Page 12 of Longing for Liberty
He looked at his watch. “Come on. It’s almost six. I invited Stanley and Rebecca for dinner. You up for that?”
I gave him a small smile and said, “Sure.” Their company would be a good distraction from these thoughts.
FIVE
STATE NEWS: NEW LAW ENACTED FOR ADULTERY: FIRST OFFENSE STOCKS, SECOND OFFENSE HANGING
Gatheringsof more than four persons were not allowed inside worker housing, not that the stunted spaces could hold more than that anyway. As we turned the corner, Stanley and Rebecca were already at our door.
“Hey, there they are!” Stanley said in his fun-loving voice. He held up a container. “I brought dessert!”
“Dessert!” I said, cheering a bit, even as I wondered how he got something sweet.
Rebecca rolled her eyes as Jeremy let us in. “He won twelve dollars playing the lottery. I can’t keep him off it.”
Stanley eyed her as he set the slice of cake on our counter. “You’re welcome.”
I gasped. “Is that strawberry?”
“It’s a mix of strawberry, blueberry, and raspberry cake with cream custard.”
Berries were hard to grow in our patch.
I covered my mouth against a moan, and Rebecca nudged me. “Don’t encourage him!”
Our cellular phones had a few uses. Calls, texts, news from the government, generic game apps like Solitaire, and the lottery app. The working class was essentially paid by being given our basic needs of housing, communal gardens that we had to plant, tend, and divide ourselves, wound care, and a ration each month of wheat flour, cooking oil, and a protein. This month had been ground beef. On top of that, we were each given a few dollars a week as our paycheck. We used our extra money for things like salt, butter, honey, toiletries, and women’s upkeep. Women were still expected to be beautiful, so nail polish, hair tools, and makeup were still luxuries that most used.
Since saving enough money to move up in the world was no longer an option, many used their extra funds to play the online lottery, which was run by the government. But every now and then, someone won enough for a special treat.
Jeremy handed me the basil, which I tore into small pieces and stirred into the “sauce” of stewed crushed tomatoes. Garlic would be amazing, but we’d run out a month ago. I twirled the rosemary in my hand and gave it another sniff as I leaned against the counter.
“Ooh, rosemary,” Rebecca said, waving a paper fan with a strong arm to cool herself. “Are you making bread soon?”
I gave her a small smile. “Just waiting on the next batch of flour.”
“Nice.” She grinned, and I wondered for the millionth time about Rebecca pre-war. She was not a small woman. Rebecca was as tall as Jeremy and had the kind of body structure that female bodybuilders had…back when women were permitted to work out like that. Her jawline was cut like a runway model, and she kept her brown hair down, tucked behind her ears, also wearing minimal makeup like me. The plain dress just looked silly on her.
I envisioned pre-war Rebecca as “Bec,” having short hair and a lip ring with a sticker on her laptop that said ‘I heart tiddies.’
A quiet sigh escaped me as I took out plates and began setting the table. Rebecca, not bothering to ask, opened the silverware drawer and grabbed the forks. We were in the process of laying everything down when a dark figure stepped into the window view outside. I tensed and felt Rebecca do the same, although neither of us stopped what we were doing or looked at the State forceman patrolling. Seconds later, he was gone, and I let out the breath.
In the living room, the conversation between Stanley and Jeremy went quiet for a brief moment as I knew they saw the State forceman walking past their window as well. I peered down at the four place settings with unseeing eyes, waiting for my nerves to settle.
Stanley had worked in hotel hospitality before the war and now helped oversee the housing commission. He was slightly shorter than his wife and very thin with a voice that was slightly too…sweet compared to other men in the State. And he loved to laugh. The things I adored about them were the very things that made me terrified for them. Rebecca and Stanley were in their early fifties and had two adult children. I was fairly certain the kids were Rebecca’s from when she was younger, before she’d probably come out as a lesbian, and that she and Stanley had coupled as a marriage of convenience when the government began rounding up the LGBTQIA+ community.
I carried a lot of guilt for how little I paid attention when our country first began to fall apart. With a young child and a toddler, my television played cartoons, not the news. And I’d been too exhausted to scroll much social media in the evenings, especially once I was pregnant with my third. I recalled Jeremy coming home from work those days with a tension crease between his eyebrows. When I asked what was wrong, he’d tried to protect me from what was going on, saying it was a rough day at work.
It was my mom who’d called to tell me about the nationwide rollbacks on gay rights. My mom seemed a little crazed, like she’d fallen down a political rabbit hole, which was unlike her, and it freaked me out. She said a string of violence across the country was being blamed on the gay community: homemade bombs placed at hundreds of courthouses and schools in a coordinated attack, eleven judges and their family members assassinated as they left their homes, and fifty-seven churches bombed in the south…during Sunday service. The footage was horrific.
I’d immediately called my friend from high school, Hannah, whose sister was gay, and she confirmed how terrible things had gotten. Nobody in the LGBTQIA+ community was owning up to any of it. It made no sense and was wildly out of character based on the people I knew. She invited me to an upcoming peaceful protest in D.C., and I tried to make plans to go, but my usual babysitters were unavailable.
Apparently, so many people went “live” on social media platforms that day that the three major video platforms crashed, and nothing was on the regular news about it. Afterward, when it was finally covered, we learned the protest was massive and had become violent. The news said protesters came with homemade bombs and other weapons. I’d found it hard to believe that the protesters had attacked law enforcement first, no matter how scared or cornered the marchers might’ve felt. Perhaps I was naive, but my gut said differently.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters were rounded up on buses that day, not just in D.C. but in major cities across the U.S. The news said they were taken to be questioned and charged, but I never heard from Hannah or her sister again. I became frantic at that point, obsessed with seeking information. I still got chills thinking about how close I’d been to going—how close my children had come to being without a mother. The last time I talked to Hannah’s mom, she was headed to the police station to file missing person reports on her daughters. I must have called her a hundred times after that, and she never answered or responded to any of my texts.
Jeremy’s phone timer went off, signaling the pasta was done, and ripping me from the disturbing past. If my intuition was right about Rebecca and Stanley being in a lavender marriage, I wondered how many friends they had lost, and how they’d managed to escape it all.
“Okay, everyone,” I said, hoping to shake off the bitter memories of the round-ups. “You guys have a seat.”
