I have a longstanding odd history with fire. In the third grade, I remember opening up one of those black history books and coming face to page with the infamous photo of the black man in the south barbecued on a pit while his Klan onlookers stood around grinning like moonshine fiends. Easily identifiable were his scars from being beaten. His face was contorted in agony.  His skin crispy and succumbing to the disaster around him. In third grade, even now sometimes, whatever happens during the day, usually ended up in my dreams at night. I could swear on all that I hold sacred that my soul was fighting something evil that wanted me in that fire. I tossed and turned, trying to wake up to the point were my chest ached and I almost couldn’t breathe. When I finally woke up with a big gasp, safely tucked away in my butter yellow room, stuffed animals surrounding me, I knew I’d won something but I wasn’t sure what completely. I checked my body for burn marks and figured I was okay.

A few weeks later, I’d have one of those dreams that was so complex and ridiculous that I wrote it down in my diary. Since that was “mfoiaupiofpa” years ago, I don’t exactly still have that diary (but the pack rat I am at least salvaged a report card or two), but I remember that dream as clear as if I had it last night. There was an abandoned building. There were desert people who could only go to there final resting place if they caught on fire. There were children stuck in the abandoned building. There was me to save everyone. I think of it as “Mad Max” meets that civil rights photo. That dream has never left me.

Later on that year, one of my Girl Scout troop members, Dawn, was killed in a fire.  My troop was part of Bethel AME in Detroit so already we had a lot of religious reside ensconced in our meetings.  Most of the girls were the daughters of long time church members. I just went because I lived around the corner. My mother and I went to Sunday church service maybe once every other year. For my mom, she spent her whole life going to church so by the time she was grown with a baby girl on her own, she was not having it anymore. My grandpa used to pay me to go to church. “Ladybird, here’s three dollars. Half in the collection plate, half in your pocket.” I went with fervor. Not only did I get $1.50 but my grandma would pass me half sticks of Juicy Fruit.  But that was not the case by the time Dawn died. We weren’t in Cleveland anymore by then. My grandpa had long since been murdered. And I was not the least bit comfortable going to funerals after having gotten lost in the parlor at my grandpa’s funeral. But I went to Dawn’s by myself, dressing in the only good dress I really had and walking around the corner with my little patent leather pocket book. I sat with a few of my troop members and listened to Dawn’s family wail and scream (awfully unusual for an AME church but given the circumstances, completely understandable). The personable pastor (who I swear was one of the twins from the group The Whispers) delivered a somber but spiritually uplifting sermon that did it’s best to make us all forget that a little girl died in a fire. There was a picture of Dawn above her casket since she was young but the fire didn’t wouldn’t let us see her ever again. She was oval and full like an Easter egg, not yet hitting puberty where everything settles in its appropriate places. She had a short Jheri Curl and toffee brown skin. In her picture, she was happy.

I was good until we had to go up to the casket, pay our respect to her and then hit family row. Her mother’s hand grabbed mine tight. It was soaked to the bone with tears and snot. When I took my hand away, I remember the blood pulsating under the skin, trying to come back from her grip.

After the funeral, out in the sunny beautiful Detroit afternoon (a sensory experience not many people will be blessed to experience or remember) us troop girls in various sizes and ages, mulled around the church, not wanting to go home but definitely not wanting to go back into the church where all the adults were old enough to be stunned about a little girl’s death. Back then I was usually the youngest, the most impressionable, the most silent, the most curious and probably the one most likely to follow the older girls. This was always a good and bad thing. On the good side, I got to be cool, got to hear closer to adult age things than I was used to, had the most adventures than the other girls my age. On the bad side, I got to be cool, got to hear closer to adult age things than I was used to and had the most adventures than the other girls my age.  One of the older girls, Gabrielle, was very maturely developed thirteen year old (this was back when I thought thirteen was practically adult) with a father who worked around the clock to keep her away from the boys in our neighborhood since she had the biggest chest, the goofiest personality and the prettiest face. Her father instantly thought these things were a recipe for a grandchild he was not ready for. Plus Gabrielle’s mother had died so it was just him vs. the cunning boys of Kirby Street. Though Gabrielle was nice and fun, she also lied a lot. I suppose when you’re a kid, it’s called having a healthy imagination or having an active fantasy life. But she was getting older and it was called flat out lying by then. As I went through my patent pocketbook for gum, she said to me, “You know, Dawn told me before she died that you were her best friend.”

This was impossible and struck me with great stress and fear. One, I had no idea where Dawn lived or what her phone number was and back then, that’s how you had a best friend. You were either over their house or on their phone. But I was neither. And, instead of thinking of this as one of Gabrielle’s lies (that being my first thought was a process that would take some time and by then, her father had finally moved her away), I was thinking what a rotten friend I’d been to let her die in the fire. What kind of best friend was I that Dawn couldn’t call me to get out? Immediately I ran through the scenarios of how I could’ve missed Dawn being my best friend. Sure there was the time we went camping and made fun of our troop leader’s sloppy joes (they put vegetables in them like proper church ladies would). There was the time we walked through the camp carefully together so we wouldn’t disturb the witch, rumored to be living in the pond underneath the bridge (especially since she liked to each children). But those were very few incidents that I know were isolated. I spent way more time with Gabrielle and Pip (the other thirteen year old girl who lived next door to me) than Dawn.

I accepted my responsibility and felt maybe Dawn would forgive me later now that she was in heaven. I was sure my grandpa, who was up there already, would sort her out.  Plus, if you died in a fire, like the man in the book, you probably had other things to sort through than who your best friend was.

I thought of all of this today as we experience raging fires here in LA. There is smoke in the sky and, in some parts of the city, you can see the flames dance above the mountains. There are people being evacuated and some who are holding their ground. Today we heard about two firefighters who lost their lives as their car careened off of a cliff as they were on their way to find an escape route for some safety trained prisoners and other fire team members. I wonder if Dawn or the man in the picture are sent down from wherever to be spirits to guide these kinds of deaths. If they are part of some supernatural squadron of life savers, I would feel better. That would me that they did die for something I could locate in the rational part of my brain and not just the fantastical part.