White Smoke

Marigold runs to the house. Piper does not answer her calls. Marigold finds the basement unlocked and open. Gathering the courage to descend the stairs, she finds two beds made of burnt sheets and blankets and all the missing items from the last few months. Marigold runs upstairs and tries Piper’s room, where she finds another makeshift bed and empty snack containers in the closet. In the bathroom, Marigold realizes the terrible smell is human and that someone is hiding in the closet. Blood runs out the closet door. The door swings open, revealing a large man (Jon Jon Peoples) freshly missing two fingers. Marigold knows it is the man who was in her room and guesses Buddy tore off his fingers, ingesting them. He holds an axe belonging to Mr. Stampley. When she runs downstairs, Jon Jon calls for her to wait. Yusef appears and whacks him with a shovel. The woman emerges from the hall closet and attacks Marigold, biting her shoulder. Yusef hits her with the shovel; she goes down. Mr. Brown (Yusef’s uncle) arrives and fires shots in the air; Jon Jon flees out the back door.

The police, Raquel, and Alec arrive; an ambulance takes Ms. Suga away, and a large crowd of Maplewood residents is gawking. EMTs treat Marigold’s shoulder. Mr. Sterling arrives; he offers to speak to the crowd in case they are willing to search for Piper. Raquel agrees. When Mr. Sterling speaks to the neighbors, he incites them to violence by reminding them how dangerous Jon Jon was years before; he gives them the idea to burn vacant properties to “[s]moke him out” (346). Yusef and Mr. Brown try to calm them, but a mob mentality takes over, and the crowd rushes off. Mr. Stampley reminds Mr. Brown that if Jon Jon says what happened years before, his father (Pop Pop) will go to prison, too.

The police suddenly depart, saying they have been ordered to evacuate. Yusef and Mr. Brown leave for the nearby fire departments to get help. Marigold accuses Mr. Watson of knowing Ms. Suga was in the house, and says he suspected it; he reveals that the Sterling Foundation made all workers sign documents that they would never go to the basement.

Marigold, Raquel, and Alec split up to search for Piper. Marigold apologizes for leaving her alone, but Alec says it was not her fault and that they will all leave together as soon as they find her. Going off alone to search, Marigold discovers newly placed pallets of wood and gasoline under tarps on each block. She realizes the Sterling Foundation, aided by the many organizations its board members headed, wants the residents to burn down their own neighborhood, making it easier to rebuild it to their vision once the Maplewood people are gone. The foundation has played her family as pawns in the strategy, placed in the house to stoke tempers and division.

Marigold takes the axe, goes into 219, and finds a strange tunnel behind a bookcase. She follows it back to her own house’s basement, where Jon Jon stands.

Jon Jon implies she must go with him. Marigold follows him down another tunnel to the boarded-up house next door—where the neighbors believed he and Ms. Suga perished. The inside is a rotting, charred mess with a plunging hole through the second and third floors. Marigold feels sympathy for the man’s fate and tries to tell him he does not deserve to be hurt by the mob, but he weeps and says he and Ms. Suga killed “that little boy” (362). The mob arrives and throws Molotov cocktails into the old house, lighting it up. Jon Jon says Piper might be in a study; Marigold must summon her courage to pull a bedbug-infested mattress away. Piper is in the closet, bound. Jon Jon helps Marigold and Piper out a window, but he refuses to come outside and instead turns toward the stairs and tunnel.

Marigold takes Piper to Yusef’s house. Pop Pop is the only one there. Her cell has no signal so she cannot find her mother or Alec. The news on the TV announces “Riots in Maplewood” (171). Piper cries and apologizes for believing Ms. Suga. Marigold says it was not her fault and that she and Piper, as sisters, will stick together from now on. Piper asks if Jon Jon is safe and says they will have to leave him tuna fish sandwiches. Marigold realizes Piper has been feeding and hiding Jon Jon and Ms. Suga all along. Pop Pop switches the news to Reverend Clark. Marigold knows that she will make it her life’s mission to tell the story of Maplewood to the media, a publisher, and anyone who will listen.