A Fire Lit by ICE
What happens next in Minnesota?
“Mary. Are you coming to our bonfire tonight?”
I turn, caught in the act of taking out the trash. Ruthie is standing on the back steps of the house next to mine. She swings the storm door open, hangs from the handle.
Is this a real invitation? I see Dan and Meg through their kitchen window. Maybe it’s a party for friends their age. Millennials, like my own children. The self-introduction meme from The Simpsons comes to mind: Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins; Homer Simpson, smiling politely.
Yellow puffer coat, sparkly dance skirt, her mother’s fleece-lined boots. Ruthie, age six.
“Of course I’ll come. Thank you for inviting me.”
“Yay!” She runs inside to tell her mom and dad.
I lower myself onto the kitchen bench and take off my sodden canvas shoes. Lean forward to peel off my socks. Leaving damp traces, I climb the stairs to the room I still think of as my daughter’s, even though I live in it now, sharing the space with my aging cat.
“Mini. Catch of the day!”
I set down her dish, filled with the newest temptation I hope will put flesh around her ribcage. As she’s nearly blind, I lift her small body and plant it in front of. the bowl. She sniffs around the edges, then goes back to her pillow and closes her eyes.
What to wear?
The temperature, warmed up to the mid-twenties, calls for layers. Thermal top. Medium-weight sweatshirt under a heavier, hooded sweatshirt. No gloves. Pushing the season, but I’m a native.
What to bring?
It’s been so long since I bought groceries that I’m out of my indicator staple, peanut butter. I grab the potato chips I’ve been saving for just such a bare-pantry moment. Gripping the bag, a bottle of riesling cradled in my elbow, I make my way across the snow.
Dan’s built a blaze in the in the firepit in front of the three raindeer figures that have adorned the yard since Thanksgiving. Wire frames covered in tiny white lights. A buck, doe, and fawn. All winter, the sight of this crèche has comforted me.
“Nice fire.” The wind shifts; my eyes sting. “Must be hard to keep wood dry over the winter.”
The front door opens. Ruthie, with a paper plate full of brownies; Meg steadying her down the steps. Those boots, more than twice the size of a little girl’s feet.
“Mary, I have a loose tooth!”
She sets the plate on the chair. Opens her mouth and wiggles a lower incisor.
“I see. And you’ve already lost one.”
“Yes. The tooth fairy gave me ten dollars.”
“Wow. Teeth are expensive these days. When I was your age, I got a dime.” I glance up at Meg. Ten dollars?
“We were on vacation. Mom said the tooth fairy couldn’t get change. Do you want a brownie?”
“I’d love a brownie.”
Salt, sugar, grease, alcohol, chocolate. Neighbors. What could be better? The fire sparks and snaps. Wind gusts drive the smoke in all directions. I’ll need to wash my hair when I get home.
“I’m not going to eat one. My tooth might come out and I’ll swallow it. Then the tooth fairy won’t bring me any money.”
“I bet she would. Maybe not ten dollars, though.”
She turns her head to watch a van moving slowly up the street.
“I’m going to bring the brownies to my friend at school. So he can have something to eat if the ice people take him.”
If the ice people take him.
In what kind of world does a six-year-old worry as much about losing a classmate as she does about losing a tooth?
In a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, benign creatures mass together on a school playground before they attack. The sense of menace and unease is sustained within the context of fiction. Children scream and run in response to a threat we know is manufactured. They are acting. The director may be a tyrant, but there are no real bullets on the set.
“I want to go inside.”
Meg lifts her daughter and carries her past the reindeer family. The flame has subsided into acrid plumes of smoke.
My hands are raw. Stiff. Bad choice, leaving those gloves at home.
“Thanks for this, Dan,” I say. He nods. Squints.
“You bet.” The stoic response of a fellow Minnesotan.
On February 12, the border czar announces the conclusion of Operation Metro Surge.
“We’ve had great success with this operation, and we’re leaving Minnesota safer. As a result of our efforts here, Minnesota is now less of a sanctuary state for criminals.” He goes on to clarify that ICE will not be pulling out entirely. A small footprint of agents will remain, for an indefinite period of time.
Four thousand arrests. Three people shot, two of them fatally.
Safer, they say. A success, they say.
I can’t shake the image of Alex Pretti, face down, shot multiple times in the back. The bloodstains he left in the snow.
The Farmer’s Almanac bestows a name on every full moon and the month that contains it. Each is illustrated with a folksy image, the kind you might see on a rural giveaway calendar. You don’t want to be greeted by Hunger or Sore Eyes over your morning coffee. Better to start your day with a strawberry or an ear of corn.
The editors chose Snow Moon for February. March is the Worm Moon; April, the Pink Moon.
Two dates with personal significance are forthcoming in April. One is the third anniversary of my husband’s death. The other is my seventieth birthday.
I share that day with Renee Good, the woman who was shot three times through her windshield by an ICE agent. Like me, she was an American citizen, a poet, and a mother. She will not be able to celebrate her thirty-eighth Pink Moon, because she died of her wounds in January, the month of the Wolf Moon.
I meet my son and his wife at a locally owned restaurant in St. Paul. We are supporting as many of the small businesses eviscerated during the occupation as we can.
“My mom went to a protest last week. She left before they started arresting people,” my daughter-in-law says. “She’s on a Rapid Response team, and gets Signal messages.”
“That’s great,” I say. “Does she follow ICE vehicles in her car?”
“No. She didn’t get the training. Maybe she won't need it now.”
“Let’s hope.” Just how small is that footprint ICE is leaving behind?
I’m in my neighborhood Signal group, but haven’t been summoned. I didn’t get the training. No one taught me how to verify license plates and send out ICE alerts. Maybe that isn’t my calling. Is it too grandiose to say I’m here to bear witness with my words? At least I can print flyers and hang them on doorknobs.
My son teaches in an autism program in a school on St. Paul’s East Side. The area is home to a large immigrant community. It’s been targeted, but residents stay mostly under the radar, aided by a stealth network of volunteers.
He holds up his phone, showing a photo of his middle-school students packing groceries.
“They really get into it. You never think about the skills involved until you watch someone learning them.”
Skills. Assessing each item by weight. By content. Packaging: metal, glass, paper, cardboard, plastic, none. Shape: square, cylindrical, rectangular, round, flat. The density of bread and marshmallows compared to cucumbers and melons. How can so many things look so different from each other and still be called tomatoes? The riddle of eggs, the mystery of bananas.
“You do good work in this world,” I say. My son and daughter exist as evidence that I have not wasted my life.
I dress like a beatnik most days. Staying up late at my laptop takes a toll. Sometimes it’s five a.m. when my head jerks up and I see that I’ve covered three pages with semicolons. That’s when I stagger off to the bed I share with Mini.
Upon waking, lacking the working memory needed to search through my closet, I reach for one of a dozen black T-shirts — no turtlenecks, I’m saving up for something chic — pairing it with black leggings and socks. Some days, I throw on a cardigan. Other mornings, a men’s XXL off-white canvas shirt. Too big for my husband, he never wore it. But I recall the tenderness I felt as I wrapped it in Christmas paper so many years ago.
It’s Ash Wednesday and the first day of Ramadan. Yesterday marked the beginning of the Chinese New Year. The Fire Horse gallops in once every sixty years. I want to harness this confluence of spiritual energies.
My wardrobe is a magnet for cat hair. I have lint rollers in every room. If I leave the house for some event, I swap out the tees for a red sweater. I’m going boldly into that good night. Red is my color. It’s the Year of the Fire Horse.
I hope Mini will be here when I turn seventy. At 22, she’s a centenarian in human years. Having risen from her deathbed countless times, she has a few things to teach me about longevity. The most important: Get some sleep.
My husband and I spent many of his last evenings sitting in wicker chairs next to the gas firepit on our upper deck, or lounging with cocktails in front of a copper brazier on the patio. In previous years, there were raucous nights with Brian and Jeannie, before they sold their house and moved to Texas, passing along their fire ring to Dan and Meg.
During our weekly happy hour over Zoom, Jeannie tells me she’s going to an ICE OUT rally in Brownsville.
“It’s my first demonstration. I’m going to set up my table.”
She learned Spanish and became certified as a voter registrar. Every week, she and Brian drive to a college town near the border, where she sits for hours at a time, helping young Hispanic American citizens change the world.
Vote.
To support the people of Minnesota whose lives continue to be affected by Operation Metro Surge, here’s a link to a number of local aid organizations:
Thank you, friends, for opening your hearts.
Mary xo
I don’t see myself as a political writer. There are many out there. Whether or not I agree with them, I respect and honor their choice.
What is happening in Minnesota is beyond politics. It is an issue of human rights and dignity. It is about standing up to care for others.
Tell me what you think in the Comments. I look forward to a lively discussion. As always, personal attacks will not be tolerated.
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That "if the ice people take him" was certainly a shock. I'm Canadian, watching from the north and feeling stress as the assaults come flying our way as well. At 79, I'm pretty sure my promise to never enter the US again won't be too hard to keep, which is a shame. I don't think I'll be around for restoration, but I hope it comes. Find your path.
No, you're not being Grandiose thinking that your words bearing witness to ICE's outrages. That's one of the most important things writers can do. Bear witess. That's why we have so many historical documents about Hitler's atrocities. So many diaries, letters, news reports, memoirs. They are the life blood of our civilizations, telling the trust on a human level about tyranny. Thank you for this beautiful essay, Mary. We all do what we can.