The world turns and all of a sudden, I can get fresh fruit in the local stores. My hands eagerly fumble through the bins. A few roll onto the floor and skitter across the produce section. I smile at the clerk who corrals them and wipes them with his cloth.
Mornings break in a roll of fog across the meadow. Our park sits below sea level so the heavy dew clings to our porches, our houses, and our vehicles. I huddle within my new winter coat, grateful for the warmth of its cashmere shell and silk quilting. The blue tam that I crocheted with wool spun by my oldest sister guards my head. I wrap a knit scarf around my neck and gaze skyward, scanning for the geese whose noisy honk has startled me.
Sleep often dances in the dark of my tiny bedroom, eluding capture. My grogginess makes the cold bite more closely. The events of the world nag at me, heavy weights on my brittle psyche. The turmoil surrounding the policies of the current federal administration haunts me. Parents torn from children; communities disrupted; people shot, people crying, people dying.
When the war in Ukraine first started, I followed its events even more closely than I might have because a friend’s brothers fought in the Ukrainian army. People would greet me with a query as to my condition. “No bombs falling on my village,” I’d respond, to varying degrees of comprehension. I have a new answer now. When someone asks how I am, I simply reply, “No one has shot me in the face today.” Everyone knows what I mean. Everyone nods. Some even reach to share a brief, empathetic hug.
Normal life seems wrong to enjoy. Where my sister lives, gangs of federal agents roam the icy streets. As a medical professional, she’s doing virtual visits for people who fear leaving their homes. She’s taken “ICE watch” training. Sixty miles west of me, peaceful protesters gather in the streets of the City, taking a stand against the wanton raids. I strain to think of any way that I can help from the rough inland refuge that I staked for myself.
I marched in 2018 for the rights of women and again that year for our immigrant neighbors. In Sacramento and Vacaville, I stood with strangers and decried the first Trump administration. But I have aged since then while adding to my daily responsibilities. Now I can only repost critical information and donate to groups that lead the resistance.
As for myself, there are, in fact, no bombs falling on my village; in fact no one has shot me in the face. I’ve seen two ICE raids in the town where I work. Rumors of several more circulate on social media. No one showed for a class that one of my artists planned to teach in Spanish even though we posted the rules of entry at our store in accordance with California and federal law. No judicial warrant, no entry. No masks, no guns, no warrantless searches. I taped it next to our recitation of bigotry that we will not tolerate. Plain and simple.
I try to put myself in the skin of the people confronted by immigration agents. I remember the few unpleasant encounters that I, a small disabled white female, have experienced in a lifetime of otherwise unnoteworthy interactions. Once a Kansas City, Kansas officer drew down on me as approached him to ask for directions. We froze, his partner raising a cautionary hand. I whispered, I’m a Jackson County prosecutor; I carry a badge. He slowly rose and holstered his weapon. The moment passed.
Another time, in an affluent neighborhood, I got stopped for running a red light. The cop told me to get out of the vehicle. I glanced at my sleeping baby in the car seat. I quietly refused his order. He leaned closer to my face and repeated his direction between gritted teeth gleaming in the frosty glow of the street light. I again said that I would not. I told him, softly, that he could write a ticket but I would not get out of the car and leave my child. His radio crackled as he hesitated. But then, because I am who I am, what I am, and the color that I am, he relented.
I cannot even fathom what the Somali-Americans experience on the snow-laden streets of Minneapolis. My heart sinks at the mere thought of the terror. If I am sleepless in the California Delta, what exhaustion must their first-hand worry cause them to suffer?
Meanwhile, citrus season unfolds, telling me that I’ve now been in California for eight years, of which I have been a full-time resident for seven. My presence in the park has grown. My original four-foot porch morphed into a 10 x 8 deck with quarter-panels of trellis for privacy and a tangle of vines that bloom each spring. My dwarf lime tree shriveled after a year or two of yielding fruit but my succulents thrive and the rainy January has inspired my perfume bush to bloom. I have a drawer filled with mandarins, their leaves sending fragrant wafts into the house whenever I open the fridge door. And, with a northward nod, I have increased my monthly contribution to the ACLU. It isn’t much, but it’s something. I will keep watch for other things.
For nowadays, the world is lit by lightening, though in my small, secluded corner, life continues.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
The Missouri Mugwump®
