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Why the Holidays are Hard |
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It starts on a winter morning in my mom's home, a school
day. It is December 13th, and a Friday. Christmas is on the way, and
we already have the tree up and decorated. Mom has some of our
presents already stored somewhere in the house, probably in her
bedroom closet which is walk in, large, filled with things that never
come out again... her wedding dress. My 13th birthday just over a
month from this day. It starts in no unusual fashion, mom waking my
sister and I up for school. Mom was a little more rushed this
morning, so it was my job to start the fire in our wood stove, the
only heat source in the house. Generally there would be some coals
left behind from the oak put on before the stove was banked the night
before, but that wasn't the case this morning. It was cold. It
hadn't snowed that night, but there was snow about from days previous.
I tried and I tried and I tried but I just couldn't get the fire
started. Perhaps it needed to be cleaned, and perhaps I just wasn't
paying enough attention to it, but there was no way the pitch and
ceder were lighting with my attempts. My mother was very frustrated
about my inability, so she did it herself. We had a verbal fight, and
although I can't recall what either of us said to the other, it ended
with me walking to the bus stop. That was about a mile away, and Mom
would usually drive us to it. I remember Mom drove past while I was
walking, and slowed down and asked if I would get in the car. I
refused, and kept walking. I know Mom was angry. My younger sister,
Rachel, I think I remember her just being confused. I must have
gotten on the bus and gone to school, but here the memory jumps.
I am at school, the Fall River Jr./Sr. High School. There
is nothing memorable about the day until an hour or so into it, maybe
two, maybe three; maybe before lunch, maybe after. I was called to
the office, where I was told I had a dentist appointment, and my
mother was here to get me. I was confused, and after our fight that
morning, a little worried. Once we got to the car, Mom explained that
she wanted to apologize for the fight we'd had, by way of taking me on
a shopping trip in Burney. Every year, for as long as I can recall,
we would pick a couple of cards off of the christmas donation trees in
the bank and buy presents for those children. My mom would always
judiciously choose something in her budget. We went to Tri-Counties
bank and chose a few; I remember one was toy cars for a young boy.
Another may have been clothes. While we were coming out of the bank,
a firetruck drove by the way we had come, all noise and thunder. I
remembered a story I'd read in a Reader's Digest, about how this woman
would always pray for the people on the other end of that siren, the
place where it stops and leaves the air hollow. I did that, then.
Mom and I went to Burney to buy the gifts for some kids less lucky
than ourselves.
We bought them, mom and I made up, and she dropped me back
off at school. Not a half of an hour later, I was called into the
office again. This time, I was worried that my mom or myself were in
trouble for her taking me out of school for that time. I didn't
really understand what truancy was, but I knew that my mom could get
in serious trouble if I didn't go to school; she'd told me this
herself. Everyone in the office (that being only a few staff) looked
very grave - I knew I was in big time trouble. The principal, a round
man in a brown suit, called me into his office and closed the door.
"Diamond" he says, "I don't know how to tell you this. We just got a
call. Your house burned down. Do you want me to drive you to your
mom's store?" The world stopped spinning on it's axis, gravity
stopped working for me, and everything fell. If you've ever been in a
decent sized earthquake, the chaos and fear and misunderstanding could
be exemplified in the visual of the bookcase shuddering, all of the
books falling off it in any direction. Only this was backwards;
nothing moved that was supposed to move. Nothing could breath. I
couldn't breath.
I don't know how long it took, and the memories become
jumbled. They become flashes, like looking at clips of a film, like
watching only every other scene in Memento. They're also confused
with memories of before and after. Of Important Things and Important
Stuff and not important but still there thoughts.
The principal, who is your Pal, eventually got an answer
out of me; yes, take me to my mom, in a series of grunts, maybe just a
nod. I couldn't talk yet. We got into the hallway and I started
walking fast, running, crying. I was asking people where my friend,
my only friend, Maria was. No one knew. Someone asked what was
wrong. I told them "my house burned down." They looked shocked. I
made it to the parking lot somehow, where the principal had gone.
Maybe he was only a vice-principal. Maria was out there, she'd found
me. She hugged me for a while. The principal drove.
He's stopped near my mom's store, and she's in the middle
of the road screaming and pulling her hair. Mom had a little shop
along 299, the Pin shop, across from the hill down to McArthur
Elementary School. That it's on 299 doesn't matter much in a town
where all business is, but there's traffic. I think she's wearing
yellow. She's wearing jeans, light blue. Mom sold hand-made
clothing, crafts, and did repairs in the little shop that smelled like
drywall and flaking paint. It smelled of the pale, washed out blue of
the walls, of fabric, of a little electric heater. My mom is in the
middle of 299 screaming and crying and ripping out her long, dark
brown, beginning to grey hair. I'm afraid she's going to get hit by a
car, because they don't really slow down; they swerve, they honk, they
have no idea what's going on. I yell at her from in front of the shop
and she comes to me.
We're in my mom's car, the Honda Accord she bought the
year after I was born, the car we came from Texas in. There are holes
in the vinyl of the interior on one door in the back, the passenger
back seat. Mom told me I chewed the holes when I was very small and
teething. They're covered with duct tape that always melts a little,
gets sticky in the hot sun. We're driving to, we're at McArthur
Elementary School, where my younger sister is. I have the window
down; Mom went to get Rachel. I can hear mom screaming, that
incredible banshee scream she does, that crazed parent scream, at the
ladies in the office. I can hear them yelling back, the principal as
well; a gigantic man, both in height and girth. He always wore light
colours. He always smelled of sweat and baby powder. I know what his
office looks like, and I pretend I can see the nobody rooster posters
as the yelling gets further away. An older lady comes out of the
school, and she says something negative, something mean and derogatory
about my mom. I yell at her. I tell her our house just burned down.
The lady runs away as fast as she can in her out-of-place heels. It's
hot, it's dry, everything is washed out, and I don't feel 12 anymore.
I feel small and petulant and scared. Mom comes out of the school
dragging Rachel. She looks terrified; she has that look she still
gets on her face when she knows something is very, very wrong, but
she's trying to figure out how to handle the situation long enough to
get out of it. Mom puts her in the car, driver's side rear, next to
me, and zooms out. Rachel hasn't gotten her seatbelt on yet, and
she's really scared now. I wait until she's belted in, and I tell
her. I tell her our house burned down. I don't look at her face.
We're driving. We're almost there, a good half hour drive
from town. We're on Day road going to Gooch Mill Road, named after
our maternal family and the mill, and we see black smoke piling up
from the trees. We turn down Gooch, and mom isn't speeding like she
was. She was always a safe driver, especially with her children in
the car. Griff must have been with Granny, or else mom would have
gotten him before she went to the house. We see the tunnel of smoke,
coming up from a spot just behind the mill stack, that great rusty
carcass of the reason for my family's existence. The smoke, darker
and dustier and more violently evil than any fire I've ever seen.
This isn't what a forest fire looks like. Mom begins to wail, and
Rachel joins her. I feel bad that I'm not crying, that I'm not doing
anything but sitting in the car, getting closer to the wreck of our
life.
We're there, we're out of the car. It's black just poles
and some charred aluminum. It's covered in white, what I think must
be snow. I try to go into where my bedroom was, and my Papa grabs me
and stops me. He explains that it's still hot under that white stuff,
that it's still burning under there. He tells me that Grandma was the
one who dialed 911, that she tried to go rushing into the fire to save
things. He tells me all the pets were outside. He tells me I have to
wait until the coals are out to go in there. The firemen from Burney
don't look at me. Part of the front poorch is still standing, the one
mom built that our fake jeep was under, the one with the "not holes".
It's later, the fire is out. There's not much left. A
glass. Some ceramic vases mom had made when she was in college. The
insides of a couple of photo albums. Rachel found a scrap from her
bear Orange Juice. I'm jealous, I'm sad, I'll never see my (stuffed)
cat Running Bear again. I find my boxspring in my bedroom, pieces of
burned books above it where they must have fallen off the shelf. I'm
looking for the books I liked the best, the mythology, the Madeline
E'lngle, the Dragonlance. I find most of a book of re-written bible
stories. I start laughing, and I rip the book to shreds. There's
part of a bright, obnoxious synthetic dress I wore when I did the
lemonade stand. The ceramic bank has no paint on it; the porcelain
dolls are just eyeless heads. Bits of burned possession is what we
find, nearly nothing whole. Mom finds her old wedding ring, melted
into a shape more like natural copper than gold. We use our memory of
the house as radar to search for the things we care about, the five
things we'd take to a desert island, the five things we'd wrap in a
blanket and throw out the window in the event of a house fire. We
move around slowly, for the rest of the day, finding, crying, being
insane, a mother and her two daughters. We stay at Granny and Papa's
that night. We begin dealing with the fallout. I blame myself for
not being able to make a fire in the stove that morning, especially
after someone tells me that the wood stove must have melted. I don't
know who it was. Maybe they were making a joke, but it stuck. If I'd
made the fire after all that struggle, it might have gone out in the
middle of the day.
 PurplePsycmoe · Sat Dec 12, 2009 @ 07:57am · 0 Comments |
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The ever lovely Bel_Dandy did this holiday avatar for me.
PurplePsycmoe · Mon Dec 10, 2007 @ 06:25pm · 0 Comments |
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Isn't this just an incredibly cute chibi? From an intermittent shop by Kaenai.
PurplePsycmoe · Mon Nov 26, 2007 @ 07:47pm · 0 Comments |
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