There is one oatmeal bar left that I've hidden in the medicine cabinet. There is a snickers bar - the snickers bar I'll eat when I've lost everything else - high up on the top shelf of the empty bookcase in the dining room corner. The entire house is mostly empty. I've run out of tea, coffee, milk powder, oatmeal, juice, rice, pasta, sugar, salt, oil, salsa, ketchup, peanuts, soda, v8 and jello. There is not even chewing gum. No licquorice, no soup packets, no popcorn.
I'm out of soap, detergent and band-aids. The electric bill is paid till the end of the month, 3 days away, which is why I'm still here, and not yet on a train to Canada. I have to make sure I live till then, although sometimes it feels like I am going to starve to death first. I am hungry all the time. My ribs are showing.
I have not eaten a solid meal for 45 days. Everything in the house has been sneaked in, pilfered from neighbors, or traded for in ghastly ways I never thought I'd have to sink to. It is too painful and humiliating to talk about. I have cuts on my lips, bruises on my back.
The signs are everywhere. No blacks allowed. No Asians. Even those who didn't espouse the cause, are now too intimidated to serve the undesirables. The nasty, vitriolic right-wing marchers with their bricks and baseball bats make it a risk too great to take. They have kids, too. Why risk their stores and their family's life on somebody who is not wanted here, not tolerated, so hated that they cannot be served. And too stupid too live, if they aren't bright enough to leave the damn country.
It's been one hundred and sixty days since the law passed. Some of the migration started immediately - those who, having seen the change coming, made their plans early. My liberal friends, who used to say to me "if we lose this one, I'm GOING TO CANADA" but never did, really left for Canada. The southern minorities, making up wave after human wave overflowing the border into Mexico. How things change.
I'm starving. I have old clothes, tired eyes. I dream of cheese and warm bread. My mouth is dry, I swallow often. There is a rainwater collector in the back garden. Decrepit, but I have water. I have always loved the rain in Oregon, but now I appreciate that it rains so often in Oregon with an unexpected intensity.
I have to get to the train station in three days. My head is hurting, and my breath rasps.
I had this dream last night. The administration says that life is precious. So precious that the second thing they did on gaining power was overturn Roe vs Wade, and make abortion illegal. It was possible by the first thing they did, which was to nominate a replacement for the last moderate on the Supreme Court. The liberals on the Court were long gone, courtesy three pro-life administrations in a row.
I had this dream, that a child was growing in me.
A child from the last attack on me, back in the alley where I was trying to trade for a chocolate bar, last Sunday. And I wondered, in my tired, tired mind while watching the shadows on the wall, whether they would care enough about the fetus to keep me alive, the necessary host. But then I remembered - no blacks allowed. No Asians.
* * *
A fire-breathing tea-bagger by the side of the road spewing hate speech about how vile I am is less racist to me, than a kindly, well-meaning, polite senator who votes no on the Civil Rights Act. Who fails to pass legislation protecting me. It's ACTION that counts, Mr. Paul. It's how your actions enable the discrimination on the basis of color and other criteria that should be protected that matter, Mr. Paul. That's racism. That's all that counts. YOUR ACTIONS. You don't get to say "I abhor racism" after that.