“C’mon, Sorry, don’t be such a scaredy cat.”
I hated when my big sister called me that. Not just the “Sorry,” part, which I really super-duper hated, but scaredy cat. I wasn’t scared. When my cat Oreo got scared, her back went up and all her black-and-white fur looked like she’d put her tail in a socket. I was nothing like that. I swiped at the back of my neck to make sure my hair was indeed flat. It was.
Rainey didn’t understand that I was just following the rules. When I did what Momma and Daddy said, I didn’t get into trouble. Rainey never did what they said, and she was always in trouble.
My sister’s eyes were shooting lasers at me. She looked like the kids in the Village of the Damned from her stick-straight blond hair to her creepily glowing eyes. See now that was trouble. Momma had been real mad when she’d caught me watching that late night movie after my bedtime. Momma had said it would cause my too young, ten-year-old self nightmares. She’d been exactly right.
Okay, maybe I was scared. I didn’t want to tell my sister, though, because Rainey would make fun of me for days. Once my sister got a hold of something, she never let it go.
“But Daddy told us to stay home.” I knew I was whining, but I didn’t care.
“’But Daddy told us to stay home,’” Rainey mimicked in the sing-song voice she knew I hated.
“Why do you want to go over there anyway?” I asked. “Did you see the news? Walter Cronkite said it’s a race riot.”
“I want to see it in person,” Rainy answered as if going to Hough were the same as looking at outer space meteorites at the natural history museum. She continued, breathing the last words like she was whispering in church, “To see if it’s for real.”
“Of course, it’s for real,” I huffed. “Daddy hasn’t been home at all. Momma said that no one in the police department can leave their post or something like that.”
“Your momma says a lot of words.” Rainey’s voice was clipped. “Get your tennis shoes on.”
I tried to back away from my sister, get to my room so I could shut the door. Sometimes Rainey didn’t bother me if she couldn’t see me.
“I don’t—”
Rainey’s hand gripped my arm so hard, I was afraid she was going to leave bruises. I was tired of trying to explain the black-and-blue marks that would appear. I’d even stopped letting Momma come in when I was taking a bath. I missed that. Momma sitting on the toilet seat while I lay in the foamy bubbles. She would wash my hair and rub my scalp, then we would chitchat until the water got cold.
“Your mother’s asleep.”
Reluctantly, I shoved first one foot, then the other into the red, white, and blue sneakers I’d begged Momma and Daddy to buy me for the summer.
Five minutes later I was in the front seat of Momma’s car. Rainey had somehow gotten the keys. After the first time Rainey had “borrowed” the car, Momma had started keeping her metal key ring in the drawer next to her and Daddy’s bed. Momma was a light sleeper, though, and the curiosity as to how she’d gotten the keys without waking Momma was eating away at me.
I thought about asking Rainey on how she did it, but the way she squinted at me made me think twice. I kept my big mouth shut.
“I used to live in Cleveland, you know.” The gears of Momma’s car ground a little as Rainey jammed the stick shift into reverse. She turned the car around from facing the garage toward the street.
Cleveland wasn’t New York or Detroit, but the city was still miles from our driveway in Rocky River.
I wanted to ask my sister if living in the city had been scary. Did she worry about being murdered in her bed at night by a guy coming through her window? Daddy said it wasn’t a safe world when you went east of the Cuyahoga River. That he was doing everything in his power to keep our family and people like us protected.
“Yeah, but you had Daddy. Everyone knew he was a cop, right? All of our neighbors say to Momma all the time how glad they are that we moved on the block.”
“He wasn’t ever home at night,” Rainey spat out. I hated that tone of voice she used, as if I was too stupid to understand anything. I wasn’t sixteen like her, but I was ten and that felt old enough to know how stuff worked in the world. She couldn’t yell at me if I didn’t say anything, though, so I shut up.
“Your dad is home almost every single night.” That one came out with a hiss, not a yell. I hoped that meant she wasn’t mad at me anymore for having a better life than hers.
It wasn’t long before we were on the expressway and Rainey wasn’t grinding gears because she’d stopped moving the stick after she’d switched to the highest one. She must have been driving Momma’s new Mustang at least ninety miles an hour in the left lane. I didn’t exactly know, though, because I’d closed my eyes when I saw the needle go past the number eighty.
I only opened my eyes again when the car came to a stop. Everything was quiet while Rainey waited for the light to change on the wide and empty Cleveland street. A big stone church stood silent on the corner. I craned my neck to look for street signs. We were on Euclid Avenue and East Thirtieth street. When the light turned, Rainey ground it into first and we drove what could only be further east.
Fear gripped my throat. I could only breathe again when my eyes finally got used to the dark. It was nothing more than brick buildings and tall steepled churches. I think I saw a theater, but it was closed up tight.
Then the air changed. It wasn’t like a thunderstorm was coming in, but the air felt electric anyway. The streets were not dark anymore. Even though I was afraid, I rolled down the window and stuck my head out. Even though streetlights were all broken jagged glass, it was as bright as daylight.
Then I understood why.
First, it was thick smoke coming from somewhere just past where I could see. I pushed my glasses up my nose, but it wasn’t much better. Rainey was moving a lot slower now. Suddenly my arm got hot and my head snapped to the open window again.
Something was on fire. It wasn’t a building because whatever it was half blocked the road. It was a garbage can, maybe. I tilted my head to the right and held my glasses up with my index finger. No, it was a car. Some kind of small car. The smell was awful, the smoke thick and oily.
A group of angry-looking Negro men ran by. Then a group of men came behind them. They had guns and uniforms, but weren’t police.
“Who’s that?”
I pointed my finger out of the window toward men in camouflage.
“National Guard.”
“What do they do?”
“What you see them doing. Keeping order.”
The car was crawling now. The fires were bigger. The shouts louder. Negroes were running everywhere. Some were throwing rocks and bottles with rags sticking out. Others had stuff in their hands like they’d been shopping without a cart or bag.
I nearly jumped out of my seat at the sound of shattering glass. Momma was going to kill Rainey if something happened to this car. It had been a birthday present from Daddy.
Ponies were stitched into the seat leather. Some days I swear Momma loved it, more than she loved any of us and the dog. The dog had been Daddy’s present to me the year before, but the Shih Tzu loved her best. At the sound of something else breaking, I forgot all about Lady.
“We should turn back, Rainey. You can see what’s happening. People are throwing things. I think I heard a gun go off. We could end up dead. Then Daddy would be really mad.”
“If we’re dead, we won’t care how Daddy feels,” she said. She was one hundred percent right. My heart started beating really fast. Sometimes I lay awake in bed at night squeezing Oreo too hard while I tried to imagine the nothingness of death. Even though Momma promised me I’d go to heaven, Rainey said she was lying. Rainey said I’d be in the ground feeling like I was suffocating and being eaten by worms. Then after that—nothing—forever.
“I don’t want to die,” I gasped.
“No one is going to die.” Rainey was turning the car this way and that. “Look, I think I see Daddy now.” She pointed through the windshield.
“Really?” I pushed my glasses up again. Tried to find him through the hazy smoke.
“Yeah. Look, you’re right. This was stupid. Let’s get him to drive us home or find someone to get us out of here safely.”
“That’s a really swell idea,” I said. It was the first good one she’d had all night.
In a second we were reversing too fast. The car thumped and someone screamed.
“Did we hit somebody?”
Rainey didn’t answer, though a smile played around the side of her mouth. Something twisted in my belly. Instead of saying anything to me, or checking to see what might have happened, my sister put the Mustang back into gear and turned down an alley. It was blocked by a burned car and other stuff.
“Get out!” Rainey had turned to me. She was screaming the command in my face.
“What?” My body suddenly went very, very cold.
“Daddy’s right there around the corner. Just past those garbage cans. You see that sign on the ground, the one that says, ‘79ers?’”
In front of us, there was a giant half burned piece of wood lying on the pavement.
I nodded.
“He’s there. Right there just past. I’m going to go around to the other side of this alley. Pick you both up there. Got it?”
I nodded again. My heart slowed down a little. She had a plan.
Right then I saw a burly cop poking his head and shoulders down the alleyway. It was Daddy. Swell. I just needed to get to him. Then we’d get home. Rainey would be punished. I would be safe.
My sweaty fingers pulled at the lock until I could get it to open, then I lifted the door handle until the heavy door of Momma’s new car opened. I stepped out and slammed it. Before I could say anything to Rainey confirming our getaway plan, the car was peeling out of the alley in reverse.
Though I couldn’t figure out why I was doing it, I found myself booking it toward her instead of Daddy. She was smiling at me. That smile filled my belly with balls of lead and my chest with fear and dread. Rainey rolled down the driver’s window. Her face going from pretty to ugly in an instant.
“This time, you’re going to be sorry you were born, Sorry.”
It’s what she meant every time she called me by that nickname. I was as good as dead this time.