A Little Fire Story
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| Picture by Pekko Vasantola |
The smell of smoke drew me to the window. I was in my dad’s room watching TV, lying on my front. He was not home. My mother was in the kitchen. We each had a room of our own united by a corridor that ran past the three rooms leading to a kitchen and a balcony at the end. My two Guinea pigs were next to me in their glass home built by my father. I saw flames and smoke billowing from the shed, licking the blue tin roof below, reaching toward the gray wall. I yelled for my mother and next I was flying down the stairs, rushing from the fourth floor to the ground floor to get out. I made my escape alone. My heart was in my throat, I think I was holding my shoes in my hands. I had to pass the fire because the burning shed was right next to our front door. I was going alone. Saving myself. Getting out. Just get out screamed my body to me. It was a nonverbal command. I don’t remember any words being exchanged between my mother and I, but I remember how my body felt in fear.
I don’t remember passing the fire. I didn’t look at the flames. I don’t remember feeling their warmth upon opening the door and running past the disaster. I joined other people congregating in front of our yard, just a little further from the building. Children and adults gathered together from the neighboring apartment building and our own. I organized my canvas shoes on the asphalt and slid my feet into them. Summer evening brightness testified of a world that was still intact. I remembered my mother and the Guinea pigs. I felt terrified that they would not make it down. I felt shame for not staying and helping my mother to carry them and I felt nauseous for the thought that she would not be able to bring them down. I felt anger, what could take her so long? What if she didn’t make it, my mother? What if the building would burn with all my books and scribbles? My toys and my clothes. With my mother.
The flames grew taller and painted black shadows onto the canvas that was the wall of my home. We heard fire engines approach. They hollered and hooted for us to move out of the way. My mother appeared from the door holding two Guinea pigs in her hands. She didn’t seem worried, she didn’t seem angry either. She was a little unreadable, used to navigating sea changes. She spoke to our neighbors, she made me look rational too and had no words about my selfish dashing out. I think I pressed into her side, hoping she’d stay there. I took the other one of the Guinea pigs and held it a little too tight with my shaking arms against my chest. I knew that it was desired I’d appear nonplussed. Some kids wanted to pet the animals. I don’t remember if the Guinea pigs squalled or if they were quiet. The children were bored with the fire already. They had mostly come to see what was happening. The fire was an interesting occurrence. My vigilance held my gaze on the fire. The police appeared and with them a strange numbness. I guess I felt safe. I believed that the men in blue suits together with men in beige and yellow carrying hoses meant that nothing disastrous would be allowed to happen. My insides turned into brittle lace frozen like ice, my nervous system kept on ringing the alarm bells. Water rushed in gushes against the wall, making the flames disappear. The smell of burning plastic turned into an acrid afterthought. It would linger for weeks and months. It would remind me of this day decades later whenever I encountered a burning rubbish bin or something minor burning at home.
I was proud for having saved myself. I was simultaneously embarrassed for having left my mother up there on her own. Standing outside our building for a minute or two, I realized that without her I would be untethered from life. The seconds I waited for her painted an eternity in front of my eyes. It was a void I sensed among the curious children and the worried adults. I understood that her existence as my mother defined my place for me. Because so did the absence of my father. He was not there. To lose my mother in the dumpster fire would make me unknowable. Just a girl smelling of plastic smoke plumes some time in 1989 or 1990. A girl with no one. The fire that licked the concrete walls of our very temporary home, reminded me again just how unsafe I was; how unpredictable the world around me was. The fire had been started by an arsonist. Maybe a child, maybe an adult. More garbage sheds burned in our suburb that summer. The news trickled in through gossip and my friend’s parents who worked in the area. The smell of burning that alarmed me and the flames I witnessed from above signified a hollow place I found in me. A loneliness. A mistrust of others and their intentions. I hated the fire. I hated it. I hated people who purposefully endangered others, who had no regard for their sense of safety, their things and their lives. That summer I hadn’t learned how to strike a matchstick against the side of the match box yet. I hadn’t learned to light a candle, a sauna or a fireplace and because of this fire, I was in no hurry to do so.
When I remember this moment now, I think of the little patch of forest behind my back as I stared at the burning. Usually, I faced the pines and fir trees from my window. They were a calming sight. Now they too watched out for the fire. But what did the trees hide from view? What stood still behind my back? They protected a hospice building in red brick, a place where my friends have gone to die in recent years. A place that I will, one day soon enter and never leave, so close to the sight of the fire.
