FLAMETHROWER
My mother sets fire to the family sofa when she’s three years old. Woodrow Wilson is president and Marcus Garvey is selling tickets back to Africa. Her father has warned her about playing by the fireplace in their Pittsburgh row house but there she is again with her doll baby. The doll’s hair catches fire by accident or is part of an experiment. When it becomes a torch Mama tosses it under the sofa.
Her father’s mad but he gets over it. They put it out before the whole room goes up and there’s the bright side that they made it out okay. All seven of them and little fire-starter.
Two years later her father is electrocuted by low hanging wires in a West Virginia coal mine. One morning he leaves as usual swinging his tin lunch pail and jumps on the shift truck but never comes back. Well. Comes back in a box that sits in the parlor. Inside he looks unlike himself: coal black, eyes drawn, lips pursed. Not even when she set the sofa ablaze was he this cross. So she sits in a chair by him or leans into the box trying old tricks to tickle his insides. She reads comics from the paper sounding out words like a five year old. Nothing. Next day their North Side neighbors, dreamers from as far away as Lithuania and as close as the Carolinas, transform the narrow city streets into an impromptu homegoing. The ebb and flow of dusty men out of mines and steel mills stop to salute. Women in limp house dresses crowd modest porches crossing themselves. Folks going and coming from day work and factories shoo children off the street to make way. Black men, Freemasons, step in double file wearing dark suits and white plumed hats. They step past the house on Decatur Street. The milkman pauses his horse-drawn truck to wave. She feels excited and sad in her new dress and hair ribbon. She waves back from behind the hearse.