by Anne Valente
BENJI NDOLO
Lewis and Clark High School Class of 2007
April 14, 1989—October 8, 2003
Benji Ndolo was a freshman at Lewis and Clark, having just begun high school in August. He lived on Conway Terrace with his mother and younger brother, where they were sometimes seen playing catch. He was tall for his age. Nothing else is known about him. His mother stood in the yard past midnight seven days after the shooting. One day after her son’s funeral. Minutes before the entire house burned.
THE WEATHER OF OUR HEART A STORM
WE STAYED IN. We did not move. We paralyzed ourselves to helplessness, our blinds closed. We feared opening our front doors to find that the world was what we imagined: an axis beyond tilt. We stiffened at sirens, swirled colors passing beyond our windows, the sound of emergency. We closed our doors to police cars and reporters locusting our streets, to neighbors peering from behind curtains and emerging only to grab their mail. We watched the news and read the papers and awoke to our parents gone to work, the way the world hummed on out of necessity though they promised to return in only hours, hours that unfurled impossibly before us.
We read of Benji’s mother, a woman we’d just seen at the library vigil. We read of the fire, a blaze that reached a moonlit sky while we’d lain in our bedrooms and felt a dark ache pulse beneath our ribs only upon waking, that streets away another house had lost itself to flames. We read of Eric Greeley, what we gathered that the paper wouldn’t say: that he’d passed the polygraph test, that he had no connection, that he was cleared of correlation. That police had no leads and no suspects, no clues though the paper wouldn’t report it, no sense at all of what the fuck was happening.
A curfew: only so many hours of daylight that would allow us to meet. Our homes turned to confinement cells, the walls crowded and the air compact and stale knowing we would not be able to breach the doors past dusk. We glutted ourselves on information, a twenty-four-hour news cycle, a television that blared Midvale County from the moment we woke to the point of pressing the power off. A news cycle that never took breaks for the events of the nation and world beyond us, information we mined from the newspaper’s back pages to learn that the Shenzhou 5 had made it safely back to earth. That four U.S. troops had been ambushed in Iraq. That box cutters had been found aboard flights in New Orleans and Houston. That an unnamed list of baseball players were being investigated for the use of performance-enhancing drugs, only a day before the World Series would begin. We turned off the news for other news, an emailed missive from the Midvale County School District: Lewis and Clark High would still resume school at Timber Creek on Monday despite the fires, a return to routine that the administration claimed we needed.
Nick pulled on his jeans and grabbed his sweatshirt and sneakers and keys. He ripped the latest front-page headline from the Post-Dispatch, an open admission that police had no clue what was going on, and shoved the clipping into his manila folder. His parents already at work, a note his father had left on the counter: Call if you need me—had a surgery I couldn’t reschedule but I’ll be home at noon sharp. His mother had left her office number at the courthouse, though he’d already memorized it in junior high. Nick gathered his things and opened his brother’s bedroom door and Jeff looked at him red-eyed and Nick pushed a sweater over his head and told him to brush his teeth and then they were in the car heading east to their father’s office.
Zola woke to the rabbit circling, its cage jangling her awake from the carpet by the foot of her bed. She crawled from her sheets and sat on the floor, pressed her index finger through the bars of the cage. The rabbit pushed its nose against her skin, a light tremor of cold and wet. She opened the cage door, pulled the rabbit to her lap, and felt its fur against her bare legs. Penelope, she thought. You are a Penelope. The Pentax camera lay nearby on the carpet, pictures she knew she should begin taking like she’d promised. Christina and Nick and Matt would depend on her for it, but there was nothing she could think to capture. She thought to snap a photograph of the rabbit, its downy fur. She picked Penelope up instead and held her to her face, a soft shock against her cheek when her mother burst into the room, her eyes grim, the lines of worry in her face redrawn.
Matt awoke early to his darkened bedroom well before the newspaper reached our front lawns. A light tapping at the basement window pulled him from sleep. He looked at his bedside clock: 4:46 A.M. The tapping too irregular, too insistent to be only a tree branch. Tyler. The same tapping of knuckles against the window, what Matt didn’t know whether he could stand. The reptile center’s bathroom. Tyler’s shoes disappearing across the tiles. Matt hesitated in his sheets before moving across the room to the window, before pulling back the curtain to a shadow too slight to belong to Tyler.
Let me in, Christina said through the glass.
Matt could barely see her face in the dark but in her voice heard panic.
When he unlatched the window she pushed her way into the room, her hair near frozen, her clothing cold. What happened? he shouted despite his parents upstairs still asleep. He knew they’d wake up soon once the clock struck five.
Benji Ndolo’s house, she said. His mother.
What about them?
I saw it. She was there in the yard. She was there in the yard and then she wasn’t.
Whose yard? What are you talking about?
Last night. Tonight. I was there on the street and then their house just erupted.
Matt sat on the bed. He listened for his father. Everything upstairs silent. How his father would awake in moments and find out and leave the house for hours.
What were you doing there?
It doesn’t matter.
Chris, what were you doing there?
I was on a bike. My brother’s bike.
But what were you doing there? Just tell me.
Christina sat down beside him. I was coming back from Ryan’s house.
And you saw Benji’s mother?
She was in her yard. She was just standing there the first time I went by. When I came back only twenty minutes later or so, I saw the entire house go up in flames.
Matt tried to summon Benji’s face. A kid he didn’t know, a freshman he could barely recall from Lewis and Clark’s halls though he remembered his mother, her soft voice and how her features collapsed at the vigil. Matt knew where Ryan lived, at least three miles away from his own house. Three miles Christina had biked through the cold wind and her own terror toward his basement window.
I thought you should know, she said. You and your dad.
You’ve just been riding around all night?
I went home. But I couldn’t sleep. I went home and I wrote this stupid profile then I rode around some more and now I’m here.
She pulled a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket and handed it to Matt. Barely a paragraph: Benji Ndolo. A scrawl written in heavy ink. Matt scanned it, short and terse. Not one of the juniors they were supposed to profile. Not a profile at all.
There’s nothing to say, Christina said. There’s nothing at all to say.
Don’t worry about it right now.
I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know what else to do with myself.
You said twenty minutes, he said. Why did you stay only twenty minutes?
I threw a rock. I broke a window.
Ryan’s window?
He called me a crybaby. He said I was just a little rich girl.
Her eyes filled. Matt placed his hand on her back.
You’re neither of those things.
He said I was.
Ryan doesn’t know shit. He’s never known shit.
What’s that supposed to mean?
It means he’s an ass, Matt said, knowing he should stop. He knew the rules, never speak badly about someone’s partner in case they ever took them back but he felt anger sear through him regardless. Zola had already said it at the bookstore.
I wish you all would’ve told me so much sooner, Christina said. I’ve been wasting so much tim
e these past two years.
Matt ran his hand down her back. You’re not the only one wasting time.
Christina looked at him. Tyler?
Matt nodded. He’s been totally absent and awful.
Ryan said I was a bitch. This summer. He called me a fucking bitch.
You never told me that.
I never told anyone. I guess I don’t have to hide anything anymore.
Matt listened to her exhale the words. Felt her breath move through her back. I hope you never feel like you have to hide anything, he said. From me, or from anyone.
Christina looked at him. You know, you never told me directly about Tyler.
We haven’t been dating that long. Weren’t. I don’t know what we are anymore.
I’m sorry what I said about him. And about you. That he left you there. Clearly, I’m no expert on how people should treat each other.
Maybe we both deserve better, Matt said.
He knew he sounded more resolute than he felt.
Tyler has better reason to be selfish right now, Christina said. I guess we all do. But Ryan’s been an asshole ever since I met him.
Did he see you outside his window?
She shook her head. I can’t believe Benji’s mother was just standing there.
You saw her in her yard?
On the way there. She looked like she was watching the stars. She just stood still. Not moving. But I saw her face and she looked broken.
Matt imagined the expression. The same lines that had carved away the features of every other parent’s face at the vigil.
And then she just went inside?
I don’t know. When I came back, she was gone but the front door was smoking.
And then what?
And then the house just exploded.
What do you mean the house exploded?
Fire just burst through the front door.
Christina leaned against Matt’s shoulder. He ran his hand over her hair.
What if she set the fire? Christina asked.
Matt didn’t move.
I’ve been riding around all night, Matt. What if she set her own house on fire? She was there, and then she was just gone.
That would mean she set every other house on fire, too. Wouldn’t it? Or that the Blacks and Trenways also set their homes on fire, just like her. Is that what you mean?
I don’t know. Both seem unlikely. But I thought you and your dad should know.
Was there anyone else there?
In the house? I don’t know. Benji had a little brother. But I don’t know.
Matt heard footsteps above him, the heavy thud of someone walking through the kitchen. Past 5 A.M. now. His parents were up.
I need to go anyway, Christina said and pulled away from him. My father will be up by five thirty at the latest for work. I need to get home.
Are you sure you’re okay?
Matt could see that she wasn’t. A mindless question. But she nodded and pulled the hood of her sweatshirt over her hair and slipped out the window. Matt sat for a moment on his bed. Felt the cool tile of the basement floor beneath his feet. He hadn’t put on socks, had barely put on pants before letting Christina in. He grabbed a sweatshirt and headed upstairs to the kitchen, where only his mother sat at the table in her robe.
Where’s Dad?
Good morning to you, too.
Matt noticed thick bags beneath her eyes. She sipped a mug of coffee.
He’s out on another case, she said. He left two hours ago. It’s not good, Matt.
I know.
What do you know?
Christina told me. She was just here. She saw it happen. Benji’s house.
She was here? His mother’s face flared with alarm. And she was there, last night? What do you mean she was there?
She was out biking. She passed by on the sidewalk and saw the house begin to burn. Benji’s mother was outside. In the yard, right before it happened.
Why was Christina out biking? It’s too dangerous to do that right now at night.
I don’t know. But she was. And she saw what she saw.
His mother stood. Your father should know this.
I know.
No, I mean he should know this right now, she said. I’m canceling today’s shift at the shelter. She pulled the telephone from the kitchen’s wall-mounted receiver and dialed the police station, his father’s direct line.
NICK SAT WITH his brother in the waiting room of the obstetrics ward watching the sun crawl up the horizon through the panoramic windows, light piercing the steel of the St. Louis skyline. He’d acted on impulse, unable to breathe in the house, his father’s office a reprieve from their television and the outpouring of news and the knowledge that under curfew he’d be locked inside all evening. He’d let the receptionist know that they’d come to see their father. She glanced away from them and dialed and spoke in soft tones. When she hung up the receiver she told Nick and his brother that their father was still in surgery but that he would be out soon, that they should take a seat.
Jeff played a video game beside him, electronic pings bouncing from the handheld console. Nick watched the sun cast a growing prism through the windows. Another day. Another fire. Three fires in less than one week. A week of sunrises that brought with them nothing but fear now for what the news would bring. A woman entered the waiting room and checked in at the front desk and sat down quietly across from them and Nick wondered if Sarah had come to an office just like this and when she’d done it, what he’d been doing elsewhere while she asked for a prescription and prepared herself for an inevitability he hadn’t known. Where had he been? Somewhere out with Matt? Where was he when she’d slipped the first pill beneath her tongue? He’d barely thought of sex since he’d left her house, though his entire body felt like radiation, a neon sign. A flashing marquee of what they’d done as if he’d slipped into transparent skin, every vessel and bone exposed.
Jeff fidgeted in his chair. I’m bored.
Dad will be out soon.
Can I get a soda?
Nick felt around in his pocket but had no change. Only the thin fold of his wallet, the dollar bills inside.
Stay here for a second, Nick said. He made his way toward the reception desk, the television blaring in the corner of the waiting room behind him. The Today Show. Matt Lauer’s voice. The last of a report on Iraq that four U.S. troops had been killed in an ambush, before he turned to the world of sports, that the first game of the World Series would begin in New York tomorrow. Nick knocked on the frosted window of the desk and the receptionist slid it open.
Do you have change for a dollar?
She rummaged through a drawer. I’m sure we do.
We’ll be back in a few minutes.
Take your time. Your father will probably be another half hour at least.
Nick motioned to his brother. Jeff hopped from his chair and followed Nick down the hallway, walking with his handheld game, until they found two vending machines between the obstetrics ward and the cardiology department.
Take your pick, Nick said. You can have a soda or a snack.
Nick handed him quarters. Jeff squinted at the panels of both machines. Nick meandered down the hallway while his brother chose, back toward the cardiology wing and its waiting room. He glanced through the pane of glass at the lingering patients, a waiting room more full than it had been earlier in the week. Some watched the overhead television. Some paged through magazines. A little girl sat writing something in a small notebook with her feet dangling over the edge of her chair and Nick wondered what a girl so young was doing in the cardiology ward.
He heard the beeping of his brother pressing buttons on the machine. For the sake of brief quiet, Nick placed his hands over his ears. He peered into the cardiology waiting room through the cupped silence, the sound the same as holding a conch shell to his ear, an emulation of the ocean. The sound of a void. The sound of lack. Empty space. A hissing rush of unfilled air. He imagined the Ndolo house and wondered
if Matt’s father would find it the same: nothing left. Muscle burned away from bone. The sheer force of Fahrenheit degrees needed to diminish an organ to ash, what he knew by researching cremation and what must have happened inside every house. Benji’s mother. The charred ghost of her heart. Nick watched the people in the cardiology waiting room and imagined the raging circuits of faulted veins that brought them here. He watched them until his own heartbeat weathered his ears, the rhythm of a storm.
MATT SAT INSIDE the Fiesta, his mother behind the wheel, the car stopped at the curb of Christina’s house. The engine idling. The house a fortress beyond the windshield.
I’ll wait for you here, his mother said.
She won’t want to go.
No one wants to go. No one wants this to be happening but it is.
Matt stepped from the car. The sun was deceptive. The sky cloudless. Unbroken and smooth as the shell of a robin’s egg but the air was brisk. Matt moved across Christina’s front lawn, dappled with pinpricks of frost. Christina’s brother answered the door and looked only vaguely surprised before motioning him into the foyer.
How’re you holding up? Matt asked.
Fine. What are you doing here?
Christina came down the hallway in a pair of sweatpants and a baggy sweatshirt before he could answer Simon, her hair mostly dry, the tips still wet.
Hey, she said. Her face looked more startled than he’d hoped.
My mom’s outside. We need to borrow you.
For what?
Not for long. Only for an hour or two.
She glanced at her brother. It’s okay. Everything’s fine.
