First House On The Left (A Personal Narrative)

What is the sound of burnt flesh cooling? With my head two feet deep in the cool water of a baby pool, I can hear it: The slow hiss of my scalded face receiving temporary relief.

It’s summer in Farmington Hills, Michigan. I’m six years old and enjoying the last sunny weeks of August. First grade starts soon. My best friend lives across the street from me, a few houses down. Her name is Lindsay. I met her before the word “school” even meant anything to me. She was there when I boarded a school bus for the first time. My parents were still married then and Lindsay’s dad was still alive. They watched and waved as we took our first big step away from home.

I’m playing with Lindsay at her house when she says, “Ryan is having a small pool party. You should ask your dad if you can go. I’m going.” Ryan is a boy we know from school who lives down our street. My house is the last one on the right; he lives in the first house on the left. Eager to swim, I run home to ask permission.

My mother is at work. My father is physically handicapped—unable to work—so he stays at home with me. I run up the crumbling steps of our gravel porch, out of breath and panting, and swing open the screen door. My father is in the kitchen. I quickly blurt out, “Ryan’s having a pool party and Lindsay and I are invited and he lives right down the street and his mom will be there” (my parents are more likely to give permission if there is parental guidance) “and I really want to swim so can I go?”

Pauses to process my words. Thinks. “I should call Mom, first,” he says. “See what she says about it.” I’m dying to go now, though. I explain that it’s not a big deal, Mom’s probably busy. Don’t call her. Please? I begin to pout. “Please can I go. Please?” I beg. Fallen victim to my begging and whimpering, he reluctantly says that I can go. A decision that he will always regret.

I quickly change into my neon green swim trunks. Lindsay’s waiting. I deliver the good news (“He said yes!”) and we run down to Ryan’s house together. Ryan is standing near the inflatable pool with his mother. She’s holding a garden hose to fill it. Ryan’s sister is also there, barefoot. She stands to the side. Ryan’s mother hands him the hose. “Don’t spray it,” she says, and walks inside the house.

It started years ago. Incorrectly installed plumbing. Years before Ryan’s family even moved into the house. Maybe the person was having a bad day. He could have been in a rush. Made a careless mistake. But when the hot water knob in the shower was turned all the way up, ice cold water would come out, and vice versa. It was like that throughout the entire house. Every faucet. Even the water running outside. The water running through the garden house. And right now, the cold water knob was turned all the way up.

She left him there with a hose of boiling hot water, and us.

He aimed the hose and sprayed. Probably because she told him not to. Lindsay was hit first. The stream of burning water grazed the top of her head. Reunited ten years later, she would show me the scar on her scalp. She’d tell me how thankful she was that she was only hit there, able to run away. It could have been worse for her. She could have been me. His main target. Standing there. Unable to move.

I don’t remember if I screamed. The pain was so unexpected, so shocking, that I probably couldn’t have. It was as if I had stuck my head in a lit fireplace. I didn’t have a chance to be angry. I ran until I got to Lindsay’s house. There was a tiny children’s pool in her front lawn. I dunked my head in before running back home and showing Dad my scorched, red face.

Years of hospital trips and lawsuits followed, most of which I can’t remember. After massive amounts of cream applied to my face three times daily, my second- and third-degree burns finally faded.

Ryan and I lived on opposite ends of the street, literally as well as figuratively. He was a bully at school. He didn’t follow his parents’ rules. Had a knack for being unnecessarily rude. But he wasn’t the one to get burned.

I followed rules. Obeyed my parents. Was a good student. My father let me go because he knew Ryan’s mom would be present. There was an assumed level of trust due simply to the label of “parent”. But she left her six-year-old son with a hose of hot water and didn’t expect him to playfully spray his friends. We were the good, trusting, optimistic family. We weren’t the ones behind the hose.

And the difference between us was like hot and cold.