Refugees

"You must take them in." 

The first time I heard those words, I turned to look if someone was speaking over my shoulder. There was no one else; the words were whisperings inside my own head. 

I was in fourth grade, making a model of the constellation Taurus, in the basement of our three-bedroom house. Every cell of my body was afraid of that voice in my own head. This was not something I could say to anyone else.  

I had other intimations. Some of those visits I can remember clearly; others are lost. "You must take them in. You must take them in." That one I remember hearing again and again.

It's the summer before fourth grade. The last day of summer camp. Rain pounding so loud no one can hear what's happening. "If you tell anyone," he says, "I will kill you," one arm tight around my neck, the other tight over my mouth so it was very hard to breathe. 

I tried to tell them: my parents, my sister, our housekeeper. I spoke in words so general, perhaps they did not understand. Or they understood, but the structures of power were such they could not or would not do anything. Any of those things, and all of those things are possible. No one helped me at the time. About that, everyone agrees.  

"You must take them in." To get myself through, I become prescient, hyper-vigilant, anticipating his every step. Listening to the world in exceptional detail, small and alone, the most important words locked inside, I kept myself safe most of the time. 

The memories fade far away; the vigilance remains. I started to remember after my first daughter was born. I was a bundle of raw emotion, and not even I knew where it came from or when it would erupt. I did enough work to push it back down. 

In the fall of 2008, after my three children had left home, it started happening again: sleepless, agitated, spinning. "You must take them in." I started studying storytelling and teaching high school students how to tell their own stories. 

Then the video of Trump walking off a bus and boasting about how he assaults women. Before I could stop myself, I thrust my own story out through the internet. A friend from childhood answered, "You are not crazy; it happened to me too." 

These were not coordinated attacks; they were just the things guys were allowed to do to girls in the 1970s in the small town where I grew up. No one stopped them.

It is late 2020, nearly a year of social distancing, and I hear the words again and again: "You must take them in. You must take them in. You must take them in." 

The words, almost physical, refer to so many different things: My own trauma. Surviving in this life and past lives. Refugees. The lost bits in all of us. The trauma in all of us. And the particular, specific trauma of being a Black or indigenous person in the United States of America. Your body shackled and imprisoned, your lands stolen, your stories written over to protect the perpetrators. It is as if I have experienced it, though it was not in this life. 

Between Christmas and New Year's Day, I experienced something I have come to describe as "soul sadness." I was physically sick. The categories in my mind were shifting, making room for something new. Refugees. Runaway parts of myself. Intimations of almost crushing loss liberated by all-consuming faith. 

I've had these moments before. They take me over. They are exhilarating and horrifying at once. They are evanescent. They dissipate, leaving only traces. 

The work of repair is simple, once we see this. Prophets of every religion have seen and done this work of repair. Picking up trash, carrying water, feeding people who are hungry and whose smell offends you. Tending to the sick, the dying, the dead.  

We need to clean up the mess we have made, again and again, as the people, the governments in charge. Repair is always already, reparation. We apologize. We clear out our mess. We pay for the damage we have created, and we dismantle the systems that perpetuate despair. That is how we atone. That is how we heal. 

Once we stop trying to fix things, we can repair everything. Once we accept the enormity and simplicity of the work. Once we see our own complicity and forgive ourselves. Accept the lost bits of ourselves. The parts that did evil thinking it was just, or not thinking, or being so numb in our own sadness we could not see the other person right in front of us asking for shelter and care.

Yes that is all we need to do with the lost ones, the disinherited ones, the fear and fright and sadness, inside ourselves and others: love them, tend them, take them in. 

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