Grabbing America by the Pussy

“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

We all know who said that. He was talking about women, but he is now applying that same hubris to his fellow countrymen. He thinks he’s a star (and not without reason, sadly, since he has so many adoring fans), so he’s doing whatever he wants. 

He likes to take advantage of weaker people, women in the case of sexual assault, minorities in the case of deportation and economic assault. The weaker they are, the easier they fall. The credo of bullies everywhere.

Some women fought back. Some got checks from his former fixer. One got a big jury award. One. Only one.

It’s tougher for minorities to fight back. They are not just dealing with a man, they are dealing with his entire government, which, green-lit by the Supreme Court, is engaged in the ICE version of his famous dictum, doing whatever they want, and in masks.

Maybe the others like him, the one who killed himself in jail, the one who is still languishing in jail, convinced themselves that women liked their assaults. Or deserved them. In the South of my youth, men used to joke in bars, with gestures to their crotches, that they had what uppity women needed. They were redneck lowlifes. I had no idea that mindset went all the way to the top.

The crude, sexist men in those rough bars didn’t make me ashamed to be a man, but the conduct of our current government is. Good men don’t prey on women. Good men don’t abuse the weak. Good men open doors for both. They tip their hets and step aside to let them pass. 

Men know instinctively that they should be protectors. And that they should be humble about it. They didn’t do anything to deserve their Y chromosome. They have to earn it in the way they live their lives.

Nothing that the men leading our government today are doing makes them deserving of their roles as men in our society. They are a danger to all who are weak, and an embarrassment to all who are strong.

Winter is Coming

He hadn’t been back to the town in over a year. The neighborhood where Theresa lived was close to a small shopping area. He was stiff from the drive and he needed coffee and he needed to pee. He pulled into a coffee shop near a big building supply store. There weren’t many cars in the parking lot, odd on a Saturday afternoon, he thought. It was a Hispanic area, but the young woman who gave him his coffee had red hair and freckles.

    “Where is everybody?” he said.

    “It’s quieter here these days.”

    He didn’t ask why. He had put himself on a news diet, for his sanity, but he wasn’t oblivious.

    He got back in his car and drove to the street where Theresa lived. Her car wasn’t in the driveway, and the house looked dark. He should have called ahead, but he wanted to surprise her. He had a check for her to celebrate the third anniversary of her pre-school. He had loaned her a little money to help her get started, but she paid it back when she said she would and wouldn’t take any more from him. He knew she was struggling, though. Fewer kids were coming. Theresa said sometimes their parents didn’t feel safe bringing them. He would put the check in her hand and insist that she take it.

        She had built the cubbies for the kids herself and set up the tables and chairs and a few cots for nap time for the younger ones and applied for and gotten the permit needed to operate a day car for three and four year olds. All of the children she cared for were from hardworking families with little money to spare. She set her rates as low as she could and gave extra time for some to pay. She hired young women to help her, and they depended on their jobs. Once when we were talking about how hard it was for her to stay in business, she said her children needed a place to go while their parents worked, and her helpers needed the wages she paid them. She had too big a heart to make much money on the business, but she always said everything was fine, that she was happy as long as her kids were happy.

Even though the lights were off, he knocked on the door. It was her pre-school, but it was her home too. When she didn’t come, he walked back out to the sidewalk and stood looking at the little white painted ranch house and up and down the street, thinking without good reason that he might see Theresa coming home. 

After a while he went back to the house and sat on the red brick stoop. He was holding the check he had brought for her, looking at it as if it might tell him where she was. He thought it wasn’t big enough. He hadn’t brought his checkbook, but he would tell her he would send her more as soon as he got back home.

A woman he didn’t know came up the sidewalk. He stood.

“I’m looking for Theresa,” he said. “Do you know where she is?”

“Haven’t you done enough?”

There was a hard edge to her voice, an anger, that surprised him.

“No, that’s why I’m here.”

        “You should go,” she said.

        “I have something for her.”

        “Are you taking her house too?”

        And then he understood. 

        “She’s been taken?” he said.

       “Yesterday evening. Your people in masks. Like the cartels.”

       She had a green card. He had helped her get it. But she was short and brown.

       “They’re not my people.”

       “Who are you, then?”

       “Just a friend. Theresa helped me raise my kids after my wife died. They think of her as their other mother. Now that they are off on their own, she wanted to open this day care to help families in the neighborhood.”

       The woman eyed him skeptically.

       “Where did they take her?”

       “I don’t know. No one does.”

        He went back to the coffee shop and got another coffee and took it to an outside table and called ICE. They asked his name and his relationship to Theresa. When he said he was a friend, they said they couldn’t tell him anything. They could only talk to family members. He told them she was alone. He told them she had a green card. They said they were sorry, there was nothing they could do.

He hung up and sat looking at his phone and at the parking lot for the building supply store. Last time he had been there there had been men waiting in the shade of the eucalyptus trees for contractors to come to offer them day work. There was no one now. The men were hiding. The parents who brought their children to Theresa’s day care could not take them there now. Maybe they were hiding too.

He would go to the ICE office and try to find her. If he did, if by some miracle he got her released, she could not come back here. There was nothing left for her. He would take her home with him and she could live in the room she had when she was the nanny for his children. She would be safe there. He could bring her food and she could stay inside with the drapes drawn.