NEW “FICTION”
(image c/o USA Today)
At the beginning of our marriage, my husband seemed normal.
The first thing which aroused my suspicion was his insistence on moving his own sofa into the modest house we’d bought.
“Honey, I thought we’d get a new matching living room set,” I told him. “There’s all kinds of sales going on right now.”
To that he stared, as if his best friend had died.
“You see, I’ve had my sofa a long time,” he explained. “I feel close to it.”
I said that was okay, too. Whatever he wanted. It was all okay. I was a new wife and was in love with him and wanted everything to be okay.
Looking back though, the first clue before our marriage was when we were handling the legal end of it. He was thrown that I had to send for a copy of my birth certificate. “You don’t have a birth certificate?” he asked, surprised.
“Oh, I have one. Had one, I mean. Or my parents had it, but I have no idea what happened to it. I mean, who ever needs their birth certificate? But it’s fine, there’s one on file. I’ll send for it.”
Then there was the eyebrow incident, when he realized my eyebrows were naturally dark. Black, actually.
“I didn’t know your eyebrows were so . . . dark,” he remarked, touching them with his finger early one morning.
“Of course they are, silly!” I said. “It’s my Slavic background on my mom’s side. She always said we had some Tartar blood in us. Did you think it was make-up? Besides, thick black eyebrows are the style right now.”
“Tartar?” he said.
Don’t get me wrong. By all indicators he was a good husband. He made very good money. Many bonuses. Though he was always vague about what he actually did.
“A government job,” he’d say. “Removals, er, maintenance. Cleaning things up.”
He’d leave early morning with a large duffel bag crammed with what he said were clothes and “work stuff.”
Then there was his attitude toward my doctor.
“You have an Indian doctor?” he asked, shocked. “Do you really have to see him?”
There were his pat-downs of me, which he explained as foreplay, and then wanting to put me into handcuffs. Or his practicing barreling through doors, which he rationalized as exercise. Or the time I caught him down the basement late at night listening to German martial music. I thought I glimpsed his arm go up in a straight-armed salute, but I wasn’t sure.
Eventually, as media stories about ICE began to appear, he’d steer me away from watching television. “Er, that’s not about us,” he’d say. “Not our concern.” Then the TV stopped working altogether. The cord to plug it in had been cut.
The next day he decided we had to move from the house. “Temporarily,” he said. “I hope.”
A suitcase for himself was already packed. He brought mine out from a closet. “Hurry!” he said. “Grab some clothes. Load it up.”
His duffel bag waited in the back of the truck. He handed me a blue ski mask.
“Here, put it on,” he requested. “Just do it”– as he wrapped a green scarf around his own head, only his hazel eyes and pale eyebrows visible above it.
We clambered into the truck. Outraged demonstrators filled our street. Their outrage was directed at us. In the truck, engine coughing to life, we drove fast up curbs and down alleys to get away. The mob continued to follow. Whistles and shouting. In the distance ahead of us, another angry crowd, carrying signs while growing ever larger.
I thought then to ask a question that’d been on my mind.
“Honey, do you work for ICE?”
-K. Wenclas