A Song Flung Up to Heaven - Maya Angelou [16]
However, nothing—not the voices trained to relay excitement nor the images of unidentifiable looters entering and leaving unlighted shops—could capture the terrifying threat of a riot like the stench of scorched wood and burning rubber.
Radios blared, “Watts is on fire.” Television cameras filmed a group of men turning over a car and a young woman throwing a bottle at a superstore window. The glass seemed to break in slow motion. In fact, throughout the duration of the explosion, every incident shown on television seemed acted out at a pace slower than real time.
Sirens screamed through the night, and television screens showed gangs of young men refusing to allow fire trucks a chance to put out fires.
“Burn, baby, burn.” The instruction came clear over the radios: “Burn, baby, burn.” Certain political analysts observed that the people were burning their own neighborhood. Though few houses were set afire, the rioters considered the stores, including supermarkets, property of the colonialists who had come into the neighborhood to exploit them and take their hard-earned money.
Two days passed and I could wait no longer. I drove to Watts and parked as near the center of the uprising as possible, then I walked. The smell had turned putrid as plastic furniture and supermarket meat departments smoldered. When I reached a main street, I stopped and watched as people pushed piled-high store carts out of burning buildings. Police seemed to be everywhere and nowhere, watching from inside their cars.
A young boy, his arms laden, his face knotted in concentration, suddenly saw me.
“You want a radio?”
I was amazed that there was no guilt in his voice. I said, “No, not yet. Thanks anyway.”
Ordinarily I would have read in the boy’s face, or felt, an “Uh-huh, this woman knows I’ve been stealing.” There would have been at least an ounce of shame. But his approach had been conspiratorial, as if to say, “We’re in this together. I know you not only know what I am doing, you approve of it and would do it yourself if you could.”
Smoke and screams carried in the air. Someone behind me was cursing long, keen streaks of profanity. It became hard to discern if the figures brushing past me were male or female, young or old.
The farther I walked, the more difficult it was to breathe. I had turned and started back to my car when a sound cut the air. The loud whine of police sirens was so close it stabbed into my ears. Policemen in gas masks emerged out of the smoke, figures from a nightmare. Alarm flooded me, and in a second I was dislocated. It seemed that the sirens were in my nose, and smoke packed my ears like cotton. Two policemen grabbed a person in front of me. They dragged the man away as he screamed, “Take your hands off me, you bastards! Let me go!”
I ran, but I couldn’t see the pavement, so it was nearly impossible to keep my footing. I ran anyway. Someone grabbed for me, but I shrugged off the hand and continued running. My lungs were going to burst, and my calves were cramping. I pushed myself along. I was still running when I realized I was breathing clean air. I read the street signs and saw that I was almost a mile away from my car, but at least I wasn’t in jail. Because I had run in the opposite direction from where I had parked, I would have to circle Watts to find my car, but at least I wasn’t in Watts.
When I returned home, the television coverage was mesmerizing. The National Guard was shown arriving in Watts. They were young men who showed daring on their faces but fear in their hearts. They were uncomfortable with new, heavy responsibilities and new, heavy guns.
After three days the jails began to fill. The media covered hundreds of looters being arrested. Frances Williams said that the rumor in the neighborhood beauty salons and barbershops was that the police were arresting anyone black and those suspected of being black.
Watts was all anyone could think of. The fact of it, the explosion of anger, surprised and befuddled some: “I’ve driven through