Burned Memories

   Have you ever imagined your house burning down. All your toys, clothes, every thing you owned? It’s devastating to think about it. Having everything you owned go up in smoke, never to be played with or worn. It makes you weep in despair, trying not to look at the ruins of your once home.

   I was 8 years old. I lived in a yellow trailer with my father, mother, and younger sister. I was sick at the time, as was my sister and mother. I’m sure we looked a sight. Skinny, backs hunched over, sniffing and looking like we were about to toss our cookies at any minute. I remember sitting on the small couch. Not the blue love seat my father always claimed, and not the one that was directly across, but the one that turned into a bed. Eating Fruit Loops out of the box with my sister, in thin blue nightgowns that made us shiver. We didn’t talk much, chatting occasionally. I could hear my mother in the bathroom. I imagined her hunched over the toilet, a thin sheen of perspiration on her face. Not a pretty sight, but my mother seemed to spend most of her time there, especially in the morning. Morning sickness, or something like that. 

   It was then, as I was about to shove a handful of cereal into my mouth that I heard a beeping noise. It pierced my ears, making me cringe as it filled my head, and bounced around like a ping pong ball. Despite that, I remembered it as the fire alarm, having once heard it one time when my father was checking to make sure they worked. I leapt off the couch, telling my sister to stay put while I got our mother. I couldn’t remember the rules my school taught me. All except three. Stop, drop, and roll. How could that help me? I wasn’t on fire, and as far as I knew, neither was my mother. I ran down the narrow hallway, reaching the very end of it. To the side was the bathroom, the door shut tightly. Wrenching it open, my mother jumped from the toilet in confusion.

   “The house is on fire,” I said quickly, fear coursing through my body. My mother leapt of the ground, ushering me back into the living room and getting my sister. My sister had a confused, frightened look on her face. She was too young to know that there was a fire in our home. We ran out into the yard, my mother looking wildly around for a place where we could go.

   “Where should we go?” my mother asked, her face mirroring my sister’s replacing the confusion with worry.

   “Let’s go to Darlene’s!” I suggested, remembering the old woman across the street with white hair and withered old skin that made me wrinkle my nose at it. And the smell, it smelled of old lady's perfume, as my cousin always called it. Seeing a light in her trailer, we ran across the street, my mother knocking on the door feverishly. The door opened, and I remember us being ushered inside, relief flooding me as I took in her beautiful living room. Glass ornaments that I admired from far away when the sunlight hit just right. I also remember my mother calling someone, and not to long afterwards a fire truck, my father, and my grandfather on my mother’s side speeding up to the corner. We were safe, but shaken. How could this happen to us?

   It turned out to have been a mouse that chewed through the wire, causing us to find a new home in my grandmother’s. The damage was done, leaving that day permanently etched in the back of my mind, making me wonder even today what would have happened if I had not known what the annoying yet helpful beeping noise was for. Another thing I used to wonder was what ever happened to the trailer I had practically grown up in, where I had designed my room the way I wanted, thinking I was going to there for the longest of times. My answers have been answered. It has been many years since that night. A new family lives there, not knowing how a little girl had imagined her life there. Plans now wasted. I have physical memories of the fire. A burnt photo album, the cover gone and the side burnt, making me think it would be best to let go of it. But no matter what the mental memories will always be there.