I fall from dizziness, I can’t get enough air to get myself up. My face is against the floor, already hot enough to scorch my cheek. Lying low on my belly, clutching the family photos, I drag myself forward but lose consciousness. At some point, arms grab, pull and lift me. For a second, I fight to rescue my papers, even as flames reach high all around us. I regret to leave my writing behind. I want to go back and save them . . . but they are gone.
All the people I had written about, all my friends at DYA swallowed up in flames, all the unsent letters I wrote my parents asking them why they left, describing to them who I was, that I miss them and love them, that they should come and get me and my brother and what I think about their abandonment; pages and pages about the kids I knew, the nuns and the director at the DYA and the guys I fought and befriended at gladiator school and those that saved me from getting jumped by opposing gang members, the county jail guards who were kind to me and my brother . . . all my memories of my brother and me sticking together and me running away and the night and days on the streets—all gone up in smoke. The friends, people, places, words the fire touched like red fingers that peeled back the ink from the letters so words became invisible, now merged with air, words without ink, spirit-words, breath-words, ink peeled from them, now rising like feathers of a smoke-bird, freed from the incense censer I swung as an altar boy at Mass . . . I witness them all rise into the air and fade into the sunlight, into the sky and the universe.
Hours later, after the firemen leave, the neighbors return to their homes, look sadly out their windows to make sure I am okay. All that is left is me standing alone with the night coming on with my sorrow. I’m remorseful, thinking I had made the choice: my couple pictures or my writing. I chose Eva, and it feels good to know I made the choice I did.
God burned what I could not. God lightened my burden. In my mind, his low rumbling voice, like that of an avalanche, says, “Why carry this stuff on, why keep it? Take courage to be the new man, Orlando. It’s gone, so now you start clean, free. Close your eyes a moment, say goodbye to them all. Clasp your hands in prayer, be thankful for this burning that has cleansed you of your past. No longer the orphan, no longer abandoned, you are a family member, a relative to all my creation, dear Orlando. The world is your mother, the Spring is your mother, the earth, the water and trees your relatives. Now, be the water more than you, be the wind more than you, be the moon and light more than you, and grow as they do, my son. I am your father, the Sun, Quetzalcoatl; I will protect you.
I stand in the embered hush. There is little left of our bedroom—smoke, piles of ashes, charred lumber. I asked the fire chief how it started. He said faulty wiring in the bedroom closet.
I step through the wet, dark world, smoldering mounds of charnel, see the fire has burned my three boxes. Oddly, what the voice said to me is true: I feel lighter. Gone is the weight of carrying my work everywhere, pulling me down. I kneel, pick up burned paper, read hardly—legible, blackened words. The words crumble to ash in my hands.
My eyes don’t see the burned rubble, but turn inward on all those memories now disintegrated into blackened trash. I kick the smoking debris, kick the pyre of my past life. Sparks shoot and scatter, burning paper flakes float. Smoke, the dark smell of incinerated wood and paper choke me, force me to cover my face with my forearm. I turn to leave. My boot pushes a heap of still burning papers, scatters them. Something catches me eye. I bend, pick up the picture of me wearing denims at DYA, looking impenetrable. I brush it off. Burned on the edges, bits of black wax stick to it, strands of red hair, plus shredded paper with some kind of prayer words: “O Goddess Moon. . . . .” Part of Lila’s incantation. I place it in my shirt pocket.
Over the next few days, I clean up, cart trash to the dump. Neighbors bring me lumber, nails, concrete and windows. And I start over. We have no money. We sleep at a Mexican neighbor’s guest house. One afternoon, I’m on my pitched roof with my carpenter’s bag, nailing sheets of plywood across the rafters, when the mailman comes, tells me I have to sign a letter. I climb down the ladder, he hands me a clipboard. I sign for a letter. It’s an official letter, probably from the city lawyers telling me I need permits, have to stop building until I get them. I don’t even open it. I toss it in the kitchen trash can and go back up on the roof to finish before it rains.
7
September 9, 2019
Someone said our lives can be explained by accidents. One year ago, starting this book was really an accident. I had no intention of writing it until my wife ordered me to get the Christmas tree out of the living room. I have this habit of leaving the Christmas tree up an extra month or two until my wife has enough of it, demands I take it down. She tells me to march my mangy butt into the garage and find boxes. I go to the garage but don’t find any empty ones, so I get two half-filled ones, dump the contents of one into the other and, voila!, bring the empty one in. I start with Xmas balls that have been with us for decades, some with our names inscribed. Others commemorate our children’s births—I have five. They bring back lots of memories, but none so unsettling as the memories that are sparked by what I find at the bottom of the box: a grimy manila envelope with my sixthgrade report card from the orphanage, my birth certificate with an inked impression of my infant foot. Ink and paper, me writing this, it was meant to be.
American Orphan Page 21
