Lina sipped from her cup. “Well,” she said, but she found herself struggling for words. The cold cream of the horchata touched her brain and glazed her throat, and she sat rigid, frozen. It had been so long since she’d spoken of that day.
“Ms. Lina never told me about the fire,” Tyrell said, perhaps trying to buy her some time—she could tell he wanted to make eye contact with her, but she couldn’t meet his gaze yet. “That was some real heavy shit, right?”
“No, no,” Lina muttered, shaking off the stiffness. “I’ll tell you guys about the fire.”
She eyed the lower left corner of the mural. Her students had painted a young Lina there—glowing Afro, leather jacket, the black-purple beret.
“It was August 24, 1978. I was thirty-four. The building was falling apart, and we’d been in court with the landlord. There was a sign on the door that said the city was going to evict, but we thought that was some kind of mistake because the court had said the landlord had two months to fix the place up and he hadn’t done any of the work yet. So, this one night, guess it was one, two in the morning, I opened the door and the hallway was already in flames. I went into the next apartment, where the Browns lived. We got the three girls out through the fire escape. But when we reached the street, the fire had spread. And some of the neighbors were trapped inside.”
Lina reached for the boom box, shut it off.
“People called nine-one-one, but the trucks didn’t show up. I went in the next building myself, went up to the top floor. There was this old woman. We used to call her Grandma. I wanted to get her out, but she kept telling me her brother was in the next room.”
Lina clutched her stomach. Felt like she’d swallowed a live snake. “I’m trying to give you guys the facts, but I’ve been having nightmares about that night for forty years and it’s hard to say what really happened.”
Just the prior night, she’d dreamed of Grandma. The old woman had jumped out of a window, then become a monster, attacking people on the street. And two weeks earlier, Lina had locked the Brown girls in a closet to protect them from a pedophile. Then the building was on fire, and the girls still trapped inside.
Lina studied the wrinkles on the front page ofOur Time Press.
“I didn’t make it in time.”
She kept her eyes on her lap.
“We had to leave without the brother, and we made it down. But by the time the fire trucks showed up, we had one dead, three injured, and sixteen people homeless.”
When she finally raised her head, Miss Sadie looked like she was about to cry. Pity, likely, and Lina didn’t want any of that.
“Who did it?” Tyrell asked.
“I saw the two boys who lit the match. But those kids were paid by the landlord.”
“The landlord—do you remember his name?” Miss Sadie asked.
“Richard Wong.”
“Was there ever an investigation?”
Lina couldn’t help but laugh. “The city didn’t investigate these fires! No, Mr. Wong took the money and ran.”
Miss Sadie reached for her backpack, withdrew her laptop.
“I was looking at the deed record for the building.” Sadie said. “I saw Richard Wong owned the building from May 3, 1966, through August 9, 1978. So August 9 is about two weeks before the day of the fire. Is it possible that someone else already owned the building by then?”
Tyrell leaned closer to the girl, squinting at the screen. Lina stared at the two of them, confused. “What deed record?” She hadn’t even known a person could have access to the lot’s deed record. “What’s that you said?”
“August 9 is two weeks before the fire. And there’s a buyer listed here—78 Livonia Avenue LLC. Do you know what that is?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What about the restaurant?” Miss Sadie asked next. “What happened to it?”
“The Chinese restaurant? That was gone long before we started the Freedom School.”
As soon as Lina answered the question, she knew something was off. That girl was hiding something. Tyrell must have sensed it too. He leaned away from Sadie now, glancing at Lina, his jaw suddenly rigid.
“How did you know there used to be a restaurant in the building?”
The reporter looked down at her notebook, but Lina could tell she was flustered.
