Dump Trucks and Lucky Ducks

The couch nearly swallowed my little eight-year-old body in the firehouse on Boylston Street. My sister gazed out the window beside me watching colorful dots scurry around below, her homework resting blank in her lap. I leaned forward to assess the lucky ducks that sat on the center table. They were little rubber toys that my parents bought me for little accomplishments. One for my dance recital. One for the A on my math test. It was only the most elite of my collection since Mom said I couldn’t bring them all: complete with the princess one and police and three dogs. They were deep in secret spy discussion, very exclusive, oblivious to the human commotion around them.

In the room around me, adults were deep in conversation. So crammed they were nearly pressed against each other trying not to spill the drinks in their hands as they passed. The excitement had settled like dust on the shelves after we had all huddled around the TV for a brief minute. Now it was all muffled celebrations and eagerness to see our friends and families.

But in the midst of secret spy business and adult discussions, there was a noise, sudden but gone in a second, like a pin in a balloon. My sister and I scrambled to the window, leaning off the arm of the couch. The scene below was nothing but people cheering and people running. Their shouts blended together and floated as one to our ears.

“Maybe a dump truck?” I shrugged.

“Probably,” my sister, who is almost two years older, replied. Her eyes surveyed the faces of the adults in the room, but seeing nothing had changed, sighed, and returned her focus to the ducks. Her leg bounced up and down as I repositioned them on the table.

It was only destiny that the old firehouse speakers would blare to life. Words were stuttered from the walls that I could not make out, but whatever they were made every adult in the room stop and fall silent. My sister grabbed my hand as if it was going to disappear.

We were rushed outside.

Somehow we ended up on the sidewalk, walking fast. Far away from the ducks. Far away from secret spy business. Far away from the sound of the dump truck.

The air was thick and dark, the sky turning pale out of fear. The wind nipped my cheeks and sent shivers down my spine. My body ached for trying to keep up and my eyes darted around the scene as I tried to understand. Big words were shouted from the windows of firetrucks. Car horns argued. Families cried. The entire city sat on my shoulders. The heavy hearts of Boston weighing in my every step. I didn’t understand the pain I saw and yet it twisted my very own heart into knots over and over again. Heat rose to my cheeks and the emotion spilled into my eyes. I tried to keep it back. Tried to be strong. My Uncle held my hand, a phone in his other. Don’t cry. Everyone is okay.

But even that small eight-year-old girl inside me knew everyone was not fine. It wasn’t the edge in my uncle’s voice that told me, or the effort in my sister’s eyes as she tried to be brave, or the dark clouds that had settled behind us. It was the stupid lucky ducks that still sat on the firehouse table. It was the thought that only minutes ago that had been my whole world. And now, I was living in a much darker, duckless world, where dump trucks weren’t just dump trucks. How could anybody be okay?

And even that afternoon, when I melted in my parents’ arms, felt their warm cheeks against mine, and I saw the love in their eyes, I couldn’t sit behind that window again thinking loud sounds were merely dump trucks. Thinking that the world outside was a fairytale full of ducks. I held on to everything I loved a little tighter, afraid it would slip away too. Afraid another piece of me would burn the next day. I stood outside in the cold harsh wind as a city was swallowed by smoke, to face a world I had never known before.