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Burning Down the House
A childhood house fire seared memories
She ran up the basement stairs, screaming.
“Get out! Get out! The house is on fire!”
The panic in my mother’s voice was unmistakable even to my nine-year-old self. I jumped up from the kitchen table where I’d been playing with plastic trolls. She told me to take my youngest brother, age three, to the neighbors while she called the fire department. I ran, dragging my brother behind me. I flung open the neighbor’s backdoor and burst into her kitchen.
“Our house is on fire!”
I ditched my brother and ran back across the driveway to our house. The backdoor was still wide open. My mother told me to stay out. But I could see her standing in the kitchen, phone pressed to one ear, on hold for the fire department.
The fire crackled. My mother dropped the receiver. I pictured flames racing up the basement stairs and begged her to leave. Instead, she picked up the phone again, and with an eerie, forced, calm redialed the operator.
“Call from the neighbor’s house,” I yelled.
Before that rotary dial made its way around from O, she snapped to her senses and ran out the door. That makes it sound as if I’d stayed calm in a crisis. I did not. I cried. I mean hysterical, frenetic…
