Controlled Burn
When I got up from my nap, the park was on fire.
“I’d never heard her scream before,” Mother said, pausing for a quick sip of pink lemonade. “Not even as a baby. She was always quiet, always smiling. My sweet little jelly roll!”
Mother was selling it as a funny story to impress my uncles and their girlfriends, Stephanie and Pilar. Both were skinny and freckled and tanned, with long brown hair and impossibly small breasts. I was fascinated by their compact golden bodies, perpetually clad in crocheted bikini tops and terry cloth short-shorts. What must it feel like to take up so little space?
“Naturally, I was terrified,” she went on. “Lily screaming b****y murder like that, Lord! I thought there must be an intruder in the house!”
I had been five or six and home sick fro
