By: Ya'el McLoud
Sep. 4, 2022
The lights of the fire trucks were flashing in front of me. My sister and friends were talking to the police and the 11 years that I had lived were flashing by me because I absolutely knew my mother was going to kill me.
Four months ago, my mother moved me and my two sisters to a very nice apartment complex that was marked by trees that bloomed with white flowers and were planted everywhere. There was a small forest with a creek behind it as well. But my family unit was missing one person, my father, my sister and I’s primary caretaker, my mother worked as a nurse my entire childhood and was rarely home.
He was the one that dressed us and fed us, made sure our homework was done, and put us to bed at night. He planned our birthday parties and comforted us when we woke up from nightmares or were sick. But he was also the source of many of our nightmares; as an alcoholic with severe PTSD, he was the one who would verbally, emotionally, and yes sometimes physically assault us.
When my mother kicked him out and stopped all contact with him, we were both relieved and left with a huge hole in our lives. With no caretaker in place, my mother moved us from our rural country home in Liberty, North Carolina to Greensboro, North Carolina near some of my adult cousins who could help look out for us.
It will come as no surprise that my sisters and I with our newfound emotional trauma and limited adult oversight started acting out. We smoked cigarettes with other kids, got into fistfights, snuck out at night, and generally behaved like little cretins. Committing arson, however, was pretty bad even by our new standards.
My friend, Elijah, slowly turned and pointed at me leading the gaze of the police officer who was interviewing him right to me. Guilt and pure terror were etched into his face. The police officer met my eyes and beckoned me over to him. It felt like my legs were moving through cement as I made my way the few short yards to the officer. The police officer leaned down and in a calm and gentle voice asked me if I was the one who built the fire pit.
Relief coursed through me, of course, I was the one who built that rather impressive fire pit behind the apartments but that in my mind had very little to do with the setting of the fire. He asked if I knew that what I had done was illegal since it was not done with any permission and not to the standards of fire regulations in place. Of course, I did not know that, but I was still not the one who had set the fire and let it burn out of control. He looked at me and informed me that because it was my fire pit it was my responsibility as was the blame for the fire that had burned so hotly that it had threatened not only the forest behind the apartments but the apartments themselves.
I was completely numb. This was completely unfair; how was it my fault that some stupid boys had let the fire burn out of control? How much trouble was I going to be in? Was I going to end up in prison? Foster care? Was my mother going to kill me? But none of that ended up happening. My cousin was a U.S. Marshall and used to work with the Greensboro police department, so when my older sister called him to tell him we were in a lot of trouble he came to handle it for us. He talked to his old friends explained what was going on and eventually got us out of trouble with the law.
But he could not save us from the debilitating disappointment of our mother. He certainly could not save us from being evicted the very next day. Or from the simple fact that our family was very much broken and in need of some desperate help. He could not save us from the pain and trauma that would carry with all of us through our days and nights. He did save me from much worse consequences that would have hurt rather than helped me through one of the most difficult transitions in my life, and for that, I will forever be thankful.
Komen