Angel Smoke

                                                             Ramblings of a Retired Mind

Angel Smoke

The scent was unmistakable. Being hypersensitive to every shift in the air, I recognized it immediately, that crisp, biting aroma of burning leaves in early December. It felt nostalgic until it didn't. At the front of the room, Sister Mary sighed, her mind already drifting toward a quiet cup of tea. Only one hour of school remained. But the smoke began to cling to the inside of my nostrils, a persistent, sharp irritation.

"Sister Mary, what is that smell?"

Before she could answer, three students burst in from the library, faces pale. "Sister Mary, there’s smoke in the hallway!"

No alarms. No warnings. Sister Mary peered into the corridor and turned back with a calm that didn't reach her eyes. "Class, we must leave. Form a line. Now."

We stepped out, but the hallway was a different world. Smoke moved like a living thing, thick along the walls, forcing a hasty retreat. Then the heat hit. The transom glass above the door shrieked and shattered, raining shards as a wave of black smoke surged in.

Panic took over the room. We scrambled for the windows, staring down at a twenty-five-foot drop. It was a distance meant to break bones, but we were fighting for our souls. "I can’t do it!" someone bellowed through the gray swirl rising from the floor.

I reached the ledge, pushing, screaming, fueled by pure reflex. There was no grass below to catch me. I sat on the sill, swung my legs out, and hung by white-knuckled fingers. The smoke poured over me as I looked for a slide to freedom. I let go. The wind roared, then total blackness.

Ninety-two tiny souls and three nuns were lost. I was not. I traded two broken limbs for the sight of my joyous parents. But every year, when the neighbors burn their leaves, my mind breaks. I never burn them in my own yard.

When the members of Writers Out West proposed a 300-word story about “smoke,” my mind began to swirl. My first instinct was to revisit the day I smoked my first cigarette—a story that felt easy, perhaps even lighthearted. But I quickly realized that moment sparked a decades-long struggle for breath that took thirty years to resolve.

Instead, my thoughts turned toward a more profound "smoke": a tragedy that struck my birthplace, Chicago, and continues to reverberate for those of us who lived through that era.

On Monday, December 1, 1958, a fire broke out at Our Lady of the Angels School. It was shortly before dismissal when the halls of the Catholic elementary school filled with heat and ash. Of the 1,600 students present that day, ninety-two never returned home; three nuns met their maker alongside them.

Though I was only seven years old and raised in a Jewish household, the event rocked my world. The images are burned into my mind: firefighters in a tireless, desperate struggle and the haunting sight of tiny coffins lined up in rows. It was more than an individual tragedy; it was a collective scar on our city. In revisiting this smoke-filled memory, I only hope to honor it with the respect it deserves.