-A Short Story by Denise Boivin-Iassogna
“Stay where I can see you!”
Mom called to Ella from inside the kitchen window. Ella always had the comfort of knowing mom was close by as she played in the back yard. The swing-set was Ella’s sanctuary. She could swing for hours on end. The metronome of the back and forth motion was a gentle melody that always lulled her. She would sing to herself the “Say Say Oh Playmate” song at the top of her lungs as she felt the exhilarating rush of wind through her hair. Then other times, she would pump her legs faster and faster until the swing took her to dizzying heights as she felt as though she could soar above the clouds.
This day, the weather was perfect, one of her favorite crisp autumn afternoons when the sun shone through the sycamores on Cameo Lane. The sweet pungent aroma of smoke from nearby neighborhood fireplaces tickled her nostrils. She knew that soon, the woodpile on the far end of the yard would be put to good use as Daddy would light the fireplace. She loved to sit beside him and watch with admiration as he carefully swept out the ash from the previous year, attentively opened the flu to let the air in, meticulously cracked the twigs from the spruce for something he taught Ella was called “kindling” on the fire. She always liked the sound of that word “k-i-n-d-l-i-n-g” and would whisper it over and over on her tongue when no one was listening. Then came long, narrow blocks of wood that were placed in a box shape to “let the fire breathe,” according to Daddy. Ella always nodded as Daddy said this, but never really understood why a fire had to “breathe.” All she could picture was a dragon who breathed fire as it charred everything in its path. Daddy’s fire would never do this. It was contained neatly within the fireplace and would always envelop the house like a warm hug. She loved how the fire always made the house feel safe, comforting. When the flames roared in the fireplace, it conjured up images of holiday gatherings, crystal on the tables, of cousins visiting, of adults laughing and Daddy watching football on a frigid Sunday afternoon. To Ella, fire was home.
Daddy always wore his flannel shirts when he was building the fire. The coarse material would scratch Ella’s chin when he picked her up to carry her on his shoulders, but she didn’t mind. She loved the way his clothes always smelled of the pine trees outside in the woods behind the swing-set.
Sometimes, if Ella was especially careful, Daddy would let her strike the match. This wasn’t something that came easily to her. At age five, her tiny fingers were not coordinated enough to put the long stick against the sandy paper to make the strike and flicker noise that turned the little red knob at the end of the stick into a burst of fireworks. It would make a pop, then a hiss as a mesmerizing blue speck instantly became a red glowing flame. Once this happened, Daddy would carefully guide her hand to place the matchstick flame to the bottom of the kindling pile and hold it there long enough to see the tiny puffs of smoke.
Sometimes Daddy used torn-up pieces of newspaper to help this process along if he didn’t have enough kindling, or if the wood wasn’t dry enough. Ella thought this was silly— wouldn’t the fire make the wood dry by itself? Today, there seemed to be enough kindling as the spark first sputtered, caught and eventually grew toward the breathing box and flames that leapt up towards the flue. Daddy closed the fireplace screen and sat down on the couch to watch the Giants play Green Bay, but Ella just sat mesmerized, recalling Daddy’s words…
(“now Ella, this is something you can only do with me, or another adult. Do you understand?” Ella always nodded and said she understood.)
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Later that week, on a crisp autumn morning, Daddy had left early for work as he always did. Ella mostly spent her days alone. Her older sister, Josie, had gone to something called ‘Kindergarten” on the big yellow bus every morning these days. Ella would have to wait another year to ride the yellow bus that showed up with a loud squeak and cough every morning down at the corner by the McInerney’s house. The yellow bus seemed to swallow up all of the neighborhood kids that had played together each weekend and sometimes after school. They were all of the older kids — none Ella’s age— and they didn’t always let her play with them. Sometimes, they just sent her home to play with her Barbie airplane as they continued their kickball out in the cul-de-sac.
‘Kindergarten’ was another one of those funny words. Ella couldn’t understand why Josie went to “garden school” every day. They had a beautiful garden right up against the fence in the backyard and, unless the tiny rabbits were able to sneak under the trellis, the beautiful expanse of soil where Mom planted peas, carrots, zucchini, and corn was a place of magic for Ella. She didn’t need a yellow bus to take her to the garden school. She had all she needed in her very own backyard sanctuary.
On this particular day, Ella wasn’t interested in swings, or backyards, or gardens. She was feeling restless with the first hint of autumn and wanted to go for a walk. She knew better than to ask Mom to take her. Mom was busy baking cakes for the St. Elizabeth Bazaar and every time that came around, Ella knew to stay clear of the kitchen. And Mom. Once Ella had taken a slice out of the cherry pie for herself, but it just happened to be the pie Mom was entering the fair and Ella had to go to bed early every night for a week. No, she knew this was the time when she was supposed to stay out of Mom’s way. Where she really wanted to go was back to the woods where the tree-fort the Sullivan boys had built and the long, snake-like rope ladder that led up to the top. The boys had told her no girls were allowed up there, but once in a while, they let Josie and Ella climb up and look out at the clearing. It was a scary climb up near the treetops, but Ella never wanted to say that for fear that James and Roddy would call her a baby and not let her up there.
Since it was getting colder, Ella decided to grab a few things before heading out to the woods. She ran in the house just as Mom was on the phone with Mrs. Ingstrom.
“No, I don’t have enough cupcakes Lucille!” I burnt the last batch! And how do they expect us mothers who work from home to hold down a job, clean the house, watch the kids and meet our deadlines all at once? It’s insane! Hold on a second…”
Mom was holding the phone away from her ear as her frantic attention turned toward Ella.
“Ella, where are you going?”
“Just outside Mom. It’s getting cold, I just gotta grab my sweater.”
“Ok, don’t go too far, I’m going to start dinner in a bit…”
Just as she said this, the ding, ding, ding, of the oven timer went off.
“Damn! I mean darn! These look burnt too! Mom said as she peered into the oven.
She turned back to her phone
“Lucille, I gotta go, this baking is driving me crazy! I know Lucille, that proposal I have due is going to be a bitch, especially if I can’t get these damn cupcakes ready!”
Ella whizzed by her mom in search of the sweater she had left on her closet floor. While there, she spotted her little backpack and decided to grab a few other items to make this walk into an adventure. She spotted the tiny flashlight that grandpa had given her, her favorite blue spotted blanket and Snuffy, the elephant. Always good to have company along.
As Ella passed through the living room on her way out to the back kitchen door, her eye caught on something shiny— the box of matches that Daddy kept near the firebox on the side of the hearth. Some pang in her stomach told her not to touch it but it looked so shiny. If she just happened to borrow it for a while, maybe she could give it a closer look. She hesitated for a moment, then grabbed it anyway and shoved it into her bag with the other items. Ella ran by mom, who was still engrossed in the maelstrom that was the kitchen which looked like a bakery with cupcakes, papers, bowls with goop spilling out of the sides and a faint haze of smokiness blurring her view. While Mom’s back was turned, Ella snatched a chocolate frosted cupcake on the way out the door. In all of this mess, Mom would never notice just onemissing.
She headed toward the path that lead right from the edge of the driveway where the asters Daddy planted last spring had grown straight up in long, serpentine vines. Ella knew “the path” well. She and Josie went there often with friends to play tag and kick-the-can out in the clearing surrounded by millions of trees. She knew the path by heart, every step of its maple leaf crusted footing, but she had never gone alone. No one had ever told Ella NOT to go by herself, but what did that matter? If she would be old enough to ride the yellow bus to the garden school next year, she was old enough to walk on the path alone.
Except this time, it felt different. The sounds of the bird’s caw caw caw echoing through the trees felt louder. Ella felt smaller as she looked up to the tops of the pines, which seemed to touch the hazy clouds overhead. She knew those clouds well also, the grey pallor of winter when the sun was not shining as brightly, and she knew soon she would be walking this path to the clearing to build snow forts and have snowball fights with all of the neighborhood kids.
A loud leaf blower kicked on in the distance and suddenly everything slowed, seemed far away. The walk seemed longer than Ella remembered, but she didn’t want to chicken out. She held her backpack a little tighter and kept going.
She eyed the treehouse at the edge of the clearing. Her original plan was to head up there and have her own sort of a picnic. But when she reached the base of it and looked up, she changed her mind. It looked a lot higher than she remembered; she didn’t like the thought of having to come down the snake-ladder alone. Josie usually helped her. No, Ella thought it would be better to head out to the old stump at the edge of the clearing— the stump that served as home base for countless games of kickball. There she could spread out her blanket and have a proper picnic with Snuffy.
She kept moving along the path and finally reached an open field where the tree-line ended and the straw grass swayed slightly. Once again, Ella felt the eerie silence she was unaccustomed to without all of the bodies of children running around. She tried not to think about it as she spread her blue spotted blanket on top of the stump and busied herself collecting acorns to make pretend soup. The world slowed down as she looked around. She never felt alone in the clearing before without the noise of the kids yelling and playing. The clearing seemed wider, as if it might swallow her up.
Ella shivered. She had put on her sweater by now. The temperature had dipped. A chill had set in. Then she remembered the matches.
The first thing Daddy always did when the temperature got chilly was to light a fire. Maybe she could make just a small one to keep warm. She always loved how they sat around in Uncle Teddy’s back yard when he made a roaring bonfire and cooked the fish that he had brought home from the lake (next year he said he would take Ella fishing), and the grown-ups told stories as they drank beer out of bottles and let the kids roast marshmallows on long sticks. Why hadn’t she thought to grab the bag of marshmallows from the pantry? She would have to remember that for next time.
Ella looked around and saw twigs for kindling everywhere! She gathered them along the ground and put them in a pile just like Daddy showed her. Then she broke up a few small branches that snapped in her hand. (Daddy said the dry ones snap easier, and he was right!) She continued snapping a few and then stacked them like the Lincoln Log set at home to make the “breathing box.” It didn’t look exactly like Daddy’s, but Ella was quite pleased with herself. She added a few of the larger branches on top, the ones she couldn’t snap, and when she stepped back, thought it looked pretty close to the fireplace arrangement Daddy made at home. She couldn’t wait to tell him later how she had followed his instructions exactly!
She took the matches out of her pouch but was unsure for a moment. She had never been able to make the striking motion herself, but she was determined to give it a try. As she shivered once more, she looked up and noticed the sky seemed darker than it was when she first got to the clearing. She would have to head home soon but wanted to first see if this would work.
She put the red tip against the scratchy side as Daddy had showed her and dragged it down, but nothing happened. She knew Daddy had said it had to go fast, but hers was more of a slow tug. She tried again, three, four, five times— and nothing. Her fingers were starting to get numb as the chilly air set in and she decided to try one last time. The flame caught her by surprise when it licked the edge of the red tip and burst to life. She instinctively held it away from her and bent down to touch the flame to the kindling. With a slow hiss, then a faint lick of snakelike smoke, then a quick “pop,” the kindling began to glow. The fire spread quickly. Ella jumped up and down – she had done it! All herself! Now the Sullivan boys would let her in the treehouse every time (Ella thought to herself that she had done something that even THEY hadn’t done)! Daddy had told her not to try this herself, but wouldn’t he be so proud of her when she told him about how well she had watched and listened and followed his instructions and it had worked?!
The fire grew, slowly at first, just enough to warm the chill from the November dusk out of Ella’s bones. Then it spread, ever so slightly, and began to jump from her neat pile to the adjacent dry maple leaves that had crunched under her feet on the walking path. Ella was so busy congratulating herself that she didn’t see the scene unfolding behind her. She had already decided to go back to the house to get those marshmallows after all. She turned in the direction of the path and ran towards home. How proud everyone would be when they heard about what she had done.
THE END
Cameo Drive 