This was just published in AmjamboAfrica, a local newspaper that helps new Mainers thrive and helps Maine welcome and benefit from our new neighbors.
One recent afternoon, I knelt on my bedroom floor, trying to remove a spot from the carpet. There I received a text from my asylum-seeking pal at work. “ICE is in Maine, in my neighborhood.” He attached a photo of masked men standing next to their black trucks. Three men. Three trucks.
I knew my immigrant friends were feeling despair. I texted, “oh, no!”
He wrote. “I’m not a criminal.”
My breath stopped. My anxious heart beat faster. I scrubbed a little harder on the stain.
He added, “I’m worried.”
I nodded and typed, “Of course you’re worried. How could you not be?”
“I haven’t done anything wrong.”
I heard his fear. “I know, my friend.”
My mind couldn’t steady itself in this country’s mess. So, my thoughts lost focus and flew around. Is scrubbing, rubbing or pressing the best way to clean the carpet’s mess?
I wrote, “I’m so sorry for the terror in America, horrors that you came here to escape.”
I put my hands in prayer position and thought, maybe we should all be on our knees apologizing.
He continued, “There is so much anxiety. People in my community are afraid to go to work. Kids are scared to go to school. We are cancelling our doctors’ appointments. We’re missing Church.”
“Uh-oh,” I thought, “He never misses Church.”
My chin dropped to my chest and then nodded as I felt his message of isolation. “Yes, I know. I’m so ashamed of this country. I really care about you. Is it safe anywhere?”
“I don’t know. Only God knows.”
“There is so much unknown.”
So that he would at least know his rights, I emailed him the ACLU guidelines.
“I have to get back to work. Here is my boss’s number. You’ll need it if they take me.”
We clicked out. I cried, shook my head no with the improbability of erasing the stains in this country, the old ones from our history of Native genocide, slavery, the Jim Crow South, the KKK. And now this new one.
I stood up to search for carpet stain remover. I found one on the basement shelf with cleaners that promise to remove scum from showers, spills on wooden floors. I lifted the bottle of Spot Out, which suggested applying some on the stain and using a clean white cloth to wipe the stain away.
My gut tightened with the words, “wipe the stain away.” None of this felt clean to me.
I hoped this liquid formula would help my carpet, and I hoped for a new formula and unbreakable promises to address this nation’s stains. Old stains are hard to remove, old stains that have existed since this country’s founding. And now this new stain haunts us.
I read the next step of the directions on the Spot Out bottle: “Instruction number two: ‘Agitate, Agitate lightly.’”
The final words on the Spot Out bottle were, “Note: It is possible for some residual portions of the stain to remain. Repeat the steps as needed.”
The way ICE froze our communities has thawed a little. The stain remains.
