A More Perfect Union

The mother of the Baker Street Irregulars sent me a text.

She texts me every day: a recipe for a dish made of mixed canned food, things I can’t eat due to my gluten sensitivity and PCOS. Sometimes she texts an obviously AI-generated image of a weird new snack, like Twix bars made with apple pie filling and a caramel coating instead of chocolate. Sometimes it’s a link to a news story about where to get free sneakers from a church giveaway. Sometimes she texts the word “bored,” And we chat. It’s friendship. Something I’ve not had enough of lately.

I texted back “looks good,” and then she texted “what are u doing for the fireworks?”

I said the car was still a doorstop, but I was going to walk to the end of the block and watch the downtown display from the cliff. Steubenville is on the Eastern edge of Ohio, overlooking the river and the shale cliffs of northern West Virginia. My neighborhood is sometimes called “The Hilltop” because it’s right on top of a great big shale shelf that drops away suddenly, with a steep concrete staircase through dense brush to downtown. If you can find a place where the trees aren’t too dense, you can sit on the edge of The Hilltop and see all of downtown spread out before you, and it isn’t even ugly.

“You can also watch from the lawsuit bridge,” said the mother of the Baker Street Irregulars. She meant “the Lawson bridge,” the bridge across the main road which separates the LaBelle Hilltop from the Pleasant Heights Hilltop. But she uses voice-to-text, and voice-to-text doesn’t know Steubenville geography.

“You can also come here Im setting them off” she said.

I’ve already observed that elaborate and unsafe home pyrotechnic displays are a glorious Appalachian tradition. I said I’d come over when the city display was done.

When I made my way to the edge of the cliff, it was sprinkling rain. I was afraid the City would cancel and there’d be no show. But nothing can deter the patriotism, and love of explosions, of a steel mill town on the Ohio river. Backyard fireworks displays were going off all over, even though it wasn’t quite dark. I saw great big chrysanthemums of color and light explode by the cliff at Washington Street, by the hospital at Trinity East, by the projects near the shuttered cathedral. As I watched, more and more neighbors wandered over from their own backyard parties, to get a spot on the hillside with the best view. Children wearing glow-in-the-dark crowns and necklaces shuffled down the hill, into the tall grass where the snakes and ticks are, in spite of their parents’ scolding. Other children and adults came and sat around me– some recognized me and said “hello.” I kept looking up politely in the direction of the “hello” and echoing it back at them, because my autism leaves me a bit face blind and I sometimes don’t recognize neighborhood friends in twilight. Pretty soon the isolated patch of grass was a crowded amphitheater.

Twilight turned to dusk, and then to real dark. The children down in the tall grass became shadows, and then I could see nothing at all of them except for their glowing crowns.

Another little crowd of children shuffled in and sat next to me, where it was easier to see. I glanced at them, then up at the man guiding them.

I came face to face with The Lost Girl’s abusive boyfriend, holding that baby I’d never technically gotten to meet.

Every story she’d told me about his drug habit and his violent losses of temper came to my mind in a second. What he’d done to her. How he’d threatened her in the ten months he was away. How I’d gotten her the help of a women’s shelter and feared for my own safety as well when he texted me on Facebook. How I felt when she said she’d forgiven him and brought him back.

I wanted to run, but I’d have knocked over the children like bowling pins. He had all five of them. The Lost Girl was nowhere in sight.

The boys I’d taken to the museum at Christmas sat next to me, friendly, not noticing my terror, as the real municipal fireworks began.

People in the neighborhood began setting off even more explosions, in a rivalry with the city of Steubenville itself. Bottle rockets to the right of me. Ground spinners fizzling on the pavement. Bursts of light downtown, bright enough to leave afterimages on my eyes. Red, blue, gold, hot pink, magenta, cyan. A volley of those strange white fireworks with a tiny flash of light and a great big angry bang. The smell of sulfur everywhere. Clouds of yellow smoke rising in the rain.

I recorded them on my phone, singing softly to myself under my breath as I do when I’m overstimulated, planning to pretend to make a phone call if the Lost Man said or did anything.

I didn’t dare look behind me until the crowd applauded at the Grand Finale and people began to shuffle away. He went off with his children. I went off, attaching myself to a crowd on a well-lit block, talking into a phone that wasn’t calling anybody. Just in case.

“Where U at?” texted the mother of the Baker Street Irregulars.

“I’m almost at your place.”

And then I was.

There are five Baker Street Irregulars living in that house, with their mother and grandmother and their new stepfather. The stepfather has a proper down state West Virginia accident and he lets all the children call him “dad,” even though he’s only the biological father of the youngest. Adrienne had joined them, along with a gaggle of friends and cousins from around the neighborhood. They were all waiting for me so the show could begin.

The youngest Baker Street Irregular is in preschool now. She’s a plump and healthy-looking blonde, who politely asked if she could sit on my lap so she didn’t get scared. I told her “yes.” The second youngest Baker Street Irregular is in second grade, dark haired, rail-thin, and a head shorter than her sister. She is at an awkward place on the autism spectrum, so she didn’t politely ask anything. She kissed my cheek to see the mark left by the barbecue sauce she’d been enjoying, and then she climbed onto my shoulders and played with my hair. Mother and grandmother sat on the porch. Dad went into the vacant lot next door which used to be a derelict house and then was a brick-strewn mess, but which is now a side yard with a playhouse and trampoline. He set off a bottle rocket in a clear spot.

The blast of colorful light filled the whole sky.

He set off another and another and another. The youngest Baker Street Irregular sat politely on my lap or hovered near me; the autistic Baker Street Irregular stuffed leaves and garbage down my back. Lights and sounds flooded our senses again and again. The world all around me was chaos and shock and noise. No, the world was brightness and excitement and showmanship. No, the world was terrifying. No, it was intoxicating. No, it was something else entirely. It was America. Appalachian people are abusive horrors I wish I’d never met. No, they’re not, don’t be silly, they’re generous and hospitable. No, they’re something else. They’re people.

The man that everyone called Dad handed each of us, even the autistic one, a sparkler.

“Everybody sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to America, and I’ll try and recite the Preamble before the sparkler goes out!” I said, just to see what the children would say.

The older children waved their lights in the air to make patterns. The youngest Baker Street Irregular let out a solemn chorus of “Happy Birthday to you.” I ranted “we the people of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect union,” and got all the way to ” do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America” before the light went out. The autistic one threw her sparkler and had to sit on the steps.

The man called Dad lit another firework, some kind of combination of rockets that went off all at once, pink and green and yellow against the black clouds.

It was almost eleven when the party was over. The autistic one wouldn’t go to bed until I promised to text her “good night.”

I went home under an eye-stinging, sulfur-reeking mist, in a neighborhood I once thought was hell, but it’s something else. A place where horrible things are done by horrible people, but beautiful things are also done by the best people I know. A place where everything goes wrong, on purpose, because the selfish profit from it going wrong, but people go on being people, and sometimes those people are saints. A place where we all go a bit crazy to celebrate Independence Day, even though independence isn’t nearly as good as interdependence between neighbors. Neighbors who are devious and downright evil. Neighbors who are the very best people you ever met.  A place worth living in. A place worth fighting for.

Steubenville.

Appalachia.

America.

Home.