I remember scrambled eggs. Hard-boiled eggs. Mom serving soft cooked eggs in the ruffled glass bowl, salt specks dotting the runny yolk.

A stuffed chicken sat on the shelf below the kitchen counter alongside the pale green walls, the blue speckled Formica, and faux red brick linoleum. After the fire black smoke marks bloomed around the burned-out stove and our new floors were cream colored. They smelled of chemicals and cardboard boxes. Still, I could not forget the stench of smoke, the flashing ambulance lights, how they rolled my parents away on stretchers even though their only injuries were burns on their faces and hands.

My sister Jenny's hamster, Scarlet, died two weeks later. Grandpa had died earlier that summer and the night of the fire, Grandma showed up with a plastic cap tied over her Velcro hair rollers. Her hands trembled her face as the fireman explained what had happened.

I had been reading a paperback book snuck from my mother's bookshelf. I flipped pages searching for words like breast, buttocks, kiss, embrace—I had an uncanny knack for finding sex scenes and once I did, I read them over and over again.

I remember my bedroom with its peach painted walls and twin bed with matching reversible comforter. Beside this was a white desk and braided rug; a floor-length mirror hung from the back of the door. Each day I'd undress and stand there with ankle bones touching, making sure the tops of my inner thighs did not meet, and then I'd stretch out onto my back on the rug, lift my head and feet off the floor and scissor my legs in and out for a count of one hundred. Some days I did this routine more than once.

In the summer I slept with an open window and listened to the traffic on Torrence Avenue, the chirp of crickets, and, closer, the rush of water as Mom washed dishes, the soles of her slippers slapping her heels as she moved from one side of the kitchen to the other.

We slept over at Grandma's the night of the fire; only I could not sleep. I kept going over the steps in my mind. I had been reading on my bed when I heard Dad yell, "Judy!" followed by a loud blast. I ran into the kitchen and saw a wall of flame coming from the stove. Mom sat stunned on the floor and Dad leaned toward the wood cabinet beneath the stove, his hands in the fire. I ran to the bathroom and filled a paper cup with water, sped back to the kitchen and stood there. I should have done more.

Weekends I ran an extension cord from the front door of the house out onto the porch so I could play tapes of Madonna and Foreigner and Duran Duran while practicing gymnastics on the lawn. There was more room in the backyard, but the neighbor boys couldn't see me from that spot.

Fried bologna, peanut butter with grape jelly, hot dogs in steamed buns. In elementary school Mom made meatloaf sandwiches for lunch and taped packets of ketchup from McDonalds to the waxed paper. The Holly Hobbie on my first lunchbox wore a floor-length blue dress, a bonnet so large it hid her face. Did she even have a face? During the winter Mom boiled water and let this steep in the thermos before filling it with chicken noodle soup or canned ravioli. Hours later I'd open the thermos at my desk, steam rising, and I'd experience a sudden ache for her.

I remember the feel of my mother's hands.

The night of the fire I lounged on my bed half dressed in a pink oxford and underwear, a hand-me-down terrycloth robe. That night we had gone to the open house at the high school and everything had felt large and overwhelming—the glossy floors and trails of hallways—the high school kids looked like mini adults. As a special treat, Mom had made shrimp for dinner and later, when she put the hulking pan away in its cabinet beneath the stovetop, she severed the gas line. Dad heard the hissing of the gas and came running, tried to hold both ends of the line together, the two of them huddled in front of the wood cabinet when the pilot light, a blue lick of flame, combined with the gas and exploded.

I heard their screams and ran out of my room, turned at the refrigerator and saw blue and orange-white flames leaping from the wall. I went to the bathroom and filled a paper cup with water, came back and stood there. Held it in my hand.

My parents remained home from work the next day. Grandma brought us over to our house after school and we found them in the stench, still in bed, their sleeping shapes made one large lump beneath the covers. I had to cover my mouth in the neck of my shirt to breathe.

They said we were lucky. Our neighbor, Mr. Collins, turned off the gas, wet bath towels and used these to whip the flames. Water does not extinguish gas fire, I learned. Even if I had been brave enough to step forward, my cup of water would not have put a stop to the flames.

We changed for gym in the room where the church stored extra tables and chairs on tiers of metal racks. Each of us spread out, searched for a bit of privacy among the stacks, turned our backs from one another as we unbuttoned our white blouses and changed out of plaid skirts. Our school gym uniforms were green polyester shorts and gold T-shirts with St. Ann's School in green cursive across the front.

My first bra size: 28AA.

The woman at Someone Special pulled the tape measure across my chest before handing me two boxes with the image of a girl in a sunlit field. She may have been sniffing a daisy.

Mom joked to the woman at the store that there was nothing there.

At night I massaged the back of my head in hopes of firing up my hypothalamus, where I learned that hormones originated. I wanted to spur puberty along.

Diane L. passed around her older sister's copy of Forever by Judy Blume. I read it in three days.

Saturday mornings Tricia and I shopped in downtown Lansing. We started at Jean's America, and then went to Ben Franklin's where we made a beeline for the makeup display in the back of the store. Someone Special was next. We then crossed the tracks on Ridge Road and ate hamburgers at Bozo's, the sandwiches leaking crumbled beef. If we had enough money, we went to Baker's Square for pie.

Driving home from my uncle's on Christmas day, my bottom slid across the vinyl seat of the car as I held the Fresh N' Fancy Makeup Kit on my lap. There was nothing I wanted more that holiday, months after the fire, than to blend my own makeup.

I wrote a love letter to Ricky Schroeder and weeks later received an autographed glossy of Gary Coleman leaning his chin on his hand. I was devastated that Gary Coleman thought I liked him.

I stood in the kitchen in my undershirt, took my father's hand, and pushed it against the budding lump on my chest. "Do you feel that?" I asked, certain I had broken a rib.

The night of the fire Dad yelled, "Judy!" followed by Mom's screams.

They painted my parents' burns with a silver ointment that sheened like Halloween makeup. Dad's hand was bandaged in a gauze mitt and Mom's eyebrows and eyelashes were singed right off, her face as blank as a newborn.

I ate salads of wilted lettuce blanketed by a single slice of turkey.

I stuffed my bra with Kleenex that I folded over and stapled.

When she wasn't home, I tried on my mother's one black bra. I turned to the left then right to see myself in her dresser mirror.

My crush on Tim B. lasted four years.  

Our summer swim coach pulled me into the pool during our final swim meet of the season and dunked me, and as I struggled to catch my breath between dunks, I felt his hardness against me but did not yet have a name for it.

After the fire our house stunk of melted plastic and charred wood.

Mom gave me a copy of What's Happening to Me? with its series of sketches of naked girls and boys at different intervals of puberty.

I thought my parents conceived me in the tiny powder room inside their bedroom, standing between the sink and toilet, I imagined them saying: "Let's make Melissa, our daughter."

I remember acid wash jeans, pegged jeans, bleached jeans, jeans with zippers at the ankle and jeans with elastic stirrups that went over the sock and hugged the heel.

When I worked on math problems at the kitchen table with my dad, my hands went gummy with nervousness, and I was unable to hold the pencil.

The color of menstruation blood shocked me.

They divided our class boys-girls. The boys followed Mr. H into another classroom while the girls remained at their desks and Mrs. J explained how the egg was released by the fallopian tubes and then fertilized by the sperm. When the boys returned to class they laughed and pointed at us.

I was the tallest girl in our class from fifth through eighth grade.

I sold Girl Scout cookies, frozen pizzas, calendars and boxes of chocolate candy.

I remember being hungry.

Sometimes I counted my ribs.

If I had run faster, come into the kitchen earlier, perhaps Mom and Dad wouldn't have been burned.

If it happened again, I knew it could be worse. We could be asleep. The smoke detectors could fail, all of us burned crisp like the blackened kitchen walls. Weeks after the fire, I lay in bed, body frozen stiff, listening for the hiss of the gas line, the explosion. This time, I would be ready.

During the school year there were skating parties at Lynwood Roller Rink and I used the fifty cents left from admission to buy a cup of warm root beer.

Our first VCR rental was Little Darlings. It starred Kristy McNichol and in the film she lost her virginity to another camper.

At family parties my uncle would kiss my cheek, his stubble rough as cut glass, and tell me I was pretty.

I set my alarm to wake an hour before my sister so that I would have time to fix my hair before school.

That fall I began to leave notes in the locker of a boy who looked a lot like my summer swim coach.

If I hadn't been reading the sex scenes from the yellowed paperback, if I hadn't closed the door to my room after my nighttime exercises, if I had instead been in the kitchen, perhaps the fire would not have occurred.

On Tuesday nights I continued to visit my grandma, the two of us watching TV together. Out of the corner of my eye I stared at her evening snack with envy: half a banana, a bran muffin studded with raisins, a cup of Sanka.

Each day I stood on the scale we kept in the bathroom closet and weighed myself.

I remember my periods stopped.

I remember the feel of my ribs.

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I've long admired Joe Brainard's I Remember. This is my own take riffing off the refrain.