Scorched

home (noun): the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.

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‘Home.’ 

Ha. What a funny word. 

What even is ‘home?’ Is it the place where you feel safest, the place where you laugh with family and friends, or is it simply the structure in which you live? Is ‘home’ even a place at all, since the very definition of home varies from person to person and place to place? If you really think about it, has ‘home’ ever really been a specific or special person or place to anyone?

But, if we follow the traditional definition of ‘home’- a structure in which you live permanently, as a part of a greater group (family, household, whatever), then what happens when the structure disappears?  Isn’t a ‘home’ supposed to be a place that is always there? So, without a ‘home’, will the family disintegrate, too?

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My mother’s hair looks like sweet ashes- gray in all the right places, and perfectly wispy. Her embrace is warm and safe- and I can almost overlook the gentle crackling of her bones as she moves to readjust her grip.

“Cherry,” she breathes. It’s almost too quiet to hear.

My name is not Cherry, but I let her hug me as if it is- because I know that soon, this embrace, the feeling of her delicate arms around my thinning body could be gone forever. 

She releases me from her grip and looks me in the eyes instead. The spark that once lit up her deep brown eyes has now faded into mere embers, veiled behind years of torment.

“Hi, Mom,” 

The winter air swirls around us and picks up the remains of yesterday’s snowstorm. The snow bites into my skin, but I don’t say anything, because the sensation will be gone soon enough.

“Let’s go inside,” my mother says. She places a hand on my shoulder and leads me in. 

I leave my luggage outside as the warm smell of the house surrounds me.

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My father’s hair is more like coal- a block of black waves placed atop a square head and deep-set black eyes. His back pops like a fire trying to burn old wood when he picks up my suitcases from the sidewalk and carries them through the foyer and up the stairs to my room.

He doesn’t say anything to me when he places them down- just gives me a quiet nod and turns to leave.

“Dad?” I whisper.

I was never one for quiet conversation.

“Hm?”

“Do you want me to shovel the driveway later?”

“That would be nice, dear,”

“Okay, Dad,”

He leaves, and the room feels a little colder.

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I am a strange combination of my parents. I have my father’s dark and solid lashes, and I have his steely gaze. However, the black hair that tumbles over my shoulders reminds me of my mother- the few gray bits peeking through solidifying my belief. 

I look into my dull mahogany eyes.

Their fire has gone out.

My mother always said that I had gold in my eyes- like sparks that would fly into a starry sky in mid-summer.

I don’t see the gold anymore.

I stare into the mirror as I wash my hands, and my willowy frame looks back at me.

I take a bit of pine-scented soap into my palm and scrub it across my fingers.

The water gently carries it away, and I shut off the tap.

I dry my now cold hands on a threadbare towel and leave the bathroom.

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The house feels cold, very cold. No amount of heat in the vents or blankets on the bed gets rid of the strange chill that lays deep in my stomach. It’s the kind of chill that swoops in after the heat from an extinguished flame. It fills my body, but I still go down the stairs for dinner.

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“So, how is everything, dear?” my father asks. His neatly gelled hair doesn’t shift as he leans down to take a bite of potatoes.

“It’s okay,” I reply. I shift a bright orange carrot on my plate.

“What would you like to do, now that you’re back with us?” my mother says as she cuts a bite of slightly burnt steak.

“I’m not sure,”

“That’s okay, honey. Just think on it and tell me tomorrow, okay?” she places a frail hand onto mine. Her fingers are like twigs.

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I forget to shovel the driveway, and I don’t sleep much that night. Instead, I simply lay there and think. Think, as my mother told me to, I suppose...

My parents have never called us a ‘family’, and we’ve never called our house a ‘home’. It’s always been “me”, “us”, “you”, and “the house”. Even if we were on a trip and coming back to the house late at night, it was never “coming home”. It has always been, and likely always will be, just “the house”. My parents told me their reasoning once, but I’ve since forgotten.

So, when my co-workers asked where I was going on such short notice two weeks before Christmas break, I said I was visiting family. Not going home. Going home sounds permanent, like a fixed fate.

I suppose ‘home’ was never a place I could return to. What other people consider my ‘home’ is simply a house with people in it to me. Like little paper dolls in a children’s game. 

'Home', I suppose, is a complex and strange thing: a combination of ideas, people, and a structure. It doesn't exist if all the pieces aren't there. My parents and I, we may be the people living in the structure, but there was never the idea, the discussion in which we decided that "yes, we all belong to this house, and it's our home,"

I guess that 'home' never existed for me because all the pieces were never put together at the right time. 

Oh, well. 

Too much time has passed to change everything- and I feel comfortable enough with just being "us" in "the house", leading temporary lives.

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I eventually fall asleep and wake up again soon after to hear a piercing ringing filling the room. I tumble out of bed and the beeps that follow the ringing make my movements frantic.

There is smoke coming from the hallway into my room.

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I stumble into the hallway, through the smoke that quickly invades my nostrils, and enter my parents’ room. 

Their fire alarm is not going off.

I shake my father awake, then my mother. They blink the haze of sleep from their eyes as the smoke floats down the hallway.

“Fire,” I say.

They nod and grab my hands. 

I lead them into the hallway, and we start choking on the smoke. It fills our lungs and our eyes sting, but we keep walking through the hallway, and carefully down the stairs.

There were many points in time where my parents would protect me, and I’d protect them, but now we were all working together. Now, we were just people clinging to each other, holding on for dear life.

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We eventually escape the burning house. Behind us, it is alight and angry, orange flames devouring every square inch of wood they can find.

The fire lights up the neighborhood, but all the surrounding houses stay silent. The heat of the fire wafts across the road, but nobody opens a window or door to notice.

My parents and I stand frozen on the street as we watch the only thing we’ve ever known burn.

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The house never seemed temporary until now. It was always a steady presence, always next to “me”, “you”, and “us”. It completed the set- made the perfectly ridiculous combination of words make sense. Made the absence of ‘home’ feel okay, because it would still protect us.

The house keeps burning, we keep watching, and the world still stays silent as the night moves on.

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It’s many minutes before my parents finally release their hands from mine and move. Their bones crack and snap just like the fire as they come to their senses and knock on the neighbor’s door to explain that the house is burning and everything we have is inside.

The orange flames are disrupted by red and blue lights as fire trucks pull up and attempt to douse the house in cold water. 

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The flames die and the house is reduced to a pile of embers and ashes as the trucks pull away, back into the night. The melted snow lays in silly little puddles across the yard, and the charred driveway is filled with fallen bits of the house. The destruction is finally over, but the house is no more.

I was never one for ephemeral things like decisions and conversations, but now it seems all I can do is make the decision to sit on the ground. Sit on the charred driveway in pajamas that smell of smoke and burning bricks, trying not to think about the tears sliding down my face. 

‘Home’ never truly existed for me, but now, it seems, I have been stripped of the very chance to have one.

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My chances of having a ‘home’ slip away into the night with the ashes of “the house”, leaving me searching for the only piece of the puzzle left- my parents. But they, too, have abandoned what’s left of “the house”, and just stand in the road, speaking in hushed tones with the neighbors.

It seems that the idea of "us" is gone, now that “the house” is gone as well. “The house”, which was never a ‘home’. Now it is just “me” and “my parents”.

The puzzle is no more.

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'Home'.

Ha.

What a funny word.

A word I will never truly understand.