Fire In the Purple Bathroom

I don’t know why Mother was using purple paint to paint the bathroom. Must have been paint Daddy came up with. Whatever he could get for free, Mother used. Like the orange paint…oh, my! We had orange chairs, tables, and wooden tool handles because we had orange paint. When there was gold spray paint, things like vases, plastic flowers, and macaroni-covered cigar boxes (Vacation Bible School projects) suddenly turned to gold.

Whatever the reason, Mother was painting the bathroom a semi-lovely shade of purple/lavender. I was sitting in the den next to the bathroom where she was finishing her painting when I heard a sudden ‘whoosh.’ My eyes were immediately drawn to the wall of flame that appeared where the bathroom door used to be. Almost simultaneously I heard Mother yell from the other side of the flames, “Get a quilt!”

My feet seemed to grow wings as I moved from the den into the dining room, knocking over chairs as I went, trying to navigate around the table at breakneck speed. I burst through Mother & Daddy’s bedroom door screaming, “The bathroom’s on fire and Mother’s in there!”

Daddy was Water Superintendent for the City of Center and he got up around 3:00 each morning to leave for work by 3:30. Since he was usually in bed by about 7:30 in the evening, he was already sitting in his chair in his boxer shorts, having a last smoke from his pipe before bed when I so rudely interrupted him.

I didn’t stop to get Daddy’s reaction to my announcement, but did hear him say, “What?” I repeated myself as I moved directly into their bathroom to frantically pull quilts from the linen closet.

Running to the burning bathroom I threw the quilt as hard as I could through the wall of flames. My hope was that Mother could either smother the fire from the other side or soak the quilt and cover herself with it in the tub until we could do something better.

As I stepped into the kitchen to grab the phone to call the fire department, I watched Daddy carry water in a small pot from the kitchen and throw it onto the fire. He might as well have spit on it.

I dialed ‘0’ (no 911 back then) and excitedly told the operator, “The bathroom’s on fire and my Mother’s in there!” He soothingly told me to calm down and I indignantly told him, “I can’t calm down! My Mother’s in there!

Daddy continued to refill his pot of water and throw it on the fire. I could hear him calmly telling me, “Donna, your Mother is not in there.” He said this over and over. “Sure she’s not,” I thought. I didn’t believe a word of it. “What does he think I am – a child? I’m seventeen-years-old and I know that she didn’t walk through that wall of fire!

I ignored him and continued to talk to the operator, instructing him to send the fire department and an ambulance. As I shakily hung up the phone, I turned to see Mother walking through the back door onto the porch and into the kitchen. I silently followed this seeming apparition to the bathroom (the one with no fire or smoke) and watched while she hiked her foot into the sink and ran water over it.

I must have asked her what happened because she told me that just as she finished cleaning up, she spilled some gasoline (yep, that’s what she cleaned with…you thought we had something fancier?) and watched as the narrow stream rolled quickly under our gas hot water heater. The union of the pilot light from the water heater and the fumes from that stream of gasoline caused the ‘whoosh’ I’d heard.

After telling me to get a quilt, she quickly determined that she couldn’t wait for that and climbed through the small, high bathroom window, landing head-first onto the dense cushion of ferns in the flowerbed outside. Strange. I never once thought of that window. As far as I was concerned, that bathroom was sealed tighter than Fort Knox.

Anyway, she just picked up the conveniently located water hose and stuck it through the bathroom window. Too bad our water pressure was so low. Old house, old pipes…took about 30 minutes to fill a tub for a bath. With Mother's hose on one side and Daddy’s water pot on the other, they were a pretty good team.

She was washing her foot and ankle because they’d been badly burned before she could scramble to safety. I left her to soothe her wounds with water while I went to see if the ambulance was there yet.

I’d heard the sirens and knew someone had to be there. I found that the fire was out and Daddy was in the kitchen, still in his boxers, nonchalantly talking to a bunch of the volunteer firemen. I sidled up to him and whispered sternly, “Couldn’t you put some clothes on?” Daddy wasn’t much of a conversationalist so he said nothing. He just slowly looked me up and down.

That was when I realized that I was running around with only a shirt on. My pants were neatly folded on the back of the recliner in the den. It was a good place for them. It was hot, we had no air conditioning and I sure hadn’t been expecting company. I slunk behind the high back of the green vinyl recliner and made myself decent before approaching the firemen again and asking where the ambulance was.

They told me they sent it away! They didn’t think anyone needed it! In retrospect, I can see that her injuries did not require an ambulance, but they didn’t know that. I’m so glad I never learned how to cuss so no terrible words were spoken that I’d have to apologize for. Instead, I went to tell Mother I was taking her to the hospital myself. One problem – the car was parked out back and she wouldn’t go through the house to get to it with all those men there. She’d been painting, barbecued her foot and ankle, planted her face in ferns, and she didn’t want to see or be seen.

Fine. I’d pick her up in front of the house so she could sneak out under cover of darkness. She’d have to navigate the five steps from the tall front porch to the long sidewalk that led to the two steps that led to the other sidewalk that led to the street. No problem. She could do all that, but don’t make her face those men!

I grabbed the car keys on my way to the back door and heard one of the fireman remark to another in a tone of amusement laced with wonder, “Look at that rat.” Oh, swell. Would the humiliation never end?

As long as we lived in that house, no matter what we did or how much we cleaned, we fought mice, rats, and roaches. I think they must have laid claim to the place before we ever got there. They were probably the inspiration for the reality show Survivor, because they’d long ago devised a defense routine and figured they could outsmart and/or outlast us. We kept d-CON in various places throughout the house and this particular rat looked as if he’d eaten his fill and was suddenly feeling under the weather. He’d chosen to drag his fat body under one of the kitchen cabinets – out of the way, but where he could be seen.

You may wonder how a rat could be seen under a kitchen cabinet. This turn-of-the-century house was typical of its era. The country kitchen had three shelves affixed to the walls, one with cabinet doors and the other two covered with curtains. Two of the shelf units had large tables under them that served as countertops. One last cabinet was a stand-alone affair with legs that kept it from sitting directly on the floor. This was the cabinet that devil rat had chosen to crawl under to watch the show unfolding before him. However, from the way the firemen talked, the rat had become the show.

I kept moving out the door and suddenly realized that the car was completely blocked by the personal cars of the firemen. One drove the fire truck but the rest came in their own vehicles. By that time I was not feeling extremely sociable. Whirling around I stalked back into the kitchen where everyone was lounging around, talking to Daddy. “Get those cars out of my, way! I’ll have to take Mother to the hospital myself since ‘no one needed an ambulance.’”

I must have been pretty convincing at seventeen or else those kind men had pity on me. In any case, the cars soon parted like the Red Sea and I drove through, picking Mother up in front of the house and delivering her to the Emergency Room door.

One doctor and nurse took care of Mother and another nurse tried to help me. “I’m fine,” I kept insisting. “It’s Mother…take care of her.” The nurse sweetly led me to a mirror and pointed. I looked at myself and saw what she saw. My face had more soot on it than Mother’s did! The nurse handed me a wet washcloth so I could wash my face while they treated Mother’s burns. They gave me instructions on how to care for her and sent us home.

I settled Mother into my bed and went to see if Daddy had gone to sleep yet. He hadn’t. He was in the only usable bathroom, washing up. I asked why he wasn’t in bed yet and, without looking at me, he told me in a low, calm voice that after we’d left, he’d gone into the dark, burned bathroom and automatically reached to turn on the light. The problem with that was that this was a house built in 1902 and our lights were the kind that hung on wires from the ceiling. No wall switches. He’d reached up to switch that light on and grabbed bare wire because the heat and water had caused the light bulb to explode.

He said the firemen picked him up off the floor, decided that he was okay, and left. I just stood listening, stunned. What more could happen? I suddenly felt very old for a seventeen-year-old. Mother and Daddy must have felt their ages, too…fifty-seven and sixty-four. It had been a very long evening.

Before I went to bed I checked the kitchen and saw no sign of the fat rat. Great. I figured someone threw him outside and one of the cats would eat him and die. It wasn’t that I wanted to see him. I didn’t. I hate them! I’m scared of them! Mother always said, “That mouse is more scared of you than you are of it.” My reply was always the same, “You don’t understand just how scared I am.” Even today you can put me in a room with a mouse, tell me where you want your new exit, and I can accommodate you.

I checked on my parents once more and only when I knew they were both asleep did I allowed myself to cry.

The next morning I got up to fix breakfast so it would be ready when Daddy came home around 7:30. The first thing I noticed was the fat rat. He hadn’t been thrown out after all. He must have been hiding. Sometime during the night he had conveniently dragged himself beside the trash can and died. I was immediately irritated that Daddy hadn’t taken care of it. Of course, the devil rat was probably still in hiding when Daddy left earlier in the morning, but I was scared and needed someone to blame.

I was determined to muster up some courage. I could do this. I wasn’t a scaredy cat about anything else and it was time to show that dead rat who was boss. I took a deep breath, leaned over, and…Mother hobbled up behind me and nearly scared the liver out of me! She calmly reached around me and wrapped the devil rat in a piece of newspaper for disposal. So much for courage.

In the days that followed my life was consumed with cleaning soot from the house, cooking, and changing Mother’s bandages. Mostly cleaning soot. It seemed to be everywhere. I washed clothes, curtains, furniture, floors, and every dish in the house. Then I did it again. Every time I thought I was finished there was more black soot. By the way, you’ve never lived until you’ve scrubbed floors with SOS pads. Ah, those were the good old days when I could get down on my knees…and get back up!

Changing the bandages involved more courage and determination. The sight and smell of burned flesh was indescribable. Mother was not allowed to see my horror. She had her hands full dealing with the pain and she didn’t need a wimp for a caretaker. I would unwrap her foot, give her a big smile, and chirp brightly, “Oh, this is going to be fine!”

The Bible talks about “speaking those things that are not as though they were, that they might be.” Boy, was I ever being biblical! Her foot was not getting better and I knew it was not going to be fine if things continued as they were. The greasy, smelly medicine-in-a-jar wasn’t helping her at all.

I’m not sure why I considered using something other than the prescribed treatment, but I was concerned enough about her lack of progress that I decided to take matters into my own hands. They couldn’t get any worse. I went to Brown Drug, one of our two local drug stores, and bought every bottle of vitamin E capsules they had, along with an assortment of gauze bandages and surgical tape.

Thus began the new ritual of applying vitamin E oil to the wound. In the beginning, a pin was used to prick the capsule before squeezing the contents onto the burn. That tedious method got old fast and was replaced with a quick bite from an incisor to release the healing oil onto her foot and ankle before wrapping it all with fresh gauze and tape.

Within a few days, the wound looked dramatically different and it was obvious that the natural vitamin E beat the pants off the prescription medicine-in-a-jar. The skin was beginning to look pink instead of red and the smell was gone. In the end, (after a long time) she had a barely noticeable scar.

This story has become a source of amusement for some of my family members. I can understand why. Things always seem more humorous in retrospect…and when they happen to someone else. However, you can be assured that at the time the events were unfolding, I was anything but amused.

When I look back on the “purple bathroom” story, I can laugh at the crazy situations, but back then I was overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy. I felt I should have handled things better, I should have thought more clearly, done things differently. Now, of course, I realize that I did the best I could with the experience I had at that age. Mother and Daddy appreciated the things I did, accepted that I was doing my best, and loved me despite my mistakes.

When I look back at my life spiritually, I can see the many mistakes I’ve made, the errors in judgment, the sins of rebellion, the violation of my own convictions. Those memories would keep me constantly depressed were it not for the grace of God. When I’m wrong He convicts me by His Spirit, but does not beat me mercilessly. Instead, He draws me back to Himself and restores my fellowship to Him when I repent. He loves me with an everlasting love and loves me enough not to leave me as I am.

The physical fire in the purple bathroom and the spiritual fires of disobedience have both taught me a few things. If a door is closed (or becomes a wall of flame!) look for a window. Don’t use gasoline to clean up paint and don’t use excuses to cover up sin. In the physical world, don’t rely strictly on conventional medicine - use the brain God gave you. In the spiritual world, don’t rely on your own understanding - trust and acknowledge God in all your ways. Like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, God will be with you in the fiery furnace. With His help, no matter how hard the trial, you can make it through.

There are two lessons I learned from the fire in the purple bathroom that made an indelible mark on me and I know I’ll never forget them: rats are dirty, beady-eyed, long-tailed devils to avoid at all costs, and my personal favorite – never go to a fire without your pants!