Fences and Neighbors

A writer and real estate agent grieves her neighborhood in the wake of a California wildfire

By Betty-Jo Tilley

I wake up to a stream of texts. “My house is gone. What about yours?” They keep coming. On group chats, many simply respond, “Mine too,” with a broken heart emoji. Each one feels like a death and dims my hope.

I live, or lived, until the Santa Ana winds-driven wildfires of January 7th, in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles. “It takes a village,” we locals liked to say. Ours is a town where neighbors gift soup or flowers to one another, and parents leave their kids in the care of friends at the park while they run errands. I’ve worked in the heart of this village for over three decades, inspired by our bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, protected by the Santa Monica Mountains that cradle us, and held in awe by the flocks of green parrots that nest in our trees. Now, there are more homes burnt to the ground than standing.

When my husband and I were house hunting over 30 years ago, there were few affordable options in the neighborhood we wanted to live. When we drove up to a garland of pink roses atop a vibrant, white-painted wood picket fence, I knew we were home.

We had a 3-year-old and I was six months pregnant when we bought the little house with the picket fence. Its two bedrooms and one bath worked for us because of the space provided by the small front yard and the safety within the confines of the fence. For years we invited the entire class to every birthday party. We played old-fashioned relay race games while parents chatted on blankets, freed from watching their kids every second because our picket fence kept them from the street. We hoisted the biggest pinata we could find from the eaves, and lined kids up along the fence a safe distance from the batter.

A neighbor manages to get into the still-smoldering fire zone and sends me a photo. My heart jumps a beat. Our picket fence is perfectly intact. She seems prettier and perkier than ever, but behind her is no longer a home. I think it must be the angle, the house must be there, can’t be gone, this can’t be true, it must be the angle, over and over again. Another friend sends a video. She opens the entry gate flanked by our picket fence, as if she’s just popping by, but nothing else is the same. There are no rose bushes, no tireless perennials, no surprise resurgence of annuals, no front porch chairs, no welcoming yellow front door. The dread sinks in. Mine too. Our house is gone. And bizarrely, our sweet little picket fence is still there.

Mine is not the only burn site with inexplicable remains in the rubble of ash, fallen steel, and massive sheets of broken, charred drywall. Burnt out trees, their limbs blackened and ravaged, seem to scream as they reach for the sky. I wonder if they shouted for help, or in anger, or both. A neighbor’s cardboard box, hand-painted, “free lemons”, still hangs precariously on a fire-mangled wrought iron fence. Is it a sign of generosity, or loss? Amidst the ashen detritus of our yard, my Easter Lilies are coming up, their own insistence on resurrection. One property has an undamaged cement Buddha, another a St. Francis statue. Did they watch it all, accepting they could do nothing?

I am a real estate agent. I’ve sold and leased homes and condominiums in every price range in Pacific Palisades and the greater Los Angeles area for 37 years. My dearest friends are the clients I’ve had, the people I’ve raised my children with, the ones I’ve helped during difficult times. I’ve been there through celebrations and successes, sadness and loss. Now we are all hurting in a way we’ve never experienced. Our community of homes is nearly all gone, and our village is spread across southern California in hotels, rental homes and apartments that are little to nothing like the homes we’ve lost.

A sturdy copper angel weathervane topped our roof. She didn’t make it. Like the mutilated trees, standing even in destruction, I want to raise my arms to the heavens and screech and wail in rage and despair. I tell myself it is okay to feel pillaged and gutted by a firestorm our mayor and our bureaucrats failed to mitigate -- and all the prophets we look to, the shepherds we rely on, the saints we believe in, all the angels real and imagined, could not stop.

Most of us evacuated quickly, with not much more than the clothes we wore, and we are all navigating the complex matrix of insurance, FEMA and the SBA, solutions to rebuild, and more. We fear for our beaches, our drinking water, and our garden soil. We fret about plastic and poisonous particulates that cannot be eradicated. Many want retribution for the mismanagement, even though justice cannot save what we had. Most just want to go back, which of course, is impossible.

Visitors could always find our home. “It’s the one with the picket fence,” we’d tell them. When our daughter was 9 and our son 12, we were able to add a second story. During our remodel, we disassembled the fence and stacked it in the corner of the front yard, where occasional passersby asked if we wanted to sell it. We declined the offers. “We love our little fence,” we’d say. “Don’t blame you,” they’d respond.

Now it is the only thing remaining of the home our children grew up in. Our beloved neighborhood is a burn zone, surrounded by National Guard, law enforcement blocking entry. There will be a toxic cleanup by the EPA, followed by an Army Corp of Engineers’ debris removal. We don’t yet know if our little picket fence will be allowed to stay. If not, and we can retrieve her, we’ll take her apart and stack her up again. We’ll relocate her until we rebuild, and she, like us, can go home.

Betty-Jo Tilley is a Los Angeles based writer and 2023 graduate of the UCR Low Residency MFA Program in fiction and nonfiction. Her critical work and interviews have appeared in Kelp Literary Journal and The Coachella Review, and her flash fiction in Scavengers Literary Journal.

Coming soon

Next week:

• One millennial grapples with truth and belief in the post-enlightenment age

Later this month:

• A writer with wanderlust renews her capacity for wonder in the heartfelt awe of fresh-eyed strangers.

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