“Can’t you put her out yourself?” Sally asks.
“I can’t do it,” the woman cries. “I’m afraid I’ll kill her.”
Sally looks from one woman to another, then down at the little girl. She closes her eyes and takes a shallow breath through her nose. “Fine,” she says. “Give her to me.”
“No!” the woman screams, burying her nose in the little girl’s neck.
“Do you want her out the window or not?”
The mother only sobs in response. Sally tries easing the little girl out of the woman’s arms, but the woman holds her daughter tight. Margaret steps in and begins to open the woman’s fingers, one by one. “Remember, dear, when they’re little, their bones are made of butter.”
Sally is losing her patience. “Give her to me now, or I won’t do it!”
The woman hands the little girl over, and as Sally lifts her over the sill, she whispers in her ear, “It’s going to be all right.” Then she shouts at the crowd gathered beneath the window. “Somebody catch this one!” She tries not to think about what she is doing, about the long way down or the bodies that lay scattered in the frozen grass. A man steps forward and shouts something up at her, but she can’t hear what. Without giving herself time to think, she releases the child into the wind.
She doesn’t want to watch the child’s landing, but she can’t look away. At the sight of the little girl safe in the man’s arms, she lets out a gasp.
“He caught her!” screams Margaret, who has peeked over the sill. “Oh my God, he caught her!”
Sally’s legs shake. She has had quite enough of being the hero and barks at the rest of the women, “Let the child’s mother out first, and then all the rest of you had better jump. I’m not going to stand here and push you out one by one. Do you understand?”
She makes to move away from the window, and Margaret tugs at her dress, or what is left of it. “Where are you going?”
Up and down the narrow hallway, women flock to the open windows. “If we wait until they’re all out,” says Sally, “we’ll be dead.”
Margaret touches her own neck.
“There’s another window back here. Several of them. They’re just boarded up.”
Sally runs her hand along the wall, moving slowly toward the back of the house. Within a dozen feet, she hits another casement window, covered with the same familiar planks of wood. She starts to pull at the boards with her fingers, but they don’t budge. “Margaret,” she calls, “see if you can find a cane or a piece of wood on the floor, anything I might wedge between these boards.”
“I’ve got a cane!” says Margaret, letting out a loud cough. “Oh! Sal! It’s Mr. Scott’s. He’s here.”
“Here?” asks Sally as she tries to work the first board free with her own two hands. “Is he dead?”
Margaret hands her the cane and returns to Mr. Scott. “I think I feel a life pulse. But it’s very faint.”
Sally has to focus, but the work is slow, and she is beginning to feel dizzy again. She looks over at the open window closest to them. Most of the women who were there a few minutes ago are gone. One lies on the floor, unconscious, and another continues to hover at the sill.
The ceiling is a sheet of flames, and red-hot debris threatens to bombard them.
“Where’s Mr. Scott?” Sally asks Margaret. “We have to get out of here. Now.”
Margaret moves through the dark to the slump of a man’s body, and Sally follows her. “Here,” says Margaret.
“What are we going to do with him?” Margaret asks.
“Let’s get him out the window. After that, we can’t control what happens to him.”
Sally grabs him under his arms, and Margaret takes hold of his legs, and together they drag him as far as the open window. He is heavier than Sally anticipated, and they’ll need an extra set of hands to get him over the sill.
A woman with a birthmark the size of a quail’s egg hovers at the window, and when Sally asks her if she’s going to jump, she shakes her head, a vehement no. “You should,” says Sally.
The woman’s face is streaked with tears. “My sister’s dead. Down there.”
Sally looks out the window at the theater green. The grass is littered with bodies. She returns her gaze to the woman, who can’t be older than twenty-five. “I’m very sorry for your loss. But if you choose to stay, you’ll die in here.”
The woman blinks in acknowledgment, but she does not make a move to climb out the window.
