Christine Birnbaum

Narrative

1/29/21

 

                                                                        The Night My House Burned Down

                         As I sat outside my family home on a frosty January evening, I could feel the heat radiating through my body. My mother and father were hysterical, pacing the ice-slicked street in nothing but pajamas and slippers. I had never seen them so distraught before; their eyes filling with tears as they watched everything they had worked their entire lives for disappear. My brother and I didn’t know how to console them. In disbelief ourselves, we both just stood in silence, watching, as our childhood home burned down in flames. As I was standing there, I thought about that hypothetical question on tests or in interviews. You know, where they ask “What would you take if your house was on fire?” In the past, perhaps I would have said that I would take objects- pictures, trophies, clothes. But now, a real fire had come, and I didn’t have time to grab anything except for the clothes on my back and my 100-pound golden retriever. As I was dragging my shaking dog through a dense cloud of blackness, covering my mouth in a desperate attempt to prevent smoke inhalation, I realized that I finally had an answer to that “hypothetical” question. I would take nothing with me whatsoever because no material object is worth more than the safety of your loved ones. 

                            We lived in a white, single-story, suburban home, with a sprawling yard and an attached two car garage. It wasn’t a mansion or a penthouse, but a traditional-styled, quant home. The long concrete walkway, aligned with marigolds and peonies in the spring, led directly to a fire-engine red front door, which was always accompanied by a “welcome” sign. I remember when we first moved in, my mother painted that door to give the house a “pop” of color. The white exterior was tinged brown from years of wear, and a large bay window with red shutters, overlooked my mother’s garden below it. This was probably my favorite part of the house. I always felt such peace sitting in that window, watching the blue jays fly by during the summer months.  

                     The interior was simple. It had three bedrooms and a sunlit dayroom with a sliding glass door leading to an outdoor wooden patio. Upon entering, there was a sunken living room to the left with original hardwood floors. My mother had recently painted the walls a pale-yellow color to give it a brighter vibe, which she accompanied with sheer curtains to cover the bay window on the left side of the room. The kitchen, with its black and white checkered tile floor and taupe cabinets, was separated by a wall directly next to the living room. Just beyond the kitchen, in the back of the house, was a dayroom. It was simple, but pretty. It had white walls, white tiled floors and white French doors covered by sheer curtains, which led back into the kitchen. There was a desk on the far left and two wooden daybeds with white comforters draped over them to the right. Outside of the dayroom and through the kitchen, was a long, cream-colored corridor lined with family photos, which led to a bathroom and three bedrooms. My bedroom was the first on the right.  I loved my room and all of the little things in it that made me, me. Only a few months prior, I had just re-vamped it. I spent hours picking everything out, including my new wooden bed frame with drawers for extra storage, my red tie-dyed comforter and my big wooden T.V. stand, where I had all of my trophies, pictures, memories. This was also my parents’ first home and the one I had lived in for most of my life. We made years of memories in that house with years of belongings to accompany them. Little did we know at the time, that the house holding decades of tangible memories was about to be swept from under us. 

                      It couldn’t have been above 20 degrees that evening. It was a bitter, almost eerily quiet night, and I was sound asleep when the fire started. At 2 a.m., I was suddenly awoken by my brother yelling, “The house is on fire!”  At first, I thought it was a dream. I was disoriented, not fully understanding what was happening. “Quick, grab water!” my brother yelled, and before I could even think, I was following him down the hallway and into the kitchen. As I got closer, I could see the shadow of the flames dancing on the walls and I could feel my heart sinking into my stomach as I wrapped my head around the fact that this wasn’t a dream at all. My mother’s beautiful white dayroom was glowing bright orange, like a sunset on a summer night. As I tried dousing the flames with my small cup of water, my brother went to wake my parents. I know, you’re probably thinking, “Why didn’t you grab a fire extinguisher?”  To be honest, I often wonder the same thing. All I can say is that during times of chaos, we all tend to lose the ability to think rationally-besides, it was probably too late anyway. 

         As my mother came stumbling down the hallway with her disheveled, chin-length blonde hair, it was clear that she was just as disoriented as I was. My father was not far behind. I could see his fair complexion losing all color, as he realized that one of his greatest fears was coming to fruition right before his eyes. As we stood there, desperately throwing water on the growing inferno, I could see the defeat on my parents’ faces. My father’s blue eyes welling with tears of despair, while we all watched, frozen in fear, as the flames rapidly traveled through the bed and up my mother’s soot-covered curtains, before spreading throughout the ceiling. In mere seconds, the room was engulfed. Other than the bright orange light illuminating from the spot that the room once stood, there was nothing left, and it was swiftly spreading toward us.

          Bypassing the shoes and coats lined up along the front door, we ran as fast as we could outside, wearing nothing but our pajamas. As my parents were frantically dialing 9-1-1, I looked around and realized that my golden retriever wasn’t standing with us. Buddy was like my child, my baby. He was my very first dog, the one I had begged my parents for since I was a little girl, and I was NOT leaving him in the house. Despite my families’ pleas, I made the rash decision to run back inside. I can remember the tremble in my father’s voice yelling “Don’t go!” as it was fading further and further away. I began making my way down the hazy hallway, which felt much longer than it ever had before. As I arrived at my parent’s bedroom, where Buddy slept every night, I was relieved to find him hiding under the bed. Buddy never did well with anything that could be slightly frightening, so it wasn’t too surprising to find him there. As I began pulling on Buddy’s collar, I could sense the smoke creeping up behind me. It was making its way to the bedrooms now, and I had to get out, fast.  

            As I was making my way back down the hallway, dragging my gigantic dog behind me, I felt as if this was no longer my home. Every crevice that I once knew now felt unfamiliar. All I could do in that moment was cover my mouth and crawl beneath the raging smoke, hoping that I could feel my way down what used to be the hallway. We almost made it to the front door, when suddenly, I felt a tug. It was Buddy. He slipped out of his collar in an attempt to run back into the bedroom. “This is it,” I thought. “I could go back and most likely not make it back out alive, or I can go out the front door right now and leave my dog behind.”  I didn’t even have time to think about what my next move would be. Before I knew it, I could feel a hand swooping in from behind me, grabbing Buddy by the fur and dragging him right out the front door. It was my mother. She had heard my yells for Buddy and came at the exact right moment. 

             Gasping for air as we sat outside, I looked around, watching, as my childhood home burned down in flames. I sat on the curb running through my inventory of all my favorite things that I left behind. My books, gone. My favorite boots, gone. Every baby picture, vacation, milestone- all gone. It wasn’t until we were feverishly banging on the neighbor’s door at 3 a.m., that I realized how lucky we really were. All of our neighbors, friends and even strangers, gave us clothes, brought food and even offered us a place to sleep. Everyone banded together, and it was in that moment that I didn’t care about any of my things anymore. I didn’t care about my pictures or my clothes or my memories. In that moment, with my dog beside me in my arms, I was grateful to look around and see that my entire family was safe.