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This Cake is for the Party

Page 18

by Sarah Selecky


  Robin’s head was black and tufted. Her clothes were burning. I got her outside. I covered her with my jacket and tried to hold her, patting her down like I was drying her after a bath. She screamed at me as I did this. Her face looked strange and bare and I realized it was because her eyebrows had burned off. Her eyelashes. Her face was a smoking burn and I thought, If I can just get her body to stop smoking, she’ll be okay. I didn’t see any other burns. I thought, It’s just her hair. There were black, wiry strands of it left on her face from where it singed up as she leaned over the flames. More ash than hair. Her cheekbones were bleeding and there were places where her skin had blackened. I need a telephone, I thought. I need to call the ambulance. The fire department.

  The telephone in the studio, it’s right there. I can still reach it. I turn around to see if I can reach it. The flames don’t even seem that big. The fire is still confined to the back, in the wicking station. And I see them all, lined up in rows: one thousand multicoloured Buddhas, smiling at me in enlightenment, their heads burning off.

 

 

 


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