As Usual

after Hannah Bottomy Voskuil

The teacher stood in the hallway with a crying student, breathing in sync with her, trying to help her get this one thing to return to normal.

Before that, the student started sobbing in her seat. The teacher didn’t know why, but she knew it was not a performance. Tears without spoken explanation revealed pain beyond words.

Before that, the teacher planned a lesson on Octavia Butler’s Kindred and how time-traveling stories highlight that evil endures here and now. She began class with a casual question about the students’ week to create a connection among them all. As usual, the teacher was expecting complaints about assignments due and the unseasonable cold.

Before that, the student arrived in the classroom and put her head down without removing her earbuds. She did not look to her classmates; no one engaged with her.

Before that, the student ran. She only slowed once her feet landed securely on the school’s property, as if “security” were a word with any meaning.

Before that, the student, who was also a daughter, saw the white SUV. Out of it bounded masked men who grabbed her parents, who belonged but were not seen as belonging. They were thrown like objects into the vehicle, dehumanized by the inhuman. The masked men were part of the state, and the state is not far away, nor part of fiction, nor in the past; the state is here, now, and ours.

Before that, the student heard a commotion outside and shut off the news report stating that all current arrests were business as usual.