I hear the tone of her voice before anything else. “Mom! Wake up!”
“What?” I burst out of the cocoon of sleep.
“The bathroom is on fire!”
It’s early morning. Still dark. I had just fallen back to sleep. It had been a rough night -- nausea, my nasal passages clogged, my throat a ragged gravel road. But in seconds my amygdala stirs me into action.
“Call 911!” I yell. Where’s the cat, I wonder. I throw on the closest bathrobe, step into my slippers, grab my computer and decide to take the power cord, too. I snatch my cell phone from its charger and dial 911 as I exit my room with my computer under my arm. Get out, I’m telling myself, Get out! I hear my daughter yelling at our friend Lorri who is sleeping in the room down the hall to get out.
“It’s bad, Mom. It’s bad,” my daughter says in a panicked voice.
As we tumble down the stairs I’m calling 911 but my nose is so clogged up from the cold I’ve had for a week that the dispatcher can barely understand me. My daughter is also calling. We’re screaming out our address. I want to give directions but I know it isn’t necessary.
In seconds we’re standing outside. It’s black and cold. Lorri has the cat, so I don’t have to go back in like some bad TV movie hero to save her. I put my computer on the ground and realize my car is in the garage. It’s one thing to lose the house but my car? I go back in the house, grab my keys and get the car out of the garage and park it on the street.
Then we stand there for a minute: my daughter, wrapped in the quilt her now dead godfather gave her; Lorri holding the cat; and me with my computer. It is only later that I realize what we have done. We have saved livelihood, memory, and love.
Sirens. I try to use my mental powers to guide them toward us. The sirens get louder as they enter the neighborhood. My fear lessens. Suddenly we are aswirl in lights.
“It’s upstairs through the bedroom at the top of the stairs,” we tell them as these anonymous men and women go tromping into the house.
It’s cold and so we go sit in the car.
“You lit a candle for your bath last night, didn’t you?” I say in a dry voice.
“I didn’t mean to do it! It was broken. It didn’t even light so I just dropped the match down into it. I never even saw it light.”
I know exactly the candle she was talking about. An old big green candle that wasn’t even in a glass jar, one left over from her father. Why hadn’t I taught her that candles need to be in something? I had missed that lesson. We think they’re adults but there are still so many things they don’t know, don’t think through.
We watch as lights go on and off in the rooms upstairs. After a while a few firefighters come back out, but no one tells us anything.
Finally, I get out of the car to go around the house and see if the fire has burned through the walls, but from the outside everything looks fine. The firefighters come trooping out. A big burly man steps out, and I ask him for information.
“The captain can tell you,” he says and turns to a woman about my size in full fire regalia who has just come out onto my front porch.
“It’s out,” she explains. “We had to cut a hole in the wall to make sure it hadn’t spread. You were lucky. It didn’t.”
I’m not thinking about luck right now. I’m thinking about the brand new tile in that bathroom. I’m wondering if all that work has to be replaced. I’m not thinking about the toxic smoke from the fiberglass bathtub that could have killed my daughter.
The firetrucks pull away, and we go back inside. Upstairs smells awful, and there is a huge cindery hole in the bathtub. Part of the wall is missing, but my tile is okay. I have no idea what to do now, not even sure if the insurance will cover a candle fire. The firefighters are gone. I am supposed to give a writing workshop in a couple of hours. Well, I know what I am going to write about.
I’ve been pretty calm throughout this ordeal but a muscle just below my right shoulder blade decides it isn’t happy and suddenly I’m yelping in pain if I move in the wrong direction.
The three of us gather in the living room and try to eat some breakfast. The sun has come up. I’m wondering if I can drive with my messed up back, not to mention, the nose, the stomach, the lack of sleep. I don’t care. I am going to do my workshop.
My daughter says, “Aren’t you glad I came over to help you yesterday?”
“Yes, honey,” I tell her. “I don’t know what I would have done without your help”
We had spent the day before moving furniture that I wanted to get rid of and packing up boxes of books. I’ve been hoping to sell the house soon -- not burn it down.
I dress gingerly. My daughter gathers her things to go back to the college town a couple of hours away where she lives.
“I’m going to leave now,” she says. “My work here is done.”
I laugh so hard that I cry. It’s a long time before I admit to myself what might have happened, what could have happened. For now life goes on.
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Paula Torrey Mamuscia
Erica K
Lizz Schumer
Firechick
Snowden
Maureen J Andrade
Salon.com
Comments
"It is only later that I realize what we have done. We have saved livelihood, memory, and love." Nice.
Great story. Taut and well told.