For Katelyn, with love and hope for a future without anomie.

5:45 a.m.

Tuesday

Jarring sounds of men talking nearby. Voices that I don’t recognize. A radio crackling in the pre-dawn gloom that is the hour of the wolf. Somebody is breaking into my house….

Rapid pulse. Wolf at the door. Imminent threat. Bolt upright.

Red and blue lights flashdance across my bedroom wall. Sleep-deprived eyes snap alert. The toxic smell of testosterone and a palpable sense of urgency fill the September air. Like a bloodhound, I can both sense and smell trouble… and trouble has definitely arrived at my door.

Stumbling from my bed to a nearby window, I slowly pull back the black-out drape (which has clearly failed to maintain boundaries between me and a threatening outside world). A dozen heavily-armed soldiers are standing in my driveway. Police cruisers are strategically positioned around the perimeter. Uniformed officers mill about. A large cast of characters sporting black tactical gear, face masks, and long guns flank my backyard.

Several unmarked SUVs are parked opposite the entrance to my driveway. A SWAT van is positioned a few feet away. The main street leading into and out of my neighborhood as well as a side street that runs parallel to my house is completely blocked off. No access. No egress. Trapped.

My driveway is the staging ground for a major police presence, I realize through the fog of sleep. Something truly awful must have happened. Murder…home invasion…hostage situation…all of the above?

My daughter needs to know what’s going on….

Except she already knows something is very wrong, because as I emerge from the disco lightshow, a tangled mass of auburn hair and groggy speech stumbles toward me, complaining that the neighbor’s alarm system is flashing neon lights in her bedroom. Worse, it’s screeching “Intruder Alert!” every few seconds. 

Before I can respond, a sharp report cracks through the pre-dawn air. Gunfire.

“Hit the ground,”  I cry, pulling her to the floor with me. Don’t move. Never, ever move. Breonna Taylor comes to mind. And oddly, the stoic Sergeant in television’s original police procedural, Dragnet. “Do you know why we serve warrants at 6:00 a.m.?” I hear Joe Friday’s staccato voice-over continuing, “because it starts people’s day off on a very bad note.” Yes, indeed.

Another terrifying sound pierces the air, startling both of us. The sharp, authoritative bark of a K9 that’s arrived on scene. That unmistakable “you’re screwed” growl. Similar to Joe Friday’s voice. 

The shrill sound of glass shattering. More gunfire (later I would learn that the “gunfire” was actually flash bang grenades exploding inside my neighbor’s condo). More minutes pass….

“Stay down,” I order my daughter, who is visibly distressed by the surreal scene she has awakened to. 

Under no circumstances do we stand up. Or even breathe, if we can avoid it. Siege mentality. I know the drill. I grew up in a house plagued by domestic violence. Silence equals survival.

I’m holding my cell phone with clenched fingers. I must have instinctively grabbed it off the floor before fleeing my bedroom. Did I actually have the presence of mind to snap pics of this nightmare unfolding in real time beneath my bedroom window? I open the photo app. Yes.

After scrolling through a few photos of men in black, their identities obscured by masks and helmets, I fire off a text to my neighbor asking what the hell is happening. 

Surely Sandy* is awake. A glorified military operation is unfolding just feet away. The lights of Armageddon must be shining on her driveway across the street.

Seconds later, dancing dots indicate a forthcoming response….

“Welcome to the police state.” Angry emoji. 

Sandy’s one line reply doesn’t surprise me. We’re both painfully aware that we live behind enemy lines, in the reddest of red states. 

Nevertheless, we live in Hollywood South, a blue island adrift in a red sea. In a quiet, quasi-affluent neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. Burglaries and vandalism occasionally pierce the calm facade, but nothing of this magnitude. Until now.

My daughter and I remain crouched on the upstairs floor. Sunlight filters through a nearby skylight.  It’s officially morning. And with light comes silence. An eerie stillness follows.

It’s shortly after seven, according to my phone. No jarring sounds for close to thirty minutes. So I slowly rise from the catwalk floor to peer through the skylight. The SWAT tank is still parked in front of my neighbor’s condo and a throng of black-clad cops holding long guns remain behind talking with a couple of uniformed officers. Constructing a narrative, I suppose.

My neighbor, a Metro firefighter, is talking to one of the uniforms. Apparently, the curtain is up on the performance and the audience is free to move about.

I walk outside and righteously stride across the lawn to ask our neighborhood civil servant WTF. 

It was a DEA/ICE/SWAT alphabet soup-splatter mission to arrest a suspected pot dealer, according to my neighbor. Matthew is bleary-eyed and sporting sleepwear.

“Well, did they arrest him?” Given my daughter and I have been traumatized by a military op unfolding in our backyard, it would be nice to know if this spectacular theatrical event had yielded a “high-value” criminal. 

Nope. 

Turns out, the “suspect” wasn’t even home, explains my bemused neighbor with a slight eyeroll. His backyard, like my driveway, had been ground zero for the pre-dawn raid. After witnessing a group of heavily armed guys race through his yard under the cover of darkness, Matthew, like me, assumed a crime was in progress. So he had called 911, only to be told that it was their guys. Just stay indoors, advised the dispatcher. Nothing to see.

As luck would have it, our street was scheduled to be repaved that morning. So in order to avoid getting his car towed, our resident Walter White had presciently decided to spend the night elsewhere, according to Matthew. Adhering to HOA rules saved the guy’s ass, and in the process, had rendered the whole theatrical production a farce. Define irony.

Did they even knock at the door before tossing grenades, I wonder.

Paving trucks line the street as we part ways, the acrid smell of asphalt replacing the misery of the morning.

Other neighbors loiter in my front yard, debating the disturbing events of the morning. “I’m so glad the President is protecting us,” crows one neighbor, Kool-Aid– excuse me– coffee in hand. Her next door neighbor snaps back, “the Gestapo is alive and well.” Verbal finger-flipping. Mutual glares. Permanent enmity. Rinse and repeat.

Yet another neighbor, playing the role of mediator, claims she’s fine with keeping the neighborhood safe, but wishes we could have skipped this morning’s dramatic events. A late arrival to the party pauses from walking her dog long enough to inquire about what’s caused everyone to gather round this morning. Apparently, she slept through the morning from hell.

Split screen reaction to the same event. The new abnormal.

Before long, the fractious group retreats to their respective bunkers and beliefs, a crushing wave of anomie slamming shut doors and minds.

Noon

Tuesday

We’ll calm our frayed nerves with tacos, I promise my daughter. Guacamole is a soothing salve for sorrows of all sizes. Besides, it’s Taco Tuesday, a long-standing tradition in our house. 

Several of our friends who work at the nearby taco shop are DACA recipients and now find themselves hanging by a thread in legal limbo. They are not surprised by my tale of woe. Every one of them has a friend or family member who has suddenly “disappeared” recently.

“Is he Mexican?” Victoria inquires. “They think we’re all drug dealers, you know.” She smiles resignedly. She may be a Dreamer, but Victoria harbors no illusions about her precarious immigration status. Nor her status as a person living in a country where discrimination and deportation are daily occurrences.

“No,” I reply with a nervous laugh. Eyeroll. A beat. And then… a creeping sense of shame. We both know my neighborhood is American Pie White. We both know my zip code is supposed to be exempt from pre-dawn shock and awe missions. 

“Well, he will be by the time the 5:00 news comes on,” Victoria predicts.

We’ve had some variation of this conversation every Tuesday since 2017. Two women, one White, the other Latina, both trying to navigate life in the reddest of red states. A place that, for very different reasons, now feels unsafe to both of us. 

Unlike me, however, Victoria can be (and has been) detained solely on the basis of her skin color. Unlike me, Victoria is single-handedly raising four kids. And unlike me, she cannot hide in the shadows of privilege. She is physically worn out whereas I have the luxury of claiming existential exhaustion. In many ways, we live in parallel universes that intersect only on Taco Tuesday. 

Despite her growing sense of fatalism, Victoria still believes in the fundamental goodness of people. She perseveres against the odds. And she remains a loyal friend whose kindness and generosity to me during the isolating days of the pandemic and my husband’s subsequent cancer battle made a wretched half-decade marginally bearable. 

One of us born on the right side of an arbitrary line, the other not so lucky. Geographical determinism. Inevitable. And inescapable.

5:00 p.m.

Tuesday

BREAKING NEWS:

Federal Drug Investigations Underway In Nashville

The locals news app on my cellphone blasts out few details:

“Neighbors in West Nashville and Madison woke up to SWAT teams, DEA agents, and heavily armed officers Tuesday morning as multiple raids unfolded across the city.”  Stay tuned….

Meanwhile:

DEA Dismantles MS-13 Cell in Nashville, screams the headline posted on their official government website. “The residents of Nashville are safer today now that these dangerous individuals will be held accountable for their destructive actions. Today’s enforcement actions are not the last. More will follow….”

Neither the local news nor the DEA website provide any further details. Predictably, most residents in the affected neighborhoods are unwilling to speak with local reporters. Only a few voice concerns anonymously and off-camera, stating they fear reprisal. And then the story just vanishes from the news.

So our Walter White wannabe got an official makeover. From American to member of a Foreign Terrorist Organization. From suspected pot dealer to Pablo Escobar in one news cycle. A star is born. Just as Victoria predicted.

Even the infamous Squealer would blush at the chutzpah of this administration’s spin cycle.   

Tuesday

Evening

My daughter and I take a long walk around the neighborhood, hoping to shake off the disturbing events of the day. Process the propaganda. Distill the truth from terror. And discuss options like dual citizenship. We gotta get out of this place has become the soundtrack of our lives. Now more than ever.

The redbuds and Japanese maples lining our meticulously planned urban neighborhood are scorched brown from a prolonged drought that continues to plague this part of the state. Children linger around the community pool as the sun sets. A woman serves across the net to her partner on the newly repaved tennis court. A blast of humid air hits us as we round the corner that separates the non-descript condos from the California-style homes on our street.

And then we see it. The scene of the crime.

A large piece of plywood covers both the sliding glass balcony door and the patio door. The condo’s former doors carpet the lawn. Shards of jagged glass glint in the fading sunlight. Crime scene tape stretches across the front door. Elephant Ears and clusters of Black-eyed Susan frame the patio and remain largely unscathed. A stark contrast between malevolence and nature. 

“Who’s going to pay for all that damage,” my daughter wants to know.    

“Since homeowner policies don’t typically cover DEA raids, I’m guessing the elderly man on his hands and knees picking up chunks of glass,” I reply. The actual owner, that is. The Most Wanted Guy, aka, his tenant, hasn’t returned home. 

Bygones.

Three weeks later

We stop in front of the still boarded-up condo to talk to Sandy and her husband, who are also out for an evening stroll. The four of us stare in disbelief at the scene in front of us. The front door is open and someone is watching television. Looking no worse for the wear. The Black-eyed Susan is still vibrant with blooms. The crime scene tape is gone. All peachy keen. 

Mistakes happen, I suppose. Maybe it had been the wrong address. An ax to grind. Or maybe it was to make a point. A jarring reminder that no zip code is beyond the reach of injustice.

If not for the plywood still nailed haphazardly against the patio door, the camera roll on my phone, screenshots of the initial news bulletins, and lingering PTSD symptoms, I’d question whether or not the events of that distant Tuesday morning had really happened. None of the legacy news outlets followed up after the initial news story. Their websites provided no information. As if Trauma Tuesday never happened. Fake news.

Turns out, Squealer was right: some animals are more equal than others. 

Back at the house, I dig out our passports. Still a couple of years before they expire. Still time to save ourselves from the relentless wave of anomie. Sauve qui peut.   

Victoria recently texted that she’s decided to self-deport. She’s going home on her terms. And I’m going to find a home on my terms. Maybe retrace my Irish grandparents’ steps back across the pond. 

I set our passports down and text Victoria:

We gotta get out of this place… and we will. Heart emoji. And fingers crossed. For all who stay. 

*All names herein have been changed to protect the truly innocent.