Smoke and ashes

Saratoga: where “all the children are above average,” where doors are left unlocked, and where cop cars respond in pairs to lemons being plucked from a wayside tree. You wouldn’t expect arson in Saratoga, and neither did I, but that changed one night four years ago.

The Night Of

Friday, March 12, 2011: All was quiet that night, save for the buzz of the World Cup Cricket Final emanating from televisions in some Indian households.

At 2:35 a.m., the shriek of our phone resonated through our rental house. My mom, my brother and I remained asleep while my dad slumbered out of bed to take the call. Tom Curtis was on the line. He was the grandfatherly gentleman who lived across from the house my dad had been remodeling for nearly two years — the house we were going to move into in two months. That house, the house on the corner of Mallory and Cumberland, was ablaze.

Flames, 40-feet high, shot over the huddle of ranch-style houses at that corner. Bleary-eyed children peeked through their windows in fascination and fear as they watched our house turn to ashes. All the fire engines in town, and some from neighboring towns,  battled the blaze. But I remained asleep, snuggled in my engine-red blanket, while my house burned.  

The following morning

My mom was the first to tell me, speaking in low and tired tones, her one hand on my shoulder as I lay in bed, her other reaching to draw the curtains. To say it felt unreal is both cliche and utterly true.

I was in shock at first, and then in sorrow. I turned away from my mom slowly, buried my face in my pillow, and let tears soak my saffron-yellow sheets. But the day went on.

Around noon, my mom dropped me off at Foothill Elementary, to a practice for the school musical, “Beauty and the Beast.” Once there, I searched for my best friend, Erin, whose flowing blond hair and smiling blue eyes were easy to spot. She sensed my distress immediately: We had known each other since our second day in Mrs. Green’s first grade class at Argonaut Elementary, when we were both the new kids. She had offered me a grape, and said, “Want to be friends?” I had said, “Ya,” and we had been friends ever since.

Wiping my tears on the sleeves of my old faded pink sweatshirt, I told Erin what had happened. After that, there was a lot of hugging and nodding, and many smiles of consolation.

Play practice was a blur. I watched my peers whirl and twirl across the yellowed linoleum floor. They hummed and harmonized across the light from the windows, grinning and giggling. I felt sick.

Later, my mom picked me up from play practice, and then my brother Sanj from our rental house, and we headed to where my dad was: at what remained of our house.  Sanj’s brows were furrowed, his lips pursed and his eyes fierce as he stared at the charred remains of our house. He was determined not to cry. I, however, could not hold back my tears. The site was swarming with firemen and federal agents from the ATF — the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, whose job it is to investigate acts of arson.

My mom, Sanj and I sat in our Honda minivan while my dad talked to the ATF agents. Then, not wanting to look at the smoldering ashes any longer, and seeing that there was little else we could do, the three of us returned to our rented house.

Sunday Morning

When I awoke the next morning, white light peeked through my bedroom window, and the sky was smothered by heavy grey clouds. I stepped outside with my Golden Retriever, Buddy, to find a white orchid with a note on our front porch. It was from Erin’s family to ours, offering its condolences for our loss.

I walked back inside, handing the note to my mom. How sweet, my mom said as she read it. I put the orchid on the windowsill in the kitchen and took a seat at our round glass dining table.

Buddy nuzzled against my leg, and I ruffled his ears. Then, I stared at the orchid, its white petals bright against the gloomy morning sky. I breathed in, then out.

Looking Back

It’s been four years since that miserable sunny day followed by that gloomy grey morning. The ATF agents spent two days sifting through the debris, before declaring the cause of the fire to be arson. They told us that the fire had been started in the master bedroom by pouring a flammable liquid over some scrap paper and setting it alight. The fire had then spread to the rest of the house. The result was roughly $800,000 in damage.

That year, Saratoga experienced nine cases of arson, the highest incidence of arson in Saratoga since records have been kept. But few in town know this, or choose to acknowledge it. Arson rates showed a steady increase from 2007, when the country entered a recession, to 2011, when the country came out of that recession. Coincidence? Perhaps not.

The police either never found out who committed the arson, or never told us.

Quite frankly, I no longer care.

Since the fire, my brother has graduated from high school and moved onto college. And Erin and I, still the best of friends, have moved onto high school.  Since then, my attention has turned to grades and college admissions, and to “fruitful” summers.

There has been plenty of time to forget how arson once reduced my future home to ashes. I am no longer disappointed, or distressed, just indifferent.

Sanj, too, has moved on from the events of that night, although I think he had a harder time doing so than I did.

The house on the corner of Mallory and Cumberland is being built anew by my dad. Although it might not be finished by the time I get to college, it is all right. We have moved through a couple of different rental houses, but I too am all right.

Then, it is a lie to say that Saratoga is a sheltered oasis — a lie perpetuated by either those who do not know better or those who simply want to protect their home values. And it is a lie that burned down maybe four years ago, maybe many years ago, and left a crying young girl in the midst of smoke and ashes.