Crossing the Threshold

The scent of simmering curry hit me the moment I walked through the front door. My wife Emma always seemed to know when to remove the lid from the saucepan just before I opened the door. A wireless speaker played melancholy rock from a popular band in the 1990s, while my daughter Sarah sat the length of the sofa with her toes poking up on the other side as she sketched a dark and gritty version of a lasagna loving cat, transforming the cheerful cartoon into a brooding, almost menacing figure.

I stopped at the coat rack to take off my hat and hang my overcoat until I realized that I no longer wore those clothes. It had been a few weeks since the company closed and I traded my suit and briefcase for a flannel shirt, jeans, and a garden hoe with a fraying wooden handle that left splinters on my now calloused hands. Old habits were hard to break, I suppose.

Emma came to greet me with a distant hug and a welcoming smile that caused the corners of her cheeks to redden. Sarah gave me a cursory nod as I greeted her on my way to the shower. A simple thing like a shower was all my mind thought of after working half a day in the field alongside other former white-collar workers whose offices had been shuttered. I went from an air-conditioned office to being conditioned by an outdoor breeze that didn’t seem to come along often enough during the hot summer days.

At the end of the hallway, just before the bathroom on the right, was a family portrait we had taken just before the downturn. Emma in her flowery summer dress and Sarah in her black Gothic attire, with me between them in a simple shirt and tie. Emma had been promoted at the grocery store and Sarah had pulled off a 3.5 GPA in the third quarter of seventh grade that day. Those few steps down the hallway always brought a sharp pang of regret—a reminder of what we’d lost.

The knock on the front door was too sharp to be a friendly visitor. I walked back to the front door, and Emma shrugged her shoulders to say she wasn’t expecting company. Sarah did the same when I made eye contact with her. The door opened after a large thud and the doorway was filled with four men clad in black, with their faces covered by matching ski masks and military style firearms. The masks were stained with a layer of grime, as if they'd been worn for a long time.

They were fast and methodical. One remained at the entrance with his gun, fanning the interior of my home from one wall to the other. Within seconds, the three of us were bound with zip ties and our hands behind our backs. The smell of curry was replaced with the smell of strangers reeking of an abundance of cheap cologne, and the music was drowned out by heavy footsteps as they lumbered about our home and escorted us out to a black SUV.

None of them acknowledged us or answered our questions, although the barrel of a pistol against our temple was enough to cause us to remain fearfully quiet. Sarah was sobbing. Emma leaned her shoulders against Sarah’s, comforting her while her watery eyes looked at mine—searching for some explanation, finding only a mixture of fear and helplessness.

I looked out the tinted windows and saw our front door wide open. The curry still simmering on the stove. Neighbors had poked their heads out from the sides of their curtains or between the slats of their blinds while a few stood across the street with their cell phones pointed our way—no doubt recording the event before the driver sped off with a sudden squeal of the tires.

The ride was long enough that Sarah nodded off; her head rested on Emma’s shoulder, even as the SUV left the paved road for one that left a plume of dirt in its wake. The men in the masks had relaxed as the adrenaline wore off and they lowered their guns but kept them at the ready. I had lost track of time as Emma and I both let our heavy eyelids get the best of us.

We arrived at an area with towering stadium lights. On all sides of us were various makeshift fenced areas with armed guards and dogs on patrol. I couldn’t make out the signs above each door, but I could hear the sound of people yelling with hoarse voices. Some were pleading for help and others were shouting for death to their captors. They shook the chain-linked fencing, and the rattling echoed the way metallic salt would if shaken from a salt shaker into a cast-iron pan.

The three of us were ushered out of the vehicle at gunpoint and we stood in the chill of the open air as each of us was patted down. Two guards separated me from Emily and Sarah. I turned to look back at them as they called out for me. Their tear-filled faces were all I could see before the butt of a gun hit me in the forehead and I passed out.

When I awoke, I was lying face down in the dirt. They had dragged me into one of the containment areas and when I got my bearings; I discovered I was with others who looked like me. They looked dejected, hungry, and sleep-deprived. A few were old, some were young, and all seemed to carry the weight of a shared loss. I spit the dirt from my mouth and asked the person closest to me where we were. No one knew the answer. I asked about Emily and Sarah and was met with the same response. A wave of guilt washed over me, a familiar ache in my chest. I had failed them.

In the distance, a large military plane took off, its markings obscured by the dim light. I was told that planes came every few hours as people were loaded up and taken away. The cages would empty and be filled with more to be taken away. My chest was cold. I felt fluid building in my lungs as my allergy flared. I felt dizzy as I began to process the events of the night. I needed to get to Emma and Sarah to make sure they were alright. It was my duty to care for them and I failed. I noticed a man across the cage silently weeping, but I couldn’t afford to dwell on his sorrow. My focus remained on finding my family.

Our cage was silent from exhaustion. The occupants had realized that shouting for help or hurling insults toward the guard was a futile exercise that yielded no results except to make themselves weary. Instead, they spoke in hushed tones amongst themselves as they collected what little information they could from each other. A common theme emerged. Everyone was racially and ethically non-white. We were all removed from our homes or businesses in the darkness of night and were being shipped off somewhere. Rumors floated around that some were deported to other countries or islands. A young woman, her voice trembling, organized an impromptu census amongst ourselves, and nearly three-fourths of us were citizens and of that group, nine out of ten were born here. A common element emerged—we weren’t white.

I looked out in every direction that I could in hopes of spotting Emily and Sarah, but the lights were too bright and I couldn’t see past their glare. I shouted their names, but my throat was too dry for my voice to carry. I asked the group why were Emily and Sarah taken if Emily was white and Sarah was our child. There were varying answers, but the one that stood out came from a guard that overheard us. He was young, barely more than a boy, with a cruel smirk playing on his lips. He referred to Emily as a race-traitor. "Mixing the blood," he sneered. “Diluting the line.” When I asked what happened to race-traitors, I was met with a malicious laugh and had a gun pointed between my eyes. A wave of cold dread washed over me, a familiar ache in my chest. I bit back a surge of defiance, knowing that any challenge would only invite further violence.

The sun rose, and I had a clear view of the people I was sharing a cage with. I also had a 360 view of the other cages. Some were easily identifiable by the ethnicity of the occupants. Others needed a closer look to determine that they didn’t fit the vision of New America that the regime had intended. If they weren’t straight, Caucasian, and subscribed to a particular belief, there were here amongst the herded awaiting redeployment to who knows where.

Then I spotted the supposed race-traitor encampment off on the distant horizon. It wasn’t close enough for me to make out the details, but it seemed smaller and more desolate than the others, the buildings a faded gray under the harsh sunlight. Shouting wouldn’t have done any good; they were too far and all I’d be was a distant blur even if they could hear me over the planes taking off and landing.

What I knew was that we were in the desert and many people looked emaciated by dehydration. My mouth was dry as well. The airstrip was makeshift, and plumes of dust washed over us with each flight that roared down the runway. From what I gathered, based on the other occupants, is that the government worked under the cover of night to gather as many of us as possible. This meant that daylight may reveal empty communities if anyone noticed.

I did my best to focus my mind on the family photo in the hallway. I noted each curve in Emily and Sarah’s smile and I could even count the little strands of hair that were out of place. The smell of Emma’s perfume from the day of the photo shoot tickled my nose and made my chest feel weighed down. The sun revealed the camp's own propaganda posters, rich with slurs and imagery, to remind us that we were no longer welcomed in the country that we were born and raised in. One poster showed a caricature of a family, labeled "Undesirables."

A few guards nearby were engaged in rhetoric that would have raised alarms if their words were to reach the public. A few fired rounds in the air to see which occupant the bullet would land on. The sounds of grown men howling in agony throughout the camp made me wonder what was happening at those locations. It sounded like torture, but our ears had heard so much since our arrival it was hard to discern the cries of man with that of the howling of the wildlife that roamed the area.

The cage two rows away from us was being emptied. Men and women of a certain ethnicity were chained to each other by the waist and led to the loading ramp on the back of a large military cargo plane. From what I gathered, they could have been doctors, shopkeepers, cooks, cleaning staff or any number of everyday working-class Americans. Now they were being led, at gunpoint, to an unknown destination. From what I gathered, they’d be taken to the island nation of where their ancestors originated from—if they were lucky. Rumors ranged from being dropped into a volcano or somewhere in the ocean, and while those seemed sensationalist, it could have very well been a reality under the regime.

Their empty cage was an eerie sight to see. Moments ago it was filled with people in despair and within minutes it was empty with only scant reminders that there were once people there. Some child’s doll had fallen from their arms and was now covered in dirt, while a man’s wallet had its contents strewn about. A few pictures had blown our direction, and I was able to make out a photo of a family of four—a young girl with pigtails, a boy clutching a teddy bear, their faces etched with a hopeful innocence that seemed tragically out of place. I had no doubt that they were all on their way to the unknown. I wondered if I’d ever see Emma and Sarah again and what would happen to them. No one knew what happened to the race-traitors.

The sun began to set and more cages had been emptied. I counted close to two hundred people in the cage closed to us as they were chained and led towards the belly of the aircraft. I shamefully imagined the door opening above the ocean as tiny bodies linked together, floating momentarily in the sky like a kite string before disappearing into the water. I threw up in disgust and my stomach cramped with nothing left to eject.

One thing I noticed is that there was no fight left in them. Not a single person pleaded or attempted to overwhelm the guards. Instead, they simply put their hands behind their head and followed the person in front of them while hunched over and watching the ground. I shared my plans with those that I shared a space with now, and I understood the compliance of others. One person reasoned that anywhere else would be better than here, while another said that they could barely stand by a lack of food or water since they arrived. My stomach also rumbled and my tongue was more chalky with dirt.

The guards opened our cage door. One had a long series of chains linked together. No doubt these would be fastened around our waist as we were led into the plane. Two guards had their guns pointed at our heads from each side as we exited our cage single file, while another connected the chain around our waist. The person around me was an old man, probably in his seventies. He was wheezing and likely was asthmatic. He received the butt of the rifle in his ribs and was removed from the chain when he fell to the ground. A fourth guard kicked him out of the way as he coughed and wheezed until his last breath had left his body. I was powerless to help as I raised my arms while a guard wrapped the metal around my waist.

I now understood why no one fought back or resisted. Anyplace had to be better than this. We were led past several empty cages and as we neared the race-traitor cage, I realized it was empty as well. Emma and Sara had already been taken and the last image I have of them in my mind is one of fear and uncertainty. I dry-heaved, but nothing came up as we continued to walk single file.

The plane was larger than I expected. The ramp was long, but there were no seats, just rails with bearings to transport cargo from the back to the front of the plane. We’d have to sit on those as there was no bare floor. Walking over them barefoot was excruciating. There were a few hundred of us, along with another couple of hundred that filled the front of the plane. When the last of us were in, the metallic whir of the door being pulled up echoed from the walls of the plane.

I was able to see the purple sky as the door raised up and thought back to a time where Emma, Sarah and I waved goodbye to the day at the rear of a cruise ship on our twenty-fifth anniversary. Emma looked beautiful and I could have watched the sun set through the reflection in her eyes—a shimmering dance of orange and gold that seemed to capture the essence of our love. Sarah had that aura of innocence while she waved to the silhouettes of seagulls long before she began to dress in all black.