18 - Glass like jewels

 

I get down my knees to pick up the pieces of glass and poppa yells at me, telling me not to touch them, not because I might cut myself, but for some other reason I do not understand.

People stare at us and point, and poppa cries out loud when he sees I wear no yellow badge.

“What is wrong with you?” he yells. “Don’t you know you clan never leave the house without your badge?”

I tell him the fire ate it – just as it ate our house when the men with the torches came, when they smashed the glass and told us we are not welcome here any more – some of them people poppa knows from when he cut their hair or shined their shoes, men who used to admire him, and pay him for his work.

Poppa doesn’t know what to say when I tell him that, all of us looking at the ruins of our home, all we own charred and devoured over the long night.

No one came to put the fire out and no one would let us try, so we just watched with nothing left,  to watch the curl of smoldering smoke and the faint glow of red still alive in the ashes.

And, of course, the glass that looks like jewels.
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