You Were Born in the Fire

You were born in the fire and you had never left the house since, neither had I. I hadn’t even tried fleeing the fire. I had let it take over me. I had gotten my foot stuck between burning furniture and tumbled onto the ground, cold concrete caressing my back. The ceiling had been precipitating flames: three drops on my hair, and a final one into my mouth. I had swallowed the fire lump, felt it slithering along my throat. It had chased you as it embered in my stomach, competing with you over the eighteen inches in my belly, breaking my water, and kicking you out. You had crashed on the ground inaudibly, for the flames had stolen your voice, sending you out mute, yet surprisingly alive. When you never let out a cry, it instinctively stopped - the fire inside my belly; it had done enough destruction. I had hidden what I thought was your corpse inside the old, broken vacuum cleaner. Firemen had come and extinguished the remains of the fire. Police had come and taken your father from the other room. No one had known you were alive, no one had been aware that you existed.

Now, five years and six days later, nature’s warning suggested otherwise. Through the window, I watched the garden leaves self-rake. The orange leaves, the most abundant, tornadoed around the yellow ones, delivering the news; the yellow leaves, sickened by what they heard, swelled onto the rare green ones, symbiotically announcing the event. The wind growled in response, echoing through the clouds, calling the flock of blue jays before their seasonal migration began. They rushed down, mimicking hawk sounds - their way of deceiving other creatures away - and landed on the sedimentary pebbles fencing the empty pond, three then three then three. The sky goosebumped, contrails trailing along like marching ants. Your knees flinched as you watched nature harmonize itself to protect you. I could’ve sworn your mouth let out a squeak, but I guess it was just a sound effect of your breathing sped up. Of course you were afraid. After all, what was protection if not the ultimate sign of approaching danger?

“Yes,” I answered your confused eyes. “Yes, not only is he out of jail, he also knows the truth, and he isn’t going to leave us alone.”

I already had our luggages ready, dormant by the back door; mine plain, navy blue; yours neon green with drawings of superheroes you didn’t know about; both brought to us by the neighbor across the street upon my request. I clutched your hand with my right hand and grabbed my luggage with the left. How was I going to carry yours too? I tried holding them both with different finger combinations, but yours always slipped. Never mind, I thought, we’re leaving it behind. It was too bright, it would grab unwanted attention. You would manage without it, how long would you be able to survive in the foreign wild anyways? I stepped out, dragging you and the blue bag along, and shut the door behind us.

You were born in the fire and the trees could tell. As soon as you stepped outside the house gate, the wind jolted the leaves of the red maples down, forcing them to bow to the sight of you. Light, orange leaves fell off cedars sporadically around you like confetti celebrating your arrival. The sun twinkled, smoothly raying on your face. You ambulated slowly, grinning to the universe’s sincere welcome. However, as you walked further away, you surpassed the ending point of the nature trained to protect you. Your surroundings started acting vulgarly. The red maple branches bowed too lowly, almost piercing your eyes. Pinecones detached themselves from their trees and flooded your face like fireworks lighted downwards, blinding you. Abandoned bindweed roots on the ground snaked around your feet in lemniscates, trying to stabilize them to the ground. I had to interfere, I wasn’t going to watch Earth’s attempts at taking you away from me. I clasped your hand tightly, pulled you away from the roots, from the leaves, from the stems, battling them all. It seemed like I pulled you too hard, I could only tell when I found your whole body cartwheeling in the air surrounding my hand, landing on a pile of yellow leaves four meters away from an inert herd of deer.

There were ten, no tens, no hundreds of them; all identical: russet brown with white circular patches, no antlers but huge ears that looked like face wings. And as if that’s precisely what they were, the deer took off in flight-like motions upon your landing, dwindling into the distance, all but one. Did they sense that you were born in the fire? Were the flames of that day still inside you, resembling colors of lions or bears, and thereby a potential deer predator? If so, why did the last one remain? None of these questions would have crossed your mind of course, you were clueless as to how wildlife functioned. The questions that you were thinking of though, ones I was equally clueless about, had driven you to rise back up, dusting plant twigs off your clothes. The remaining deer walked away, as if it was waiting to make sure of your mobility. You were standing back up, your eyes still full of wonder and your expression still full of eagerness to continue the journey. You weren’t going to surrender as easily as I had thought.

“He was born in the fire, mute,” the neighbor said to the police on the phone.

“Do you think that’s an adequate reason for her to want to get rid of him?”

“I don’t know,” the neighbor wasn’t sure how much he should give away, or how much he wanted to give away.

“Sir, I need you to tell me everything you know,” the policeman urged. “If you claim the child could be in danger, you have to help us save him.”

“Yes, of course.”

“So, the child was born in the fire, five years ago?”

“Yes.”

“And now they both disappeared?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know they’re not just out for a walk?”

“They’ve never set foot outside their door since the fire. A few days ago, she asked me to buy her two suitcases, one for her and one for him. So I did. Now, her suitcase is gone, but his is still there, packed.”

“How do you have access to their house?”

“I have a key. I’m the one who brings them groceries, books, water, everything. I’m a close friend, I live right across the street.”

“Had there been any other signs that she was going to leave in the recent past?”

“She thought nature was telling her something. She said something about her husband being released from prison, setting off to find her, to take the child away from her.”

“When was her husband released? Do you know his case number? His name? Why he was sentenced?”

“Sir, her husband passed away in that fire.”

The policeman was silent for a moment. Then he asked, “his name please?”

“Martin Litt.”

After some keyboard noises, “it’s true, he’s dead.”

“She refused to believe it. She chose to blame him. To think he’s away serving his punishment. Hating him was easier for her to accept his absence.”

“What changed now? Why did she think he’s out?”

“She thought nature told her so. In her story, he was sentenced to five years. She always counted down the days in fear, they’re over now.”

“Is there anything else we should know?”

“Yes,” the neighbor hesitated. “She just recently found out she’s pregnant.”

“Who’s the father?”

“Me.”

You were born in the fire but your sibling wasn’t going to be. He (it must be a boy - I could feel it) was going to wail when he’s released into the world, soothed only by my soft hands and warm grip. He was going to scream when he needed my attention, and he was going to have a vivid laugh when I rocked him around. He was going to say mama when he turned eleven months old, a first word that would be celebrated in the neighborhood. He was going to start singing along to his lullabies, replacing words he couldn’t pronounce with gibberish. He was going to go to school and tell me about the girl with braided, orange hair he likes to play blocks with. He was going to be born in a hospital and his birthday wasn’t going to be a fire anniversary.

Most importantly, nature was going to treat him well. Was it hurting you again? It was the ground this time. The mud undulated underneath your feet, but not in the way of guidance, rising below the foot about to take a step forward and sinking below the foot steady on the ground; but the other way around, suddenly sinking right before your foot hits it, and abruptly rising when the other foot isn’t kinetic, as if trying to trip you. You didn’t seem to notice its motion, but it was your first time walking on mud anyways, you would’ve thought this is how it should work. It got more challenging as the land became more grassy. The moss started to interrupt your footsteps, confusing the soil. The dirt’s rhythm, mixed up between the shoe-shaped moss and your feet, started juggling them all around like a clown juggling balls.

Yet, you were still oblivious, too spellbound at the sight of the twenty two meter waterfall you were now running towards. The ground changed its pace as you changed yours, almost racing you. I wanted you to win, to show nature that you were stronger than it and that your muteness was compromised by your speed and your power. But you weren’t catching up. I must do something, I thought. I must push you, only slightly, just enough for you to understand that you must speed up. Your brother kicked in my belly driving me to push you faster, sooner, fiercer than I intended, unaware that you had reached the tip of the hill, and were standing right at the edge of the waterfall.

You were born in the fire and now you descended into the water. I watched as your torso twirled around itself in loops. Your legs were wide open, facing the sky while your hands were outstretched downwards, pyramiding your body upside down. Your poise, your position, your every move looked very intentional, resembling a jump of a talented olympic swimmer to the extent that, for a moment, observing you fall from a meter afar with a hand on my belly, the sound of approaching sirens ringing in my ears, I had forgotten that I had pushed you. I watched as if you were performing a water show and were going to come back up momentarily, run back towards me, cured, voluble. As if your clash with the lake, in which the glistening water was going to come in contact with the fuming lava inside your volcanic heart, wasn’t, as the newspapers would later call it, a murder disguised as an elemental reaction.