Delayn Partlow had a question.
Looking at the empty seat beside him, Delayn put up his hand yesterday morning at Hilton Elementary School. He wanted to know whether his friend, Siedah Fields, 5, was coming to school.
No, replied Patricia Barrett, the children's kindergarten teacher. Speaking quietly but clearly, Barrett told Delayn and the rest of the class that Siedah would not be coming back because she had died in a fire.
"At first he just looked at me," Barrett recalled later, "and then his eyes teared and he started to cry."
Siedah and her two brothers, Elijah, 13, and Sadik, 8, perished in the blaze Friday at their home in Northwest Baltimore. The older child was pronounced dead at the scene; the two younger ones were taken to Sinai Hospital, where they died later Friday night.
Their parents, Elijah Fields and Toni Johnson, who have two other children, were not at home at the time of the fire.
The children's father is distraught that he did not save the youngsters, said Cynthia Conaway, a cousin of the family who was Sadik's second-grade teacher last year at Hilton Elementary.
"The father is devastated - he feels he failed his children," Conaway said. "He's the kind of father who didn't want his children walking home alone, and he was always here to pick them up. He came to all the programs. He helped them with their homework. This was the only time he left them."
A shrine of stuffed animals decorated the steps at the family home on Springdale Avenue yesterday. Several had tumbled down, propelled by a brisk breeze. A cluster of balloons was tied to the white metal screen door - on one, someone wrote in felt tip: "Ya'll we be miss."
There was little exterior damage to the house, although closer observation revealed melted, blackened aluminum siding around upstairs windows. Broken glass littered the ground. Some windows were boarded, and others had been covered with plastic sheeting that crackled in the wind. In the fenced backyard, a dog named Big Black barked almost incessantly.
"He wants the kids," said Keesha Singleton, another cousin, who had stopped by after hearing of the tragedy.
Ralph Herndon, who described himself as the children's maternal grandfather by marriage, said of the children's parents, "I can't say they're doing fine or well. They're doing the best they can about standing up right now."
