It Occurs to Me That I Am America

by Richard Russo

  Afterward, he caught his breath, gave her a peck on the forehead, and went for his clothes. She could have guessed that he would not want to stay. Still, she felt a choking grief, as if she had finally inhaled a toxic smog that had been closing in on her for some time. “Don’t feel like you have to leave,” she managed.

  “I’ve got a long drive—and I have plans tomorrow.” He appeared to take note of her blue button that read STRONGER TOGETHER. She had gotten it at the Women’s March and had clipped it to her curtain.

  “This country sucks,” she said. “Even more since November eighth.” She might never have the heart to take down that button.

  “Well, people picked who they wanted.”

  “No, the Electoral College did. I didn’t. The popular vote didn’t.”

  “I guess that’s part of the deal,” he said, reaching for his shirt.

  “Well, the deal sucks too.” How was she more upset about this than he was? “Wait, you didn’t vote for—”

  “If I’d voted, I guess I would have gone for Hillary, but honestly, she reminded me of this stuck-up teacher I had at Horace Mann. I did kind of like Bernie. But in this blue state? My vote wasn’t going to change any damn thing.”

  “God. What if everyone said that?”

  “You’re funny. You’re cute.” Now dressed, he moved toward her and set a few fingers on her tattoo again. “I am enough.” He chuckled. “I should go. I’ll see you at the shelter sometime?”

  “Yeah,” she said, tugging the sheet over her chest. “You want me to walk back to your car with you?” She had no image of where he might be headed, no clue even where in the city or in which borough he lived.

  “That’s all right. I’m good.”

  • • •

  Joelle’s father had a lumpectomy. America suffered through a long bout of kennel cough, after which Joelle began to toy with the idea of adopting the dog herself. She Ventures found a new investor, a motorboat heiress from Albany, as well as Aruna, an administrative assistant who had recently moved up here from Brooklyn with her husband and young son. Joelle continued in vain to try to limit her consumption of news. There were so many articles online, more and more details revealed about the president’s entanglements with Russia, the rapid-fire executive orders that punished everyone from women to immigrants to disabled children to wolf pups.

  Several weeks after their evening together, she and Anthony were scheduled to cover the same shift again at the dog shelter. She had often replayed the evening, and each time cringed at the words she had used, although if she had to say or do things differently, she was unsure just how she would.

  That Saturday morning, he showed up at the shelter, his goatee now grown in, a girl of about twelve or thirteen beside him. She looked a little like him. He introduced her as Eve, his niece.

  “Hey,” the girl said.

  “Nice to meet you,” Joelle said. Maybe it was good that Eve was here. Her presence could mitigate the inevitable awkwardness.

  Eve wore red cat-eye glasses and a purple-and-white-striped scarf. She was adorable. Although Candace had a strict age threshold for volunteers—no one under sixteen—Joelle offered to take Eve’s mint-green jacket.

  “No thanks,” the girl said. “It’s freezing in here. And it smells like toilets.”

  Anthony chuckled and said, “She’s not wrong.”

  Joelle held forth the dog food bowl of butterscotches that Candace kept on the front counter, but Eve said, “I don’t eat sugar. No one should. Do you know what sugar does to a body?”

  “I do,” Joelle said, returning the bowl to its place. She reminded herself that this girl had lost her father.

  Eve went off to look at the pamphlets about dog adoption and health.

  “You’ve been okay?” Anthony asked Joelle.

  “Pretty okay. My father had his surgery and it looks like they got all the cancer.”

  “Cancer?”

  Hadn’t she told him that night? She swore that she had at the pizza restaurant, when they talked about their families. “In his, well, his chest.”

  “Oh man. My uncle had lymphoma. It was rough for a while, but he’s fine now.”

  A few dogs barked and a sad howl rose up and wound through the place like a silk ribbon. “That’s America,” she said. “You know what? I’ve been thinking of taking her home myself.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” she said. The other day, she had mentioned it to Candace, who reacted with relief. “In fact, I will. I just decided. I’ll bring her home later. Why not?”

  “Lucky girl,” he said with a surprised look.

  Eve returned to them and complained again about the smell.

  Anthony said, “How about we go back and see the dogs?”

  Joelle grabbed a few Milk-Bones, and the three headed toward the swinging door.

  “These are some really sorry-looking animals,” Eve said, standing at the center of the loud room. “Who’s going to want them?”

  “It’s a shelter, Evie,” Anthony said.

  “It’s a dump.”

  “Maybe you could make them some clothes? Some cute dog shirts and stuff? Evie sews,” Anthony told Joelle. “She made me a bag for my laptop, and she sewed a shirt for her mom.”

  “Wow, nice,” Joelle said. She imagined America and the others ambling around in dog-sized coats, dog-sized shirts, carrying dog-sized bags.

  “Um, no thanks,” Eve said. “Anthony, how long do we have to be here?”

  He did not answer.

  Joelle wandered to the last pen, where America stood, staring out at them, her teddy bear torso and a fleece Yankees blanket wadded up behind her. Anthony and Eve followed.

  “Would you hate it if I changed America’s name?” Joelle asked Anthony. The president was about to sign an executive order repealing all legal protections for wolves and bears. In a tweet that morning, he had accused the previous president of tapping his phones before the election. The country might never be the same again. “America is a really big name for a dog. And that flag factory where she was found? For all we know, it made POW or rainbow flags and not American flags.”

  “Go for it,” he said.

  “I’ve been thinking I might call her Iris. She has two different-colored irises, but I also just like the name. And the flower too. You sure you don’t mind?”

  “Of course not. Why would I?” He had only volunteered a few times, hardly enough to grow attached to any of the dogs.

  America, or Iris, watched them standing there outside her pen now. She rose up awkwardly on her three legs and went to lick Joelle’s hand through the bars.

  Eve said, “Oh my God. You let that disgusting thing lick you?”

  “Evie,” Anthony said.

  The girl spun around and marched off, and Anthony followed her.

  Joelle watched them disappear through the swinging door. Was it possible for a person to age twenty years in just six months? She went to unlatch the dog’s cage and held out a bone for America, who snapped it up and cracked it between her teeth, gazing up kindly. Iris. Maybe it was too late, even cruel to change the dog’s name now, after all she had been through. There was no way to know how long she had been chained up outside Chattanooga, how she had lost her leg or what brand of hell she had endured before that.

  When Joelle knelt down and looked directly into the dog’s green and brown eyes, one and then the other, the only thing she saw was the reflection of herself.

  “What a good girl,” Joelle told the dog. When she crunched the rest of the bone between her rear teeth, America almost looked as if she was grinning.

  HEIDI PITLOR has been the series editor of The Best American Short Stories since 2007. With Lorrie Moore, she coedited 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories. She is the author of the novels The Birthdays and The Daylight Marriage, and is currently working on her third novel. Her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Huffington Post, and elsewhere. She teaches
at the low-residency MFA program at Regis University in Denver and lives outside Boston with her husband and twin daughter and son.

  S. J. ROZAN

  * * *

  If They Come in the Morning

  Finally, they came again.

  I knew always that they would.

  The first time when they came I was fourteen years old. This was 1944. For me they came, and for my little brother, Ludvik. Ludvik: Chaim his name was, in Hebrew. It means life.

  They put us in a truck, the children only.

  Our Mami had died before the War. So endlessly sorrowful it seemed to us then, but no. She never knew what happened, so for her it was a blessing. Tati by the time the truck came was also gone. I knew: the SS troops shot him, they took the men away and shot them all. Grandmother didn’t tell me and I didn’t tell Ludvik, but I knew.

  Ludvik was mine to raise after Mami died, mine and Grandmother’s. She said I must be Ludvik’s Little Mami. Tati was sweet, and funny, but so sad about Mami, and children? You might have thought we were from the moon. Sometimes his face became so puzzled, he tilted his head so far trying to understand us—Ludvik and I had to laugh.

  Ludvik laughed a lot. He was a happy boy, full of jokes and pranks. Grandmother and I tried to shield him from what was happening around us. This was not really possible, especially after the men were taken away, but I think he understood we were trying and so he pretended. And he had such a happy nature.

  Early one morning, a neighbor ran to Grandmother to say a truck was coming to take away the children. Grandmother’s face went white and she tried to hide us. She told us to lie flat on the bed slats and she put the mattress over us and made up the bed. The mattress was heavy, the slats were hard and I held Ludvik’s hand, though he was eight years old and not a baby. We lay facing the floor, trying to breathe between the slats. We heard pounding on the door, then men’s voices yelling. Pots crashed in the kitchen and dishes broke. Boots stomped closer; the men came into the bedroom. They threw the closet open, pulled the wardrobe down. It crashed to the floor. Great-grandmother’s bowl fell from the top of it and shattered.

  Then the coverlet flew off the bed. The mattress, that heavy weight, was lifted off and Ludvik was pulled from my hand. Then I, too, was pulled up. I staggered. Grandmother was crying, she was on her knees. She begged them not to take us. A soldier hit her with the back of his hand, sent her sprawling across the floor. He grabbed up Ludvik under his arm like a sack and carried him out of the room, out of the house. Ludvik kicked. The soldier punched him. Grandmother wailed. Hands pushed me forward and I went, stumbling out the door. The soldier threw Ludvik onto the back of a truck already filled with children, some crying, some frozen in silence. The soldier grinned at me, a horrible face, and he pointed. I climbed onto the truck, skinning my knee.

  The journey was very long. More children were picked up, loaded together with us. Many of them we knew. We were friends, we had played together, had gone to school together when that was still allowed to Jews. The older children stood so the babies had room to sit. Ludvik insisted on standing, too, with me. So many were crying. As it got dark, and cold, the crying slowly stopped. Everyone huddled together, trying to keep warm.

  Late at night the truck drove through the gate of a place we’d never seen. It stopped and loud-voiced men told us to get out, to line up. The lights shone very bright. The soldiers went down the line and I could see: they were pulling out the older girls, taking them away. When a soldier came to me he ordered me to step forward. I heard my voice shaking as I said to him I would do anything they wanted—I knew full well what they wanted, it terrified me—anything they wanted, but please let my little brother come with me.

  Skinny, he was, this soldier, with glittering, small eyes. He said, You will do whatever we want, in any case. Which is your brother? I showed him.

  Step forward, he said to Ludvik. Ludvik took a step and reached out his hand to me.

  The soldier raised his pistol and fired.

  The noise was very loud. Another child screamed. Ludvik made no sound. Eyes still open, his hand still held out, he fell forward in the dirt. I tried to run to him but another soldier lifted me and dragged me away. I kicked and shrieked. He hit me hard.

  • • •

  For nearly a year I was there. I sat in a room, on a bed, waiting for the men. The things they did to me, I won’t describe to you. Some of the other girls I could hear screaming or sobbing in their rooms. Some of them died.

  When no man was there I watched out the window in case Ludvik was not dead, in case he had only been hurt and would soon march past carrying a shovel or pushing a wheelbarrow. As other little boys did. The boys whose sisters had not tried to save them.

  When the Americans came, I hardly knew. They gave us clothes and blankets and they gave us food, and I ate and wrapped myself but I thought they were just more men and would do more things to me. They moved us, the older girls, to a different building. Then, a few days later, again in trucks, they took us to another place. A different kind of camp, they said, but it was the same to me. Doctors examined us. They asked my name but I didn’t speak. Since Ludvik died, I hadn’t spoken. Do you not know your name? one man asked gently. I knew what my name had been before I came here, but now, I was someone else. Her name, I didn’t know.

  So I said nothing, and went wherever in the new camp they told me, and sat in my blanket, and ate the food they brought, and waited for the men.

  But no men came.

  What happened was, they brought the children.

  From where, I don’t know. Young children, skinny and crying and scared. Some they carried in, some walked. They had beds for them in another big room past the room for us. One little boy tried to walk with the others but he was unsteady and he fell down, right in front of my bed. He looked so sad but he didn’t cry. He just sat where he’d fallen, watching as the Americans led the other children away. After a time I got out of my blanket, picked him up, and carried him back with me. I wrapped us up together and rocked him, and he fell asleep. When he stirred and started to cry, Hush, I said.

  • • •

  I stayed in that camp, a relocation camp it was, for two years. I ate and grew strong. I helped with the children. From the soldiers I learned English. The people in charge, many different agencies, they tried to find families, if anyone was left. Many children had no families anymore, or didn’t know who their families had been, knew only Momma and Pappa, Mami and Tati.

  In the end the camp was closed. The children who no longer had families were taken in by families who no longer had children, or by agencies in Israel, in Canada, in America.

  I had no family; I was sent to America, here to this quiet, pretty town. A kind couple whose son died in the War took me into their home, sent me to school. I will not say their names because both are gone now and I do not want their memory dishonored by what has come after.

  All my life since I came here I have lived in this town. I did not marry. After the camp, never again would I let a man touch me. I went to college and became a teacher. In the public school I taught and also in the Hebrew school in the town’s single synagogue, Temple Sinai. Why did I do this? After all that had happened, all I had seen, did I still believe in a benevolent God? Or at least, a righteous one, a God who would avenge the wrongs done to His people?

  I did not.

  I taught in the Hebrew school because these children, these beautiful children, they had to know who they were. If knowledge is in any way truly power, then knowing the past would help them be prepared, more prepared than we had been, when the Nazis came.

  But knowledge is not the only power. Very early, I bought a gun. I would not be helpless again.

  • • •

  And to our quiet town, our pretty town in the middle of America, more than seventy years later, the Nazis came.

  Neo-Nazis, they call them; alt-right, and skinheads, and nativists. We have now a president who allows it, who says some of them are
fine people. I know who they are. The swastikas on their armbands and the eagles on their flags, I know. Their loud voices and mean faces, their fists, I know.

  The Nazis decided they would march here, down our Main Street, from the playing fields—the children’s playing fields!—to City Hall. In our town we have many churches. To one of them most of the black people go, Mount Horeb Baptist Church. It sits down the street from Temple Sinai. Sinai and Horeb: different names for the same mountain. The route these Nazis chose went in front of both.

  We knew the route in advance because the mayor announced it. We cannot stop them from coming but we will fight them with knowledge, he said. And with peace. Everyone along the route, close your doors, stay inside, turn your backs. Deny them what they want: attention.

  We were not sure. At Mount Horeb Church, they also were not sure. The minister came to meet with our rabbi. His Elders came, and our Board of Assembly, and we met together. We discussed and debated and together we prayed. In the end there was no vote: consensus was unanimous. Peace, yes, we agreed; but we would be seen. We did not think the Nazis wanted only attention. We thought—I knew—they wanted to frighten us. To scare us into hiding ourselves. Once they saw we were scared, they would grow stronger. So we refused.

  They came at night. Lifting high their torches, they stomped and chanted, they shouted and saluted. We saw them coming up the street. Our congregations had chosen to mix ourselves together. In front of Temple Sinai and also in front of Mount Horeb Church Jews stood silently. Black people stood at Mount Horeb and at Temple Sinai. Men and women together, in lines. Also with us, many people from the town, neither Jew nor black but people who wanted also to be seen.

  The children had been told to stay at home, but at Temple Sinai the recent bar and bat mitzvahs, the thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds, had a meeting the adults did not know about. They took a vote and came out as one to stand in the lines. We are adults now, said their spokesman, a boy whose voice had not yet broken. We share the responsibility for our community.