LOXLEY, Ala. — The Loxley motel room is crowded. Bags of clothes are stacked neatly on the floor and the beds are made. Everything is in order

But, there really isn’t enough room for a mom and her daughters, 10, and 13. Especially when friends of Tasha, an eighth-grade student at Central Baldwin Middle School and Shelby, a fifth-grade Loxley Elementary School student want to come and sit with them like young girls do.

“It’s hard to get away, to have a little time to myself,” said Tonya Johnson, her eyes still haunted by the house fire she and her daughters had at their rented home at 68 Steele Lane in Loxley Nov. 6.

“We lost everything,” said Tonya.

Remembering that night is hard for Tonya.

“It started in the kitchen,” she said. “Our next door neighbor saw it. We were all getting ready for bed.”

Tonya recalls that one of her daughters needed some money for a school function, and she needed to break a larger bill.

“I just ran to the store to get change,” said Tonya. “I was gone maybe five minutes.”

Then the cell call came. "The message was ‘your house is on fire.’ I thought it was one of the kids’ pranks,” said Tonya, adding that her daughters had been known to pull similar “jokes” before.

Still, Tonya made her way home fast.

“I flew. I know I was going 80 miles per hour. There was a police officer right behind us,” said Tonya.

It wasn’t a joke. The house was in flames.

According to Ashley Parker, a friend of Shelby’s who was staying over at the house that night, she had gone to the kitchen to get a drink of water only to discover the kitchen in flames.

“It was scary,” said Parker.

“We were screaming, said Shelby. ”My sister was asleep and we were yelling and screaming at her to come on.”

All the girls got out of the house with minor injuries.

But all the things the family had, including things Tonya was saving for the girls from their late father was gone.

“We lost everything,” said Tonya. “It took about five hours to put the fire out. There were so many fire trucks.”

Shelby, a budding artist, said, “All my pictures got burned up.”

Tasha, an avid photographer, lost her digital camera. Worse, her images from a Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America trip to Disney World are gone.

The family did not have insurance.

“I didn’t know that it existed,” said Tonya.

The exact cause of the fire is in dispute. Tonya says the fire department blamed a “short” in the stove, and an insurance adjustor says there was a melted pot on the stove top.

“I’m not a careless person,” said Tonya who is unemployed and pursuing a disability claim, “I don’t understand how I could have done it.”

The Red Cross paid to put the family up for a while, but that help is ending. Tonya’s mother, Sue Whittington, is already helping another daughter who lost her home, so there’s no room at her house.

“What we really need is a home,” said Tonya. she added that many people have come forward with clothes, but because of the sudden nature of the emergency, she does not have the funds to put a deposit on a new rental home.

A fund for the family, the Johnson House Fire Fund, has been set up at Wachovia bank. De Ann Ramey, principal of Loxley Elementary, has offered her school as a drop-of point for donations for the family. And people can call Whittingtonr at 251-231-8046 for more information.

“I just want to sleep in my own bed again,” said Tonya.