Rachel Perry Kieffer kindly edited this short autobiographical story.

The Fire That Burned My Soul
By
Maryse Noël Roumain
(Born in Haiti; resides in New York)
Short story of 8 pages and 2,331 words

The Fire That Burned My Soul
(1)
We are at the end of May. Soon it will be summer, bringing with it hot weather.
I have not been able to stand up or walk on my own, and have spent the past two weeks at my sister Marie’s in Philadelphia. I am still shaken by what happened on Ash Avenue, where I live. It was the 5th of May. I don’t call to the incident by name to ward off bad luck.
I remember.
I am on the phone with my friend Ray, looking out my bedroom window. I watch thick black smoke rise up from nowhere to the 5th floor, my floor. From the window I see passersby on the street below, their eyes directed somewhere below me. Their faces are fascinated and horrified, and I realize it must be a fire.
Not yet panicked, I pick up the phone and dial, 9-1-1:
-There is a fire in my building.
-What is your address?
-I live on Ash Avenue. There are firefighters here.
-Just a moment. We will inquire into what happened.
(A moment of fuzzy silence)
-We are sorry, but the fire broke on the second floor. There is no way to reach you. You have to wait until the fire is extinguished.
The panic comes all at once, all over my body. I scream into the phone:
-You have to do something! You can’t let me burn alive!
I run back to the window, and crawl onto the fire escape. There are flames shooting out of 2B’s windows, and the spectators yell for me not to try.
I’m back in the apartment. There is no way out through the entrance door either. A thick smoke has invaded the corridors.
I am thinking. I am thinking of the fire, of the progressive fire, of the flames and smoke climbing up to me. Victims come to my mind. Joan of Arc, burned alive. She was burned in execution, for recovering her country from English domination, at only 19, tied to a cross, put on display and burned again. She’s at the bottom of the Seine now, where fire can’t touch her.
My mind jumps to lynching, neck lacing like in South African Apartheid; like in Haiti, near the end of the Duvalier regime. I see a man wearing a tire around his neck; I see it lit on fire. I see him die.
I talk to God. I have a conversation with God. It seems to me my time of death has not yet arrived, not like this. I am working for Haiti, I am working for the world, I am working for God; and my work is not over.
Finally, the flames are gone from 2B’s windows. I am not thinking straight, it seems. I take my sneakers off and climb back onto the fire escape. I race down the stairs, and when I reach the second level, that’s when my feet burn. I descend the remaining stairs, running and screaming:
I am burned! I am burned!

(2)
At the hospital, the doctor finally comes in at 2:00 in the morning. He examines my bleeding feet. I ask his name. He answers, “My name is Lu. You’ve got a second degree burn. A skin transplant will not be necessary. The burns will heal by themselves after two weeks.” Two days after, I was sent back home. From there, I left for my sister’s in Philadelphia.
My husband is visiting from Haiti. He had planned to stay in New York with family, but joins me in Philadelphia. He spends his time walking around the pool, smoking and thinking. We take photographs of him, posing alone, serious. At dinner, he enjoys Marie’s meals. She goes out of her way to be a generous hostess. He is served red snapper baked with onions, tomatoes and parsley and we drink good wine.
Later in the week, the two of us drive through the heart of the city. We pass the museum where Salvador Dali’s exhibit has just ended. We eat oyster and scallop crepes at a Belgian restaurant, and for dessert, we share a sweet lemon crepe.
Not far from Marie’s neighborhood, we see The Interpreter with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn at a movie theater. It’s a suspense film that takes place at the United Nations in New York, and Kidman is an interpreter who finds herself involved in a conspiracy to assassinate the African president of Motubo. African soldiers—mere children—fire machine guns at short range at the reporter who came to investigate the government’s crimes. A bomb blows up a bus in Brooklyn. The Interpreter, a must-see film.

(3)
It was when I entered the apartment upon my return from the hospital that I was able to see the damage.
The firemen had forced the entrance door to see if there was anyone inside, and to verify the amount of smoke. Now, the door would not close. I was to sleep in the apartment in such condition? My son and his girlfriend had scrubbed the blackened walls clean of soot, but the single bedroom smelled of bleach and smoke. I felt unsafe and scared. I had received no communication from the landlord about the cause of that fire. I worried about whether the problem was yet fixed.
I told myself the damage could have been worse: I did not lose all my belongings, or breathe fatal amounts of the toxic fumes like some of the other tenants. I noticed the two paintings my husband brought from Haiti on his last visit were spared: one is a Manès Descollines, three women bathe naked; the other is an abstract by Garibaldi, a lesser-known artist.
My sister and I had plans to attend a benefit dance in Jamaica Estates, but the soles of my feet are not quite mended.

(4)
Three weeks after the fire, I write a letter to my sister Marie to thank her for having granted me hospitality.
As for my husband, he flew back to Port-au-Prince, to more political chaos than before his departure. I read on the Net that there are several dead and many wounded among the police and the civil population. The violence began to prevent the elections from happening at the end of the year. I try not to think what will happen if they do not take place. Our country does not need a complete occupation, especially since we are already significantly embarked on a path of dependence. The political parties are struggling to organize conferences, forming alliances, strengthening their bases across the country’s ten departments. It seems there is finally a real willingness on their part to work toward a pluralistic society, political stability, and an economic program that will address the basic needs of the people.

(5)
I think about asking my nephew Jay to come to Ash Avenue and help me search for a new apartment on the Net.
Before the fire, I thought of decorating a little bit—colorful curtains in the living room, new tiles in the kitchen… I wanted to change the linoleum in the bathroom, to purchase a nicer bed frame. Goodbye calf, cow, pig, couvée, as the old fable tells. The fire burned my soul and fantasies. In any case, my salary at the library would not have allowed those extravagances.
I wonder if I can ever dance again to Gracia Delva or Coupé Cloué Haitian tunes. This morning I can at least listen to some good music. Strings plays through the speakers, then Cesaria Evora. Summer is not yet over, but later I will let Edy Brisseaux interpret Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas on his trumpet.
I tell myself I loved the apartment, but not the building. I may as well look for another place nearby; someplace better, where I could have new dreams of redecorating, inviting over friends and family for dinners, dancing in the living room to Mamina’s saxophone, or making paella.

(6)
Before he returned to the island, my husband and I sat in Tompkins Square Park, near my daughter’s in the East Village, to breathe in the warm air. I must walk to tell my feet to work for me again. The park is filled with people.
“I wonder if the people who come to the park, are all from the neighborhood. They seem disconnected as if they do not have rapport with one another,” one of us said.
“Are they like us people of passage?” asked the other.
At the other end of the park, I recognized African drumming being played by some Puerto Ricans. On the way back to our daughter’s, we stopped at a vegetable stand to purchase asparagus and red skin potatoes for dinner. At the wine merchant, we bought a bottle of red from South Africa. In the evening, I made myself a glass of iced chamomile tea to calm myself. I know my shock is temporary, but it remains with me, still. I tell my self I am not traumatized, the wounds on my feet are not as deep as the wounds of others.

(7)
It seems to have been an electrical problem that caused the fire on Ash Avenue. It has been a month, and the owner has sent no communication about the accident, about its possible permanent effects on the building’s structure or safety. We tenants are no better. It crosses my mind: we have not even held some sort of meeting to brainstorm a strategy for repairs.
Yet we know the damage is significant—we are damaged. According to the firefighters, a handful of people were taken to the hospital for breathing smoke; a kid broke his arm jumping from the fourth floor; and my feet were burned going down the fire escape.
As for the building, the second and third floors are for the most part burned. Many of the apartment doors were doors forced open, electrical wires lay exposed in the sooty, black corridors, and everywhere the smell of smoke is overwhelming.
I meet my neighbor Lisa, a Puerto Rican woman, going down the stairs. She tells me the fire was due to an electrical problem inherent to the building. “My children,” she said, “are traumatized. They’re staying with their grandmother’s until we can get out of here.” She is looking for a new apartment. There are many people who want to leave the building.
Maybe she is being dramatic, but standing there with her in the black corridor, unable to lean casually against the wall without ruining my blouse, I decide I can no longer live on Ash Avenue.

My daughter decides to come to the rescue. We have always dreamed of living together in a brownstone in Brooklyn.
“We could have garden space at the rear and on the roof.”
“We could have a pool for the kids, and we’d have family cookouts and fruit cocktails or iced tea.”
“Who knows,” she adds, “it might have decorative fireplaces and plenty of high windows to let the sunlight in.”
And I say, “Next summer we’ll go to concerts at Prospect Park, they’ll have Tabou Combo, or maybe Boukman Eksperyans. Who knows?”

(8)
Two months have passed; it is now July. I’m in my new apartment on Beech Avenue. My daughter and I take great pleasure in decorating it. We found a large antique mirror with a carved wooden frame, which we place above the sofa bed in the living room. We also bought some cheap shelves where we’ll put books and a few trinkets. I hang my Manès Descollines’ painting, the Garibaldi, the one my friend Ray painted after the fire, and a collage my brother made, and a Georgia O’Keefe poster. I still have to buy frames for family photos.
The building on Beech Avenue is in any case in better shape than the one on Ash Avenue. I tell myself I can invite friends and family over my home for dinner and they will not be afraid to take the elevator.

(9)
At the local library, I meet my new colleagues: Jessica, Christina and Da Xin. Mara I knew from the interview. There are two more ladies—a Korean and a Puerto Rican—but I haven’t yet learned their names.
My department is the Center for English as a Second Language. My degree in developmental psychology focused on children and bilingualism uses psychology, language development and learning. I am in familiar territory. It is not well paid, but it is not hard work. My feet are still sore but I manage. In my free time I will pick up a book from the shelves and read.
I wonder if their collection of French Literature on the third floor has Haitian books. I wander up the stairs on my break, to the international collection. They have no books on Haiti except for Edwidge Danticat in the literature section. I borrow In Search of a Homeland, a biography of the Martiniquian writer Aimé Césaire written by Georges Ngal. He reports that Césaire had written a book about Toussaint Louverture and Henri Christophe, the leaders of our independence. I read that he was a part of the Surrealist school of the Negritude movement. His influences are Rimbaud, Lautréamont, Aragon, Breton…
I sit down in among the stacks of books. Ngal writes, “his writing is punctuated as jazz and tam tam. However, the main source of Césaire is the collective experience of the Negro in time and space – history and Diaspora – the concrete situation of the Negro in Martinique, the lynching of the Mississippi, the stalking of slaves in the savannas and forests of Africa.”

I think of the writers of the Negritude movement— Senghor, Césaire, Damas and so on. Since I am writing about the fire on Ash Avenue, I cannot help but wonder if long we will be condemned to write literature on the plight of the black people and their struggle for liberation.

2005 & 2011