Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
I have thought of writing a story about my mother for many years.
When I was nine I was home alone, sorta like the movie. In fact a lot like the movie as it was two days before Christmas and very dark and cold. It gets that way in Canada in winter. At Christmas.
I was making sand candles for presents. Melt coloured wax on the stove in an old juice tin. Dig out holes in the wet sand in a cardboard box, poke fingers in for feet, then put in a wick.
After the wax is melted you pour it into the sand pod where it cools and hardens quickly. Then you can add another layer of a different coloured wax when the first layer has set. What you end up with is a candle, layered in colours with a fine sand coating. Very hippie. Very 1970.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas was on the telly. I got distracted and then Charlie Brown’s Christmas Special came on. No parents around to tell me what to do, or to interfere with my lovely, golden Christmas handgiftmaking that will put me at the top of everyone’s prized child list. I’ve had plenty of practice with the stove and oven. Expert grilled cheese making skills. Lived off from age 8 to 16.
I was aware of flames in the alley outside the house.
But as I neared the window I realized that the flames were a reflection in the window and were coming from the kitchen.
The wax on the stove.
Holy shit.
Ran to the phone to ring Mummy, but remembered that I didn’t know where she lived or if she even had a phone. She had been living in a place above a grocery so I could have rung the payphone, but I didn’t know if she was still there, or if the grocer would be able to get her to the phone.
The neighbours had also seen the flames and quite correctly rang the fire brigade.
I, on the other hand, was nine years old. I tried very hard to blow the flames out as if they were a massive birthday candle. Uhhhh phooooooooooo.
No luck.
It was getting very warm when the firemen came in. I was trying desperately to put the flames out. PUT THE FLAMES OUT. I was a moth to the flame. Blowing.
One of the firemen carried me outside and put me down on the sidewalk.
By then the kids in the neighbourhood had all gathered to see whose house was on fire. Renata, the Czechoslovakian girl from my class, asked me why I was shaking. I never trusted her as she also told her mother in Czech, the reason I was so fat was because I lived off grilled cheese sandwiches. Who doesn’t eat grilled cheese? I was annoyed she spoke to her mother in a code, aka Czech and I felt even fatter and less a part of a normal family where mothers prepare kid’s meals.
I told her my house was on fire. That was my house. On fire.
The firemen started to smash the leaded glass windows. I though for sure my father would be angry with me because the landlord wouldn’t appreciate that the windows were broken.
I watched. I was scared of the blame. That the windows would not be replaceable. I knew it was a special house with amazing windows. My bedroom had an enourmous walk-in closet with a little window with a domed top that could be opened outward. I had my bed in the closet for a spell and my father had a darkroom in another walk-in closet off the bathroom that he blocked the light out of to do his film development.
They were very special windows.
The house was special.
Annie soon showed up with Wendy. She said she heard the firetrucks and hoped it wasn’t her house on fire.
– Sorry sister, yeah I burned down the house.
– Weren’t you supposed to be at home with me? No. I was home alone.
Daddy showed up later and the crowd was still standing around staring at the firemen doing their job as the fire gutted the kitchen. Clearly he had too much Christmas Cheer in his belly as he staggered toward me. I was scared shitless of what he would do to me.
I truly ruined Christmas that year. We had to find somewhere to stay.
I still do not know where Mummy was or where she lived. I never talked to her about it. I thank the firefighters for telling Daddy it was the stove shorting out, and not that I was making sand candles for gifts for the family. Neither Mummy or Daddy will ever know the truth.
Night mother, like a moth to a flame. I run heated, toward the flame.