THE FIRE SETTERS

Years later I listen to the madame reminisce
on that house fire.
She say first thing she heard with closed eyes
was rocks banging the porch, then her mama stumbling all over.
Caught-fire hair, the next breath;
her granny's bosom heavy with the scent of vanilla.
I knew what this had come to by counting
who was in the parlor—
Baby-Boy, carried in first from the smoky back rooms,
child rolled back like fish belly.
And the man, he there,
just dithering over my madame's burnt hair.
That only one small trouble, I like to tell him.
What showed me was Myrna—nowhere to be found,
and I'd watched how she nursed Baby-Boy
like something owned.
But that night she'd slid off with the fire-setters.
I ask myself what the difference was anyways,
me huddled on the inside
while that house come crinkling down.
Outside or in, we pass under the same name:
bunch of wild niggers.

                                   --after Jean Rhys

First published in Bomb