Margaret back on track. But the old woman recovered.
“No, I guess it wasn’t all the boys. It was Little George. He was always mean to me. So I went up there to find out once and for all whether you could see faces in the window.”
“Faces?”
“Yes, they were always talking about the faces in the window. I thought they were trying to scare me with ghost stories. So I was going to see if they were real.”
“I’ve never noticed any faces in the window. Were they pictures someone had pasted up there?”
“Of course you haven’t, dear. I’m talking about my house, not yours,” Margaret said. She gave Nora a look that might suggest she was concerned about her nurse’s mental acumen. “Anyway, they weren’t pictures like you mean. They weren’t pasted on the window, they were in the window, in the glass.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
Margaret thought for a moment. “Do you ever take photographs?”
“No, but my husband is a photographer. He takes lots of pictures.”
“Okay then. You know the little images, the ones on the little strip?”
“You mean the negatives?”
“Yes! The negatives. Long ago when cameras were much bigger, they didn’t use those little strips. They used glass. And when my father came home from the war he brought a whole mess of these big glass negatives with him, and that’s what they used to make the window. So each pane of glass had a portrait of a soldier on it. And those were the men in the window my brothers talked about.”
“But I’ve never seen anything in that window,” Nora objected.
“Dear, I think you’re confused,” Margaret said, patting Nora’s hand. “I’m talking about my old house. The window was in my house.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. Go on.”
“They’re long gone now. Faded away. The sun makes them disappear.”
“But you saw them?”
“Only faintly. They were nearly gone by the time I saw them. And they were definitely gone by the time Father and I moved out. But I did see them once, even with my bad eyes.”
She fell so quiet and so still that Nora almost called the real nurse.
“It made me sad to think of those men,” she said finally. “The boys played at war. They pretended to shoot each other, and then they’d squirm around on the ground and go still. After I saw those men in the window, I couldn’t stand watching my brothers play at war. It didn’t seem a thing to play about. They used those stones in the field for their forts and hiding places, leaping and jumping all around on them. I didn’t think that was right. George was always jumping on them. You’d think those stones were placed there just for their amusement.”
“Ms. Balsam,” came a voice from the door, “it’s time for you to take your medicine.”
The nurse gave Nora a pointed look. Further explanations would have to wait.
“Margaret, it was so nice talking with you. You’ve led such an interesting life.”
“Well, I don’t know how interesting it is”—she laughed—“but I do like talking. When you’re busy living life, everything’s a blur. It’s not until you get to be my age and you’ve got nothing more to do than think that you start to see it for what it was.”
“I’ll see you again soon,” Nora said.
“Okay, Evelyn. Come any time.”
Nora drove home at a leisurely pace befitting a hot Sunday evening and tried to recall everything Aunt Margaret had told her. William would be especially interested to know about the faces in the window. But the moment she pulled up to the house, William burst out the front door, suitcase in hand, and ran to the car before Nora even had time to turn off the engine.
“Thank God you’re home, Nora.”
“Why? Where are you going?”
William opened the car door. “Detroit.”
“But I was just there.”
“And I’m glad you’re not anymore,” he said as he helped her out of the car. “Do you know what’s going on down there?”
“Nothing seemed to be going on at all.”
“There’s a riot growing—a real one this time—and it’s just a few blocks from Mama’s house.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. “Is she okay?”
“She and Bianca were going to go to Aunt Dee’s, but they can’t find J.J.”
“Of course they can’t.”
William gave her a chastening look as he slipped into the driver’s seat.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But you can’t tell me you’re surprised.”
He slammed the car door.
“You can’t go down there,” she said through the open window.
She clamped her hands on the door. “No, you don’t, William. You did your part last year. If he can’t stay out of trouble, there’s nothing you can do to make him. He’s chosen his path in life.”
“He’s only sixteen, Nora. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.” William pushed Nora’s purse at her through the window.
“How are you going to find him in a city that size? Where will you even start looking? It’ll be a needle in a haystack. I don’t want you down there.”
He put the car in gear and looked at his watch. “Baby, I have to go. It’s going to be dark before I can even get there. I got the call from Bianca a half hour after you left. That was six hours ago. You know how much can happen in six hours?”
This felt like bad déjà vu. Nora looked at the sun beginning to sink in the western sky. It must be shining directly through the attic window. She thought of the ghostly images of soldiers that had once covered the glass, of the attic full of former slaves who finally got the chance to live free and be paid for their labor. She thought of her family’s legacy of equality that had been twisted into bigotry over the last century, of that photo of her enraged father. And in her heart, Nora knew William needed to go. But she also knew he was not prepared to enter a riot zone.
“Wait, please. Just wait thirty seconds more.”
“For what? I gotta go.”
“Just wait!” she called over her shoulder as she ran into the house. She came back out a moment later with his camera bag.
“You think I’m gonna have time to take pictures?”
“These are the kind of pictures you always wanted to take, William. Important pictures. Pictures for the newspapers. So go find J.J. if you must. But don’t miss this moment in time. When it’s over, people are going to want to know what really happened.” She pushed the bag at him through the window.
“Baby, I love you.” He pulled her in for a kiss. “I’ll call you as soon as I get him to Aunt Dee’s.”
“Okay.” Tears welled up behind her eyes. “Don’t forget.”
“I won’t. You know I won’t. Love you, baby.”
She nodded. He let his foot off the brake and pulled away. The car disappeared behind the row of pine trees. Nora heard it move into high gear. When only the sound of cicadas remained, she walked back into the house and shut the door.
Deeply unsettled, she turned on the radio and sat down to work on the binding of her yellow quilt. If she could get it done, it would be a nice surprise for William. When they had gotten home from church that morning, she had considered finishing the quilt once and for all now that there was only one last step. It would feel so satisfying to have it done and on the bed after her daily work on it over the past year. But William had convinced her to go visit Margaret again instead.
“You won’t be able to go for another week if you don’t go today,” he’d said.
Now she wished she’d stayed home.
She turned the dial from station to station, but little news about the riot seemed to be leaking out. Just a “disturbance on Twelfth Street.” Maybe William had blown it out of proportion.
By late in the evening, the binding was finished, the quilt was laid on the bed, and Nora was pacing. The cool green lights of fireflies blinked in haphazard patterns outside, and William still hadn’t called.
That night, every little sound had her reaching for the phone. But it was never ringing. On Monday morning the news was still sketchy, but the tone had changed from detached to anxious. No one answered at the Rich house, and she couldn’t find Dee’s number. She needed a distraction.
Nora flipped through William’s record collection and pulled out everything on the Motown label. Nothing drove away bad feelings faster than the Supremes, the Temptations, Stevie Wonder, and Gladys Knight. She turned the stereo up, moved the furniture to the margins of the room, rolled up the rug, and got down on her hands and knees with a pail of soapy water and a scrub brush.
When William came home, everything would be shining like new.