The Story of Katia Garcia
by Raynelda Calderon
It was around three in the morning. They were sound sleeping, her mother Juana, her sister Estela, her brother Nicolas, and Katia. Suddenly, someone was pounding on the door. Bang, bang, bang! “It’s on fire! It’s on fire!” someone was shouting. “Teacher, get up. Asuncion’s house is on fire”! Shouted the voice again, urging her mother to get up and open the door.
Asuncion’s house was next to theirs. Separated by a few feet, the Garcia family could hear anything that was going on in her house as the Asuncion family could hear them. In the small towns of the Dominican Republic, the houses are scarcely ten feet apart each other. Monte Bonito was not different. Wooden houses adorned the small town and candles light illuminated the multi-color homes. The luxury of electricity had not reached the town yet, but an old radio could be heard here and there playing old songs powered by batteries.
Katia was only 10-year-old when the fire occurred. Although it has been more than 50 years, that night stayed in her memory forever. The fire lighted up the night like a big bonfire on the beach. People spoke of the fire for years, not only because it took about five years for Asuncion to build a new house, but because there never had been another fire ever since.
Katia smiles as she recalls the events of that night. She used to have nightmares afterwards . . . Today, the fire dances in her memory as an old black and white movie.
They all rushed outside and a huge red flame welcomed them into the darkness. Like every other night, the town had no electricity. The streets were dark but the flames coming from the burning house lit the whole block. Men were rushing with buckets of water trying to quench the fire. The closest town with a firefighter unit was two hours away; if they didn’t do something the whole block could burn down by the time they arrived.
The flames made weird figures in the sky. The smoke was dense and it was becoming difficult to breath. “The teacher’s house is catching fire too!” said one of the men combating the fire. Katia saw how the wooden wall of her house, the side that faced Asuncion’s house, began to drip a brown sticky thing that looked like jelly. The wood, painted in green, started turning brownish as the flames ate the wall away.
All the attention shifted over the other house now. People started rushing in and out carrying out their furniture. “My doll!” Screamed Katia as she tried to go inside to get it. Her mother stopped her and handed over her little sister for her to hold.
In a town where nothing ever happened, this was some night. All the men in town gathered with buckets and any available utensil to carry water. They splashed her house’s side wall in an attempt to rescue it from the claws of the fire. They had forgotten about the other house; it was too late to do anything for it now.
As Katia started crying taken by the thought that her house would burn down, she heard the distant wail of a siren. “Finally, the firefighters were coming! Maybe my house would be saved after all.”
Nurys, one of Katia’s aunts, took her and her sister away and she couldn’t see anything else. They went to sleep over her house. The next day, Katia woke up very early and went to see what had remained of her house. To her relieve, the house was still standing, only the wall facing the flames had been affected, but Asuncion’s house was now an empty field. Nothing had been saved, not even a wall was standing. The spot where the house used to be was empty, as if a house had never been built there. Only ashes, blown by the early morning wind had life. It was strange not seeing the house there. It never occurred to her that a fire could ever happen in town.
She went inside her house to start fixing things up, but even inside she could feel the emptiness of what used to be her neighbor’s house. Katia went to the wall that faced where Asuncion’s house used to be but she couldn’t hear anyone speaking anymore. Only the wind hitting the house, now unprotected, seemed to be whispering it’s gone…
U S Legacies Magazine July 2003
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