Coming Up Trumps

A Story by Molly K

This piece is bound to cause some controversy, but please be respectful.

I thought I was safe.

From the start of his campaign, I thought I was safe. There were so many things that meant I should have been safe. When it all started, all those months ago, nobody took him seriously. Things weren’t great in our country, I will be honest, but things weren’t awful. Shootings in schools and public areas still happened, but unemployment was down and finally poor people could get health care, even when they couldn’t afford it. I thought I was safe.

Then, he started to shout louder, to reach further. He got to people. He got in their heads. After another attack, people started to listen to him. He picked a group to blame. He decided they posed a threat. People started to believe him.

Soon, cities were divided. People who had lived next door harmoniously for years would no longer speak. Men spat at children wearing headscarves. Women crossed streets when they heard someone talking a language they didn’t understand. Still, I thought I was safe.

I worked for the government. Not for any one party, and I never talked about my political opinions at work. I just did what I had to do. There were whispers around the office. It looked like he might actually be able to run for President. President Triumph. I could not believe it. But, I said nothing. Hoping and praying to a God I didn’t believe in that somebody would come along and turn everything around. They never did.

November approached fast, and still I thought I was safe. The country was being torn apart. People didn’t know who to listen to or what to believe. Another attack. This man, soon to be President Triumph, stood and told anyone who would listen that they were to blame. This minority. Children cried in the streets. Men told their daughters to be safe, to wear longer skirts, come home before dark, always keep their phones on. Women told their sons to be careful, don’t talk to strangers, walk your girlfriends home, stay alert. Everyone was terrified.

He fed on their fear. Every time an attack was mentioned he talked about change. He screamed about it. Yelling that the only way to fix the problems was to build a wall around our borders. Keep us in and foreigners out. He said it would be safer. He convinced people that the only way to protect their children was to shut out anyone who wasn’t a native.

But he was what we needed protecting from. He shouted about their men raping our women, while he groped them under tables. He screamed about their children poisoning our children’s minds, while he attacked their mothers. He yelled that we should take them all to court, while he faced sexual assault charges. And still, I thought I was safe.

He won. Half of the country cried, hysterical tears of fear and nausea. Wondering when they would be asked to leave, where they would take their children, if their families would be separated, if they’d be able to take their dogs. I cried too. Silently in my living room, cursing the God I never believed in for letting this happen. The protests started that very night, signs being held all over the countries begging for change. Fires burning and people screaming, but he did nothing. For days half of the country mourned.

The other half rejoiced, they genuinely believed he would bring about change. They thought they were safe and the majority of them probably were, at the time. Nobody knew he would go as far as he did. Then, it started. He rejected bills that would help people. Now, everyone had to pay for their own healthcare. Some started to regret their vote. We would each have to pay for his walls, the walls he’d promised would benefit us and that would be free. Families who struggled to keep a roof over their heads and food in their children’s stomachs would pay for it. More started to regret it.

Then the ban came. Still, I thought I was safe, but I should have realised I wasn’t. People were being blocked from coming back into the country. Children were detained at airports alone, without their mothers. But still, we all thought we were safe. I didn’t believe in their God, I was born here, in a hospital half an hour away from where I lived. My mother and father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins all born here. I swore I was safe. They couldn’t come for me and if they did I could tell them where I came from. I could proudly say I was a native.

Except, I wasn’t. I hadn’t thought it necessary to look back any further than my grandparents. I’d assumed that was as far as they’d go. But I was wrong. The looked back past my grandparents, to their parents. There was one weak link, but that was enough.

My grandmothers father was born in one of the countries on the ban list. He lived there for six months. No one thought it necessary to mention it. I wouldn’t have either. He came here on a boat after those six months and never left again. I thought I was safe.

They came in the morning, the day of a work trip out of the country. I thought maybe it was an escort to the airport. I suppose it was, in a way. They escorted me to the airport, where I saw dozens of others lined up in a small room. Our names were called. They asked how we were linked to wherever we were linked to. When they came to me I didn’t know yet. I told them that. They told me to come outside, and I thought I was safe. I thought it was some ridiculous mistake and that all it would lead to was me being given a substantial sum of money to keep quiet about the whole thing. But I was wrong.

The room was an interrogation room.

They cuffed my wrists and ankles to a chair and kept me there for hours.

“Where did you come from?” They shouted.

I kept telling them that I didn’t know, that as far as I knew I came from here the same as them.

They spat at me.

“You’ll never be the same as us.”

Hours passed, maybe even days. They eventually left me alone, occasionally one would come in, pour some water down my throat and ask again. I stopped answering.

Then, my parents came in. Tear stained and covered in dirt.

“What happened to you?” I croaked. My mouth barely able to form enough saliva to speak.

“We tried to get to you, to tell you that we have a relative from outside. We only just found out ourselves. But, they got to you first. We thought we were safe, we thought we were going to escape. But they caught us.”

My parents too were chained to their chairs. People paced outside the room. We knew we’d be made to leave. But where would we go? They told us they were sending us back home. But this was home. It always had been home.

I thought I was safe.

© 2017 Molly K

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Reviews

Holy Gma

Molly, I love this piece. It is tension filled to the end even though the reader knows where it is leading. I love how the fear, always lurking in the background keeps rising. I love the way you never mention a nationality or ethnicity, allowing the reader to insert their own idea. It is a really good and timely piece. I did find one place awkward, or perhaps it's an error. In paragraph ten at the airport you say "I saw tens of others lined up..." I am not sure if you meant to say that. I have never heard that use before. I've, of course, heard tens of thousands, for instance, but never just " tens of others". Again, I am not sure if this is a choice or an error, but I wanted to give my feedback that, for me, it is awkward. Aside from that however, this piece is gripping. Good work, Molly!