January In An Ordinary Dystopia

Life is ordinary here, and that terrifies me.

The holidays ended happily, on Epiphany, which was the second day Adrienne was back at the middle school. I asked if she’d rather I cooked, or if she’d like Chinese or a pizza, and she chose Chinese. We sat in the twinkling light of the Christmas tree which we’d decided to keep up until Candlemas: her with her fried rice and me with a bowl of scrambled eggs, feeling happy and content.

The next morning, she woke up and walked to school as usual. I slept late. When I finally got up, I saw the news about Renee Nicole Good,  that poor woman murdered by an ICE officer. I scrolled down my social media for a long time, first numb, then angry, then furious. And then the lies began. Of course, I’d expected the president’s people to lie. That’s all they ever do. But the lies were so blatant, and so easy to disprove. The video was crystal clear. It had millions and millions of views. It was a lie that that woman steered her car towards the ICE officer. It was a lie that she was a terrorist. It was a lie that the officer was in the hospital, because he hadn’t been run over at all.

When I couldn’t stand to be on the internet anymore, I went for a walk, up and down the streets of my neighborhood, fuming. I stormed past those dilapidated houses I’ve talked about a hundred times: once 1920s middle class housing, now mostly slums. I stormed past Jimmy the Mechanic’s house. It has been too cold and wet to play outside, so I haven’t seen Jimmy’s boy since before Christmas. I stormed past that beautiful vacant house up the street, the one Jimmy’s boy and I want to make into a farm. That house is still empty, and falling into disrepair. I stalked past the street where we found the blind kitten. There were neglected cats outside as always, sleeping on the porch.  I paced around the edge of LaBelle and back, past my block, onto the block next to mine, past the vacant house of the Artful Dodgers, who I haven’t seen since the summer and will never see again. I passed the house of the boy who killed that bird with his gun. They have moved out of town, and I don’t know the people who live there now.

The neighborhood was quiet, gray, commonplace: nothing was amiss in Steubenville. It was an ordinary day.

I got in the car and drove up and down all the blocks of LaBelle, and then I drove to get Adrienne when school was out.

When I got back, the president’s supporters were mocking a mother who’d been shot in the face. Through that week and over the weekend, it got worse and worse. The vice president got in front of a camera and lied. Members of his Cabinet lied and threatened that the violence would go on. There were angry demonstrations all over the country. ICE officers responded with redoubled threats, shooting two more people, waving guns at many others, throwing tear gas and shooting pepper spray at point blank range. They taunted other women and told them they’d be the next to be shot if they didn’t go away. Minneapolis’s schools had to be closed for days. Over the weekend, there were demonstrations all over the country. I saw protesters from Texas to Anchorage chanting and waving signs. I even saw a little group of protesters standing outside the Chamber of Commerce in the little city in the blood-red corner of Maryland where my estranged grandmother and aunt live. I thought about them. They love Donald Trump so much.

I wondered if my grandmother and aunt were jeering at a murdered woman as well.

I desperately wanted to talk to them: no, not to them, but to the people I thought they were when I was a little girl, before all the trouble started. I wanted to shake them and ask why they were defenders of such an evil, Satanic regime that was harming so many people. I wanted to ask why they’d come to believe such crass and ridiculous conspiracy theories and buy into such obvious wrong. And I wanted to ask the whole country the same question.

Back at home, I got online again. People were asking each other if the murder of Renee Nicole Good was another Kent State. Last year, every so often, they asked if this or that event was “another Reichstag fire.” Just last week when we invaded Venezuela, I found myself saying that it was “another world war.” Now we had “another Kent State.” Or maybe we had none of those things. History doesn’t really repeat itself, after all. History only moves forward, war by war, uprising by uprising, cataclysm by cataclysm and apocalypse by apocalypse. Maybe someday, somebody else will be murdered by government thugs, sparking a wave of protests, and people will ask if it’s another Renee Nicole Good.

Meanwhile, in Steubenville, there were no protests. Everything went on as it always has. At least in 2020, around the time of the murder of George Floyd, life looked different here. We were in the middle of a pandemic, with shuttered buildings and people wearing masks. In 2026 the only masked people are the ICE agents, and there aren’t any ICE agents in Steubenville. Steubenville is a deep red city in the red state of Ohio. The president doesn’t want to punish us, not yet. Our time will come.

I picked up Adrienne from school, and talked about how she was doing. She likes her classes. Her grades are near perfect. She’s learning about dystopias in English class. Her teacher has a lurid love of dystopian fiction. She said that the Empire in Star Wars was dystopian, and then joked that Alice in Wonderland was dystopian as well. I joked to Adrienne that she ought to tell the teacher that Thomas the Tank Engine was dystopian– a race of sentient and rational machines, enslaved and forced to make themselves useful by a grumpy human in a top hat. We both laughed.

I felt so guilty for laughing about anything.

I felt as if my little corner of Northern Appalachia had somehow drifted away from the rest of the earth. Out there, far away, in the famous parts of the United States that people who aren’t from America can easily name, so many terrible things are being done to so many innocent people, and it’s getting worse and worse. Countless human beings that I once thought had consciences are laughing and cheering at atrocities, excited that things are accelerating further and further out of control. Some of my family members are among them. Here, there is plenty of cruelty, of a more commonplace kind, but we’re not affected by this violence just yet. Here, life is ordinary.

Adrienne and I came home, and did everyday things.

I got online and saw that ICE had kidnapped forty-seven people in West Virginia, just across the river. You can see West Virginia from the end of my block.

Evening passed, and it was night.