The usual collection of victims with blankets, in nightgowns, pajamas, wasn’t there. Instead it was just us, the residents of Pilsen, the galley, some of us sitting in cars, some of us standing, steam highlighting our exhalations. Whoever was in the building was still in there, had to be, and as the minutes wore on a column of flame took hold. By the time we left, the building looked like a four-story jack-o’-lantern.
We went home, and while my father warmed up his dinner I climbed into bed. I knew he would not want to disturb my mother. That he would sleep on the couch and that my mother would wake up and our awkwardness as a family would continue for one more day. I could smell the fire, the charred wood, in my nose, on my arms, like I was burning, like I had been in the blaze myself. A building that tall and narrow was complicated to navigate even without fire. It was a wormhole, a building you stepped into and never came out of.
The next morning I awoke and found my father still asleep on the couch. I went to the table, got my bowl of puffed rice. I could still smell the blaze. My jacket was hanging on the chair but the smell was something stronger, like my father was also coated with it, the whole house, like the smell had finally become a part of all three of us.
“Did you guys go out last night?” my mother asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
“Which building was it?”
“The one across from the laundromat,” I said. “The tall one by Zemsky’s.”
“I never saw anyone go in there,” my mother answered.
“Me neither,” I said.
My mother and I exited our building out into the cold morning. We climbed into the car, the same one I had been in just a few hours before, though now it was cold, needing time to warm up. We drove down Eighteenth Street, turned onto Blue Island. There was the building, the shell of the building, coated in ice, transformed, glimmering, beautiful in the morning sun, an ice castle waiting to be occupied by anyone desperate enough to live there.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski grew up in the Pilsen neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. He has taught in the Chicago public school system and is currently a high school counselor for students with disabilities. In his spare time he builds and repairs motorcycles.