Pieces of Untold Stories

Taken

These are the things we lost in the fire: memories, hope, safety. It wasn't my little brother's toy cars or my grandmother's jewelry that my mother cried over. It was the things you couldn't see. My childhood went up in smoke as our house was being torn down by the flames. And I could never get that back. Our lives were stolen from us that day. Our hopes and dreams destroyed. The fire left nothing behind in the rubble that was once our house. It even took my father from us.

I was suddenly forced into the role of man of the house. Except, we didn't have a house. We didn't have anything. We barely had each other. I didn't want to be the man. The leader. I didn't ask to be, but that's what the fire made me to be. I didn't know what that meant or how to do it. I only knew that was the role I was assigned.

We were moved to some sort of shelter. Mother said it was temporary. We weren't the only ones there. A lot of different looking people were there, but she told my brother and I not to talk to any of them.

My mother quickly became a fragile little thing. She had always had a slender build, but she became even smaller after the fire took her home and her husband. She could hardly do anything on her own.

My brother was six then. Old enough to take care of himself. I didn't know how to be a father. I didn't even know how to be a brother. Once he came to me crying, and I told him to suck it up and be a man, though I was still trying to figure out what that meant for myself.

It wasn't long after that before mother's accident. My brother told me she was sleeping. She never woke up. The doctors said she must have fainted and hit her head on something when she fell, but I always suspected she wasn't alone when she fell.

Then some men in uniforms came for us. They put us in the back of their car and took us to a new home. At least, that's what they told us. They lied. That was no home. It was a house, but it was no home. It was filled with dozens of other kids who looked like the people our mother told us not to talk to, so we didn't talk to them.

Some older lady gave us a room and brought us food, if you could call it food. She brought two plates with something brown and a few green things that had no form. It looked more like table scraps from the month before. What ever was left over after the other kids had their share.

No one talked to us, and we didn't talk to them. We were the last in to be fed, and we watched as every kid got bigger while we got smaller. One day my brother asked me if we were going to be so small that we'd go to sleep like mother did. I told him to be quite and eat his food. And that was how it went day after day.That didn't change for a long time. I have no idea how long we were locked inside that place they called a home, before they took him.

They took my little brother. A man with a well trimmed beard, ironed pants, and tie with a woman on his arm who looked like she had just stepped out of a salon. I'll never forget the day they came in that house, pointed to my brother, shook the old lady's hand, and took my brother. I never saw him again.

Many more days, and maybe even years, passed before the old lady finally let me out. One day, she unlocked the door, opened it wide, and told me I could leave. I ran out to breath in the fresh air, and she slammed the door shut behind me. I turned around to go back in, but the door was locked. I yelled for the old lady until my voice stopped working. She never came. I was locked out of the only house I'd known since the fire.

I walked away from that house that day as an adult. I started out as a kid forced to be the man of the family, my mother went to sleep, and my brother was taken. I was leaving that place with no where to go, but I didn't let that stop me. My home was taken from me by a fire, but I was still going to find a house of my own. I didn't know how, but I was going to make that happen. I knew that once I found a house, I would set out to get my brother back.

That was sixteen years ago.

I've been looking for him ever since.