He ran up the basement stairs and shouted.
"Get out! Get out! The house is on fire!"
The panic in my mother's voice was unmistakable to my 9-year-old self. I jumped up from the kitchen table where I had been playing with plastic trolls. She told me to take my youngest brother, who was 3, to the neighbors. I ran, dragging my brother behind me. I opened the back door of the neighbor's house and burst into her kitchen.
"Our house is on fire!"
I abandoned my brother and ran across the driveway to our house. The back door was still wide open. My mother told me to stay outside. But I could see her standing in the kitchen, the phone pressed to one ear, on hold for the fire department.
The fire crackled. My mother dropped the receiver. I imagined the flames racing up the basement stairs and begged her to leave. Instead, she picked up the phone again and reconnected with a calm, eerie, and forced operator.
"I'm calling from the neighbor's house," I shouted.
Before the rotary dial could move from O to the next number, she broke down and ran out the door. It sounded as if I was calm in the face of crisis. I wasn't. I cried. I mean hysterical and frantic…