Ask Not (The Bells Must Ring)
She could hear the bells ringing.
Not the real bells, not yet. Just the bells that echoed in her memory. The real bells were too far away for her to hear; sound could not carry from the heart of Queens to the West Side of Manhattan. But she knew that in Elmhurst and Flushing, in the oldest parts of Queens, eager volunteers had run up stairs and climbed ladders to set the bells tolling. By now the signal would have spread to other neighborhoods, and all the bells of Queens would be ringing: the cascading Temple chimes in Long Island City and Kew Gardens, the Lutheran bells of Forest Hills and Middle Village, the deep-toned Greek bells of Astoria, the tiny but myriad Catholic bells of Jackson Heights and Ridgewood. In Woodside, the bells rang softly under the muzzeins' cries, and any Channel 1 tourist foolish enough to be in that neighborhood trembled. In Jamaica, steel drums sounded alongside the church bells, and people gathered supplies they'd saved for years. In Flushing, among the temple gongs, fireworks bright as lightning flashed across the hazy blue sky. Queens was ringing a call to arms, a cry for freedom, a peal of celebration, and as the bells of Queens rang, the other boroughs would answer.
Her first day of class, she half-expects class bells like the ones at her old school, and she stays in her seat until half the class is up and gone, and the girl next to her laughs softly. "Don't worry, Samantha, they got me on that the previous class," she says, and she speaks deliberately, her melodic voice neutral, like she's already looking past Jersey. "I'm looking forward to this season."
How did she not recognize Tessa Vaughan, her New Jersey counterpart, someone she'd played against at West Fourth and in tournaments? "Man, I ain't close to being with it today," she says, and Tessa laughs again. "College ain't nothing like high school, is it?"
"Wait 'til practice gets underway," Tessa says with a devilish grin.
Queens was ready.
To the north, the students on City Island heard the calls from College Point and Whitestone and set their bells to ringing, passing the signal along to the watchers of the Bronx Society, who sent up flares all along the coast of the Bronx. Clad in their red and black, Los Metros streamed into churches they had long forsaken and tolled the bells loud and long. Did any of them think of her, one of the few women who had dared run with the gang, not from them? Did they know of the last time red and black rang the bells? Rings chimed against knives, against guns, against steel knuckles, a hundred thousand little bells that echoed the call.
The bells ring out, and she and her team have made them peal out for honor and pride and glory, because she and her team had been too young to know what they could not do, so they did everything. There will be other rings, too, metal chiming against metal, a constant reminder of what they have accomplished for their school, their team, their coach. And she is their leader, proud and fierce and fiery, and who will dare speak against her and what she has done?
The Bronx was ready.
To the south, the overcompensating Poles of Greenpoint and the crusty Irish and Italians of Ridgewood heard the bells, and they hurried to answer. Soon Brooklyn, the city of churches, echoed as the bells tolled a call that the rebel borough had waited a decade to hear. The onion-topped Russian churches, the half-forgotten old Catholic parishes, the Witnesses, the Temples, even a few of the shuls- all of them spoke with one voice: "The battle is won! The war has begun! Rise, rise, rise!"
"Dex."
"Say what?" she asks, catching the pass from Jay and flipping it to Rev without really thinking about it.
"I envy you your hands," Tes says. "When it comes to basketball, I mean. They're so quick, so… dexterous. And you've got the name for it, so…"
She nods. "Got you. We all got those combos, don't we? Gen, Rev, Jay, Ras, Del, you… I'm down with that. Dex. I like it."
And it's almost like tapping crystal, a perfect note, or maybe it's like a well-struck bell.
Brooklyn was ready.
(And further to the south, as the deep, compelling voices of shofrot cried out their alarm along the shores of Brooklyn, the hastily completed church on Governor's Island relayed the signal to Staten Island, and in the synagogues women in scarves and men in shawls prayed separately; they would not fight a Christian war, but that didn't mean that they, as the People of the Covenant, couldn't beg for His protection and ask Him to strengthen those who would leave them to worship in peace.)
To the east, more than church bells rang to link the suburban towns together. Air raid sirens whooped and wailed as the sensitive men of Nassau and the strong women of Suffolk joined a war they thought they would never have to fight. At Montauk Point, a lonely bell atop the lighthouse rang rebellion across the Atlantic Ocean. Fire Island was alive with sound. At Douglas College, the Dame, out of her work clothes for the first time in years, pulled the rope again and again, past the point where her arms dragged down like lead.
The words echo harshly over the radio waves, and none of them can believe what he dares say about their team. She'll have to keep a close eye on Rev's short temper after the younger guard bursts out, "Who the fuck he think he is, callin' us hos?"
"Who does he think he is, talking about our hair like that?" Genneva counters, holding out sandy blonde curls for inspection by her teammates. Jamie laughs, a nervous airheaded blonde giggle, but she's the only one.
And somehow the cruel words drown out the bells that she and her team had set to ringing only the day before.
The Island was ready.
To the west, Roosevelt Island had long since gone into lockdown so that they could blare out the island's sirens strong and loud, loud enough to be heard across the river. The East Side churches answered, and the sound spread, ripples of the wave growing ever wider. The mighty bells of St. Patrick's brought Midtown to a silence only broken by answering bells. In Harlem, the bells rang in harmony, defiant and proud; these churches would not burn, but stand strong. At Trinity Church, the preacher whose smooth voice had alternately captivated and enraged stopped his sermon short and tolled the bell with his own hands. In Chinatown, tong foot soldiers seized great mallets and banged on the giant gongs before taking up their weapons. Call and response: the bells called, the bells responded, heedless of creed or color.
The bell of the Lady's temple chimed a bare half-mile to the south, the bell of First Baptist tolled a few blocks to the north, the West End synagogue added a silvery ring to the west, and as for the east, it seemed as if a solid wall of sound were approaching. Only one bell remained silent in the city.
"It's your right," Emily had said to her. "Hit the buzzer if you need help."
Emily had tried to understand, but she never would. If it took all day, she would find a way to pull that rope, or if she had to, she would push the bell herself.
"Lady preserve us, it's a fucking trap!" Aurelio yells, and they're all able to figure that out when a figure out of urban legend reaches through the window and breaks his neck.
She remembers them, these stars and legends, from the rivalry, though they had all graduated before she ever set foot on campus. But faces that were once immortalized by cameras are now twisted with hate, madness, and hunger that she's not sure is actually metaphorical. She's heard the stories; who hasn't?
Before the guy riding shotgun can either get over to drive or get the window down to start shooting, the silent and terrifying figure that was once Linda Wolfe takes care of him, too.
Rev preps her scythe, and something flickers in her expression as she pulls out the shaft. Maybe it's excitement for the fight. Maybe it's the idea of revenge against the Connecticut girls. Maybe she knows she's going to die and is looking forward to that. "Scarlet," she says, and whatever else she might have said, along with just what she's feeling, is lost forever when a sledgehammer crashes through the back window and crushes her skull.
The woman who calls herself Scarlet, whose friends once called her Dex, whose parents had called her Samantha, doesn't scream the way most people would, even if there are now little bits of Rev on her, but then there's a dart, and then there's blackness, and by the time she comes to, screaming has become rather difficult, although she tries.
"Lady preserve us," Aurelio had prayed before things went wrong. Over the next couple of weeks, she really fucking wishes that the Lady hadn't been watching over her to save her life, because the Lone Wolves systematically take everything from her, leaving her empty, hollow like a bell.
Scarlet, scarred and silent, she smiled tightly as she wrapped lifeless hands around the rope and pulled down sharply. For a second, there was no sound, and she cursed in her thoughts, but then the peal rolled out. It hurt her ears, but Scarlet didn't care as she rang the Rutgers bell.
Manhattan was ready.
New York was ready.
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