Page 24 of Longing for Liberty
When we got to the high school, yellow buses were lined up with a table out front manned by police. We passed through a station where we were patted down and scanned for weapons. An old lady held a fluffy white dog and was arguing with a cop. The whole parking lot was chaos.
As we waited in line, I took a squirming baby Clara into my arms and bounced her. At the front of the line, we gave our names and they found us on a clipboard. The police looked at Jeremy and then Damari.
“You’re in bus 203,” he said to Jeremy. “And you’re 5608,” to Damari.
I poked my head between the men. “Can we stay together?”
“No,” the man said sternly. “It’s by name.”
“Please?” I begged.
“I saidno, lady.”
“Okay, all right, take it easy,” Jeremy said, putting an arm around me and glaring at the man, who leaned to the side to look past us.
“Move along! Next in line!”
Annoyed, we stepped aside, and I handed Clara back to Paola, hugging her again, and then Damari. The air was thick with stressed energy as we said our goodbyes and see-you-soons, heading to our bus numbers and wondering where they might take us. This was crazy. Everything felt wrong. I understood that bombs had dropped, and we were supposedly under attack, but why the sense of hostility?
My body hunched forward on the bus, my face in my hands, panic tearing through me like a live, rabid thing. My stomach was so knotted that my ab muscles ached as if I’d been beaten. Jeremy rubbed my back, whispering things like, “It’s okay. We’ll be back home soon. The kids are safe. Just breathe.”
Yes. I had to speak positive affirmations to myself because anxiety was throwing worst-case scenarios at me from every direction.
I finally calmed enough to sit up and look outside at the busy parking lot. I wasn’t sure why armed personnel were everywhere, half of them in plain clothes, or how there were so many of them gathered on such short notice. I guess to keep the peace if people freaked out about the attack? But their presence definitely wasn’t calming.
A couple with three kids was checked off and pointed toward the bus in front of ours. The woman after them was pointed to the bus on the side of Damari and Paola’s. This went on for a few groups, and I noticed something.
All of the people being directed to buses on the other side were…not white. A quick scan of our bus found us all to be white. But there was no way…I was being paranoid, right?
I tapped Jeremy’s shoulder to make him look out the window—he was fiddling with his phone.
“Are they separating us by race?” I asked him. He leaned over me, and other people turned to look, too. Sure enough, white people to one side, everyone else to the other. A blinding fear lanced through me.
“What the hell?” Jeremy murmured.
“Why are they doing that?” I asked, fear ratcheting my voice higher. I got to my feet, staring out, willing them to prove me wrong. A Filipino family was next…and was pointed toward the non-white bus. “This is wrong!” I shouted.
Jeremy gently took my arm. “Libby.”
“Shut up, lady!” shouted the man in front of us, who’d turned to yell at me. “There’s a fucking war going on, in case you didn’t notice! Let them do their job!”
Jeremy stood now, too, saying, “Don’t tell her to shut up. She has a right to be worried.”
“They’re segregating people!” I tried to get past Jeremy, but he grabbed my waist now. “Stop!” I pushed at his hands. “We have to stop them?—”
A child on the bus started to cry as some people stood and started shouting, arguing with one another.
I looked at Jeremy. “What about Damari and Paola? What if something bad happens?”
He didn’t deny it or try to downplay how strange this was. He looked out the window with a crease between his eyes like he was trying to figure out what to do.
An older woman said loudly, “They probably just want people to feel safe and secure…” Her voice trailed off, and I felt my eyes bulge.
“Oh, with theirownkind?” I asked. “These are our neighbors!”
“Hey!” We all turned to the front of a bus where one of the military men stood with his massive gun held upward, finger on the trigger. “Everyone, sit down!”
People quickly sat, except me. Jeremy was half in the aisle, as if ready to run, his hand protectively on my lower back.
