I knew something was wrong even before I opened my eyes. The atmosphere just seemed...different. Fuzzy. Off. And very, very wrong. And it wasn't just because it was only four in the morning.
I made my way out off bed and pattered down the hall, the knot in my stomach getting bigger and harder to ignore by the second because I noticed a thick haze in the air. Is that smoke?!? My mom had fallen asleep on the couch. She was snoring. I shook her hard. "Mom! Wake up. I think the house is on fire."
Earlier that evening my sister had taken a shower. Afterwards we both noticed that it smelled funny around our home. It smelled...burnt. Like burnt potatos. Mom kept insisting that we were just being dumb but we kept on saying that it smelled until she went to investigate. What she found was that the water heater had disconnected at a joint. When Katy took a shower it had gone a bit out of whack, and produced the funky burning smell. She turned it off and forbid me to take a shower even though I whined about being greasy for school the next day.
Mom jumped awake and blinked at me through the dark and the thickening haze. "What?" I repeated my theory and she ran down the hall to her bedroom where the smoke seemed to be emitting from. She came back just as fast. "There's a fire back there. Wake your sister up. We need to get out NOW."
I went into Katy's room and shook her awake. She seemed to think that being jarred awake was somehow pleasant because she had a dopey grin on her face. "Mmmm...what?" She muttered. "It's not time for school."
"Katy, the house is on fire. We need to get out."
"Ooooh my god." She jumped out of bed and started crying a little. Then, as if a switch flipped on in her head, she grabbed some of her stuffed animals and toys and stuffed them in a backpack. "I'm not leaving without these."
We went out to the living room where Mom appeared to be in the save-her-stuff mode as well. "Krissy! Call 911!" She yelled this as she found her purse and grabbed some important paperwork from her desk. The haze was almost unbearable now. I could only see fuzzy figures--partially because I didn't have my glasses on but mostly because of the smoke.
I dialed the numbers and a cheery voice answered. "Um, hi. My house is on fire."
"Are you out of the house, miss?"
"No. Not yet. I wanted to call you guys first. My mom told me to. Here's our address and fire number."
She kept me on the phone for a few seconds more than instructed us to go outside. The conversation ended with her going "get out. Now."
Though it was the Upper Peninsula and the beginning of December, it wasn't unbarably cold outsides. The three of us huddled together and watched the smoke snake through the inky night sky. This isn't real, I thought. It's only a dream. I'll wake up in a bit. My thoughts were shattered when my mom gripped my arm. "Krissy! Oh my god! Your paper! Your clarinet! Katy! Your trombone! GO BACK IN THERE AND GET THEM!!!"
"Mom! Our house is on fire! You want us to go back in there and get our homework?"
She looked at me with an intensity I rarely saw. The fire in her eyes matched what I imagined the fire in the back of the house to look like. "Yes."
I grabbed my sister's hand and we entered the front of the house. Luckily her school backpack was near the entrance. My stuff was snugly by my desk in my room. I grabbed my backpack and clarinet then remembered about my glasses and managed to get those, too. When we went back outside, we heard sirens.
Shortly after, I found myself in the E.R. I was ordered to suck down oxygen like my life depended on it, while my mom was treated for shock and her severe asthma. I laid on the cot and heard voices float around that talked about the "tragedy" and "conditions" while thoughts swam through my mind. We're homeless. Is Mom ok? What's going to happen? My band concert is tonight--what's going to happen with that--they need me for "Sleigh Ride!" I have no clothes. Will my paper on Poe be considered late since this is kind of an emergency situation?
By some sort of miracle I was cleaned up, clothed and shipped back to my tenth grade classes by noon that day. I put on a brave face, but everyone I encountered gave me a hug which sent me into tears every time. So many things were uncertain that I didn't know what to do, how to act or what to say? Do I freak people out by saying what I was thinking? Do I play the martyr and pretend that everything is ok? Should I ask if I can just crash at my best friend's house for the rest of my high school existence? After being in my head with those ponderings for an hour I decided to just breathe and took every hug and kind word as it came.
Hugs and consolations weren't the only things I got, though. The community rallied around my family in ways that I'd only seen on Oprah. At the band concert that night an impromptu collection was taken for my family and $500 was raised in fifteen minutes. People that Mom hadn't heard from in years somehow figured out how to contact her because they wanted to help. Benefit dinners were organized to help us get money for a new home, friends offered to let us stay at their places (which actually turned out to be fun because it was like a sleepover with a different friend every night of the week for me) and people who barely knew our family pressed money into our hands because they had heard about the fire. I was amazed at the outpouring of love and compassion that I saw on an almost-hourly basis.
Maybe it was because it was Christmas-time. Maybe it was because of the kindred feeling that can only be found in a small community. Maybe it's because there really is a God and there are miracles. What could have been one of the greatest tragedies in my family's existance turned into a tale that I think of every December because of how truly beautiful some things turn out to be. December 3, 1998 should be a day of infamy in my mind, but instead I look back on that date and smile.
Ciao, dahling!
~*Krissy*~