The World Is on Fire So You Have to Protect Yourself by Besty Finesilver Haberl

The world is on fire so you have to protect yourself. The good news is that there are easy ways to do so.

First, be a man. You’re more likely to avoid the flames that way.

If you’re not a man, the next step is to always be alone. Other people spread the fire.

The best way to avoid people is to never leave your house.

Stay inside and look out your window. You see a woman going past on the sidewalk. She is moving quickly, like she wants to run while still appearing as if she’s walking. It’s snowing, even though it’s sunny and only October. She leaves a trail of red, hot embers instead of footsteps in the snow. She keeps glancing over her shoulder.

Behind her, a man follows, walking casually. His hands are in his pockets. He kicks her embers out of the way as he walks, hardly even noticing that he’s doing so.

Turn away from the window and don’t think about why she’s on fire. Women who think about the fire end up feeling a slow burn in the pit of their stomachs. It never ends, and over time the heat seeps into their bones and turns their skeletons to charcoal. They ache whenever they move.

Don’t watch the news. Don’t read the news. Avoid social media. Otherwise, here’s what will happen:

You’ll see a video of a middle-aged woman with glasses pushing blonde hair out of her face. She’s in a Senate hearing room. She’s facing a row of men and telling them about being held down on a bed when she was a teenager. She doesn’t remember the where or the when, exactly, but she knows she knows she knows what happened. You can see her heart beating inside of her chest and your heart beats at the same time. You look at her face and you know that since that day she has felt the fire inside of her, in the back of her eye sockets and underneath her fingernails, in places she never thought she could even feel heat.

Behind the men in the room, the wall is covered with heavy wood. You wonder how it’s possible that the wood hasn’t burst into open flames, that the room is still there, nothing has turned to ash. But remember: they are men. They are there to protect that space, that wooden wall. Their bodies are like cold water, a barrier for the fire.

Turn off the television or put your computer to sleep or shove your phone inside your pocket or close the newspaper and recycle it.

Better yet, throw everything away.

Lock your doors and breathe a sigh of relief when you see they are already locked.

Your daughter is taking a nap. She is just a little girl. Make yourself a cup of coffee and peek in at her. Sit on the floor in the dimly lit room and breathe in the same air that she’s breathing.

But it’s too late. Your hands, which are wrapped tightly around your coffee mug, are starting to glow from the heat inside your fingertips. Tell yourself it’s just warmth from the hot coffee. But you know that’s not true at all, that it’s been in your blood for a long time.

You have your own story. It’s not all that different from the story you just heard on the news.

Tell yourself it’s not all that different. Tell yourself everyone has a story like that, the woman on the sidewalk, the woman on the TV, your mother, your first-grade teacher, the actress from that show you watched in high school. Tell yourself it’s just something that happened a long time ago. Tell yourself all the ways that you don’t even think about it anymore.

Your daughter wakes up from her nap. Pick her up and don’t worry about burning her. Only you can feel the heat in your hands. She likes to snuggle on your shoulder as she settles into wakefulness. She’s so warm and calm. Carry her to the kitchen and open the fridge. Pour her a glass of milk and realize you can remember his first name, but not his last.

Give your daughter a cup of Goldfish crackers. Slice an apple for her. Listen to the satisfying crunch of the knife cutting through the fruit and remember it was April 25, at a friend’s apartment, and you were twenty years old.

Watch your daughter become enchanted by the snowflakes collecting in the grass. She presses the palms of her hands to the window and asks to go outside.

Since you’re already on fire, you might as well leave the house. Your daughter is just a child. It’s not fair to keep her away from the world just because it’s on fire.

Outside, the snowflakes are soft and thick. They swirl around your daughter’s feet with each gust of wind, and you remember that you felt frozen, on April 25, but you cannot remember if you said no, or nothing, or moved at all.

Your cheeks and ears feel flushed and hot and you wonder if someone is watching the two of you. Take off your jacket and put your daughter in the stroller.

If you decide to leave your house, it’s best to always be moving.

You pass a church with a small playground. It’s empty. Your daughter asks to play but you say no, not today. You push her stroller and the wind spins the rusty merry-go-round. Even when you are past the park, you can hear the metallic scrape of the merry-go-round as it spins and spins and spins.

Your daughter asks if she can walk and you say yes. She likes stamping her feet in the light dusting of snow. She runs a little ways ahead of you. Remind her not to go too far away. The sidewalk stretches ahead seemingly forever and you start listing all the things you could have done differently that night to avoid being on fire: not been a woman, not left the house, not left the house at night, not left the house alone, not had friends, not flirted, not been frozen still and quiet when you should have yelled and kicked and screamed.

But remember: the whole damn world is on fire. It’s not just you.

The sun is starting to set and the sky glows orange and yellow through the gray clouds. Your daughter is silhouetted darkly against the light and you realize, with horror, that the flames are already dancing around her toes. The colors are the same as the sunset.

But watch what she does. She skips right through them.

You jog a few steps to catch up with her. She stops and throws her head back, opens her mouth to catch snowflakes on her tongue. You look up at the sky with her. The wind is cold on your face like a slap, but you refuse to close your eyes. You imagine what the sky looks like on the other side of the dense clouds. It must be cool and clear as it bends toward the distant horizon.

Keep thinking about that horizon, how the sky curves to meet it, how the setting sun dips below it every day without fail. If you think about the horizon, you won’t think about your daughter being a woman in this place, and how for a woman in this place, the world is on fire and there is no way to protect yourself.


Betsy Finesilver Haberl writes fiction and nonfiction. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University. She is also a curator for Sunday Salon Chicago, one of the city’s longest-running literary reading series. She was born and raised in northeastern Wisconsin, but now lives in Evanston, Illinois, with her family.


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