they’re laughing and you’re past them and you don’t look back, you just keep going, and ignore behind you the winding kick-spun sound of pedals spinning fast on their bikes
don’t look
The doctor said I didn’t understand —
I recall Lou, eating lunch at his desk while Philando Castile’s death played out between paragraphs on his screen. He held his burrito up above his mouth and caught falling beans with his tongue as he peeled the foil back from soft tortilla. The doctor had said I didn’t understand, that I didn’t know the pain of it; of cancer left untreated. I’d wish I’d acted sooner, she said. Pain, I repeat. Malignant intent. Assimilation – radiation, rays. Flesh consumed, ravaged by cannibalizing eyes. Video, and burrito, finished. Lou’s sticky hand cupped the mouse and clicked away.
（understand: the desire is to consume your suffering, entertain themselves with the chill of it, the hair-on-edge frisson of it; of suffering that reasserts all they know as higher truth jolts and thrills and scratches the throat as they swallow it whole that same satisfaction of a thread pulled, of pulling, unravelling, coming undone）
In walking, the crunch and rustle underfoot has yielded to dusty whispers; weightlessness, soft treading. I am lost both literally and in the larger, abstract sense of this narrative. Though looking back, down, I still see the house: red brick towering high behind a white marquee. It seems the house and the marquee and the distance are the only things here now at all. Why am I doing this? I’ve reduced the son, the family and their home, to choice moments, flashes, summaries. Stitched them together from the words and actions of others. Of people, real and complex individuals. Transcendence. I am lifting them up here with me, to these as-yet-unconquered metaphoric planes. Where we can play-act who we are to one another on simplified terms. Which is to say, I am thinking. The mother is right, the air invigorates.
Still, I remain physically here. And I do not feel safe. My presence unsettles colleagues, strangers, acquaintances, even friends. Yes, I’ve felt the spray of my co-worker’s indignation as he speak-shouts his thoughts re affirmative action. Fucking quotas. Even Rach, her soft hand on my shoulder as she says she understands, of course. She understands, but it’s still tough, you know? It’s like being a woman isn’t enough any more.
The unquestioned assumption is of something given; something unearned, taken, from a deserving and hardworking –
Though these hills are empty, and I am free to walk them, there’s the ever-present threat of that same impulse. To protect this place from me. At any moment, any of them could appear, could demand to know who I am, what I’m doing.
Who told me I could do that here?
The son – he loves the stories of monstrous men doing hideous things in glossy offices and Michelin restaurants. He takes voyeuristic delight in the pain and righteous struggle, before the eventual overcoming. Afterwards, he smiles and squeezes my hand, he sits easy. Assured by his participation in the quiet, the happy ending. The solution.
He introduces me to his political friends from across the spectrum. Conservatives who oo and ah and nod, telling me I’m just what this country is about. And so articulate! Frowning liberals who put it simply: my immoral career is counterproductive to my own community. Can I see that? My primary issue is poverty, not race. Their earnest faces tilt to assess my comprehension, my understanding of my role in this society. They conjure metaphors of boats and tides and rising waves of fairness. Not reparations – no, even socialism doesn’t stretch that far. Though some do propose a rather capitalistic trickle-down from Britain to her lagging Commonwealth friends. Through economic generosity: trade and strong relations! Global leadership. The centrists nod. The son nods, too. Now that, they can all agree to.
They take their modern burden seriously; over Beyond Meat burgers with thick-cut chips drizzled in truffle oil.
Per bell hooks: We must engage decolonization as a critical practice if we are to have meaningful chances of survival… yes, yes! But I don’t know how. How do we examine the legacy of colonization when the basic facts of its construction are disputed in the minds of its beneficiaries? Even that which wasn’t burnt in the 60s – by British officials during the government-sanctioned frenzy of mass document destruction. Operation Legacy, to spare the Queen embarrassment. The more insidious act, though less sensational, proved to have the greatest impact: a deliberate exclusion and obfuscation within the country’s national curriculum. Through this, more than records were destroyed. The erasure itself was erased.