Previously: A Terrifying Night in a Good Liberal Town | A Democrat’s Lonely and Hopeless Thanksgiving | Janet’s No Kings Halloween
It was Halloween morning in Vista Butte. Another perfect day, of course. Was there ever anything else? A sky so blue it never looked real. A sun so bright it shames you for wasting a minute inside. Janet sometimes wished she could have a real Fall, a creepy Halloween. But in Vista Butte, it’s just another too-hot Saturday.
Janet stirred in her bed, feeling bad for wishing for a real autumn. No one was luckier than she was. She knew that. The warm and inviting smell of freshly brewed coffee wafted in from the kitchen where she’d set the brew alarm for 7 am. But she wouldn’t get up just yet. She luxuriated in her sustainably sourced bamboo cotton sheets as her thoughts drifted to her plans for later.
She’d been accepted back into the No Kings resistance group. They kicked her out after that embarrassing E-Bike incident. Her friends ghosted her, unfriended her on Facebook even. It was chilling to see just how quickly they could all turn. You think you know people, but they can always surprise you.
You know me, Janet would say, you know I’m not a racist! You know that I smile and wave and am friends with many black and brown people. You know I hate Trump and MAGA too. I’m on your side, she pleaded. But it didn’t matter. She was marked, and no one wanted to be anywhere near her online or off.
Janet even consulted with a virtual therapist who told her that she needed to own her part in it, to stop denying it, to admit what just being a white woman in America actually meant. What had she done to cause harm? How could she repair the damage?
One of the books her therapist suggested she read just happened to be available at one of the free libraries near her street.
Someone just gave it away. So Janet took it and went home to look up the reviews.
There were others, too, Janet saw on Amazon that her therapist, a non-binary person named Jeba, had recommended she read.
Jeba thought Janet might be secretly a racist. That was hard for her to hear. Those kids on the E-Bike were all white. One of them had a stepdad of color, but did that count? She said to the boys, “Go back to where you came from,” but she meant it as their neighborhood. But the story came out as if she said it as an anti-immigrant, a racist.
So she thought the little pink book would help her. She spent many hours reading it, taking notes, and saying affirmations out loud.
I will not be a racist today.
Decentering myself is an act of care
Being uncomfortable does not mean I am being attacked.
When in doubt, I can choose to observe, learn, and stay quiet.
I am not neutral — my perspective is shaped by whiteness.
This was a lot for Janet to take in. She never knew any of this about herself. She just tried to be a good person and save democracy from the fascists. And you know, eke out a little time for a glass of wine now and again? Was that so bad?
So she decided to put some of her thoughts about being a secret racist on Facebook and to confess it to all of her friends and say how sorry she was and how hard she’s working now on being an anti-racist. She did the work. She owned it. No more micro-aggressions.
For every post on Facebook where she admitted all of the times she was racist in her life without knowing it, she was rewarded with a cascade of likes. They warmed to her, talked to her again, laughed with her, and invited her back into groups where she’d been bounced.
Maybe that’s why Jodi Mitchell, not Joni, JODI, called her and invited her to join the latest meet-up. The objective was ICE OUT of Vista Butte, and as long as the migrant refugees were hiding in their homes or wherever they lived — probably the apartments on the north end of town — no one should be enjoying themselves, especially in the 96% white town of Vista Butte. They would protest outside restaurants or house parties - anywhere there was fun and music and celebrating.
Janet wouldn’t mind celebrating. It had been a while. She longed for those days of being young and drinking Cold Duck at sunset, something bought with a fake ID. Those old days of Vista Butte before it became, well, what it is now.
She loved celebrating Halloween back in the day. But that was before she knew that she was nothing but a micro-aggression delivery device, and now she had to do the work. Her Halloween would be to ensure everyone was miserable until Trump was out of office.
There was something disrupting her meditative thoughts and anti-racist aspirations. Was that music? Spanish language? Mexican music? It was too loud this early in Vista Butte. This was a quiet town. The rules were no construction before 8 a.m., but music? No one ever played music except on a Saturday night and then only until 10 pm.
Then she remembered her neighbor, a slender middle-aged blonde from Germany, had told her last week that it was finally time to trim the large eucalyptus tree that stretched over both of their houses.
“I have to get it done,” she’d said. “It will cost a fortune, but I have found some cheap workers, and that will cut the cost in half. I will be sorry for the noise, but it won’t last long.”
Janet had only half-listened. She didn’t like her neighbor who was always on about something or other. Last week it was the rats. Her neighbor knew Janet had a rat problem and didn’t have the heart to kill them.
“There is never just one rat,” the German woman had said. “There is always a nest. They will cause thousands of dollars in damage. You have to kill them, Janet.”
She’d pressured her into putting out traps, but the deaths were so violent, so horrific - some of the rats would get caught halfway and would be screaming into the night. Janet would free them from the trap and fling them outside. They’d still probably die, but they wouldn’t be in pain.
Everyone on NextDoor said poison would kill wildlife like owls and squirrels, and that was cruel. Live traps were also cruel because when you set the rat free, it had no idea where it was and could not protect itself and would be killed instantly by a predator.
“You must kill them, Janet. It’s the humane thing to do.” Janet had tried to tell her that she couldn’t kill the rats. She tried. It wasn’t in her. She’d rather they crawl all over her at night — and they had — than endure another screaming half-dead rat caught in a trap or look at another pool of blood under a trap.
“Then hire an exterminator,” the German had said.
“But what about squirrels? No one wants to kill them. Why do they get to live and rats have to die?”
”Because, Janet, only rats will destroy your house, under your roof, wires, and will cause fires that will rage out of control and kill the whole town. It’s like the border. You have to have a secure border or your country will be overrun in ways you can’t control. Same with rats.”
Janet had been so stunned by her neighbor’s comment that she was speechless. She watched her walk away and realized in an instant that she was living next door to a monster. She compared rats to immigrants? Was Janet’s neighbor a real Nazi?
But now the workers' music was getting louder and obnoxious, and Janet couldn’t think. She had to tell her neighbor to tell them to turn it down. That kind of thing was not allowed in Vista Butte. But if she said something, that was the worst example of “white woman’s tears” and a microaggression. She had to just suck it up and forget about the music. Let someone else deal with it.
But she grabbed her phone anyway, texted her neighbor, and told her about the music. She felt bad about it, but not enough to suffer. No one would know it was her. It might have been appropriate in a Mexican restaurant, but not on the quiet streets of her neighborhood.
Moments later, she heard some low voices and the music abruptly stopped. Then, it was quiet except for the sound of a chainsaw, the hammers, the footsteps, and the cracking of the limbs as the mighty tree got a trimming.
Janet heard her phone ping with a text message. She looked down at her neighbor’s words: “Sometimes you have to do what has to be done.”
ICE OUT
Most restaurants and shops had ICE OUT posters in their windows. This community effort aimed to ensure all Vista Butte residents felt safe and welcome. As Janet walked to the park to meet Jodi Mitchell, she saw an ICE OUT sign in almost every window.
It was Halloween, and there were pumpkins everywhere. The kids were dressed up in their costumes for school, and even some of the adults were. But the ICE OUT signs were a warning that there was an existential threat hovering over paradise.
Janet remembered Jodi from high school. She was one of the popular cheerleaders, though not a pretty one. Pretty or not, she was still a cheerleader, and back then, if you were one of those girls who wore those short skirts and sweaters, you were like celebrities. They were all pretty except Jodi.
But Jodi was popular. She didn’t know or talk to Janet in high school; that’s for sure. They moved in opposite worlds. Word has it Jodi’s husband left her for a newer model, and Jodi was abandoned with their four kids. She did live in one of the rich houses on the hill.
“Janet!” She heard Jodi’s voice calling from one of the gazebos inside the park. Jodi was already trotting toward her with two cups of coffee in her hands, one outstretched for Janet. Jodi’s once-blonde hair had been hacked into a spiky crew cut and tipped with blue dye. Her yoga body left no fat. She wore a diamond nose ring on one nostril and was wearing a T-shirt that said:
“So glad you could make it,” Jodi said. “I was worried no one would show up. It’s Halloween, after all.”
”Oh, of course,” Janet said. “It’s the least I can do. Hand out candy to kids or protest other people having fun while too many people suffer?”
”Exactly!” Jodi said. Then she took Janet by the arm - a little too close. Janet could smell that she used the health food store deodorant, which is to say, no deodorant at all. Jodi’s voice dropped into a whisper.
“So, I asked you to come early before the other warrior women get here because I wanted to know if you would be interested in going to the next level of our activism to help the black and brown oppressed classes of Vista Butte. I figured from your Facebook postings that you took this all very seriously and believed in forcing change by any means necessary.”
“By any means necessary?” Janet said.
“Well, you know, change is not easy, especially in a fascist occupation of a country we’re living in now. We don’t condone violence, of course, but should violence occur in the name of, say, protecting an immigrant grandmother being chased down by ICE, well then, we have to accept that the revolution requires us all to take a stand.”
“Well, I don’t know about violence, Jodi, I mean - that isn’t what I had in mind.”
“Oh no, of course not,” Jodi said. “This isn’t violence. Violence is what Trump and MAGA are doing to this country every day. Speech is violence. This is love. This is simply holding people accountable. For instance, some people in this town support ICE. Did you know that? Even some of your neighbors. I heard that an ICE officer lived in this town.”
“No,” Janet said.
”Yes.” Jodi let the thought fully saturate Janet’s surprised expression. “I want to make their lives a living hell so they think twice about working for or supporting ICE.”
”Oh, of course,” Janet said. “But what specifically?”
”Well, I have written out a few things we’d need to do to expose them. We’ll put their faces on fliers all over town. We’ll call their employers. We’ll contact every person they know on Facebook and send out a group message telling them exactly who in our town supports ICE. And we’ll let the consequences rain down.”
Jodi didn’t wait for Janet’s response; instead, she led her to one of the picnic tables, where a bag was slouching in the hot sun, stuffed with water bottles, Sharpies, and a thick, black-covered binder. Janet sat down as Jodi slid the binder out of the bag and opened it.
“Here is the list of those I’ve identified as supporting ICE or liking posts about ICE or even just supporting Trump and MAGA because it means the same thing. I’ve already been investigating their social media, their likes, their friends, and I'm sure these residents of Vista Butte support ICE.
Janet glanced at the list. She didn’t recognize all the names, but some sounded familiar. There were men and women listed. Their addresses showed they lived right in town, near Janet. She had no idea there were that many. Did they just hide in their houses? Did she get coffee standing next to them? Did she smile at them on the street?
A chill went through Janet as Jodi flipped the page over and showed the names of those who worked for ICE. And there it was. The name. Skip Taylor.
Jodi studied Janet’s reaction. “Remember him from high school, Janet? You had a crush on him that everyone knew about.”
Janet’s face blanched with embarrassment.
“They only knew about it because someone wrote it on the bathroom wall,” Janet said.
”Well, does it matter?” Jodi said. “He was garbage then, and he’s garbage now. We’re going to ruin his life, aren’t we, Janet? We’ll force him and everyone like him to leave this town for good. No justice, no peace. No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA. Say it with me, Janet.”
The two women chanted, “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA.”
Janet looked at Jodi now. Not the girl she went to high school with, that’s for sure. She flashed back to those game days when the cheerleaders all wore their cute outfits to school. Janet burned with envy at the sight of them. If only she could have worn one, just for one day. The tiny skirts. The shoes. The warm turtleneck sweaters. Even Jodi looked cute in hers. But you had to be a cheerleader to wear that outfit. Except, of course, on Halloween and in her day, Janet had fulfilled that fantasy more than once.
“What’s wrong, Janet? You look sick,” Jodi said.
”I’m just…I need to … I’m okay. I’m fine.”
Jodi took out a water bottle, cracked it open, and handed it to Janet, who took a few big gulps.
“I just don’t think I’m the right person for this, Jodi. I’m sorry, but I really just want to help do good things for other people, de-center myself from the narrative, and choose to observe, learn, and stay quiet.”
“What?” Jodi said. “You’re worried about hurting Skip Taylor after all of these years? He barely looked twice at you in high school. You were nothing to him, just like refugees and migrants are nothing to him.” Jodi was in Janet’s face now, too close.
“Why shouldn’t all of Vista Butte know what ever became of the prom king and star of the football team? Why shouldn’t they know he’s a triple-Trumper who is just like all the rest of the MAGAts who have ruined this country, corrupted our democracy, and brought back racism, misogyny, sexism, transphobia, and homophobia? I think everyone should know, and I hope he feels bad about his own life choices. Are you in or are you out?”
Janet couldn’t answer. But of course she knew Skip Taylor was one of them. She knew he had Trump signs because, of course, he did. He was a white man. A white American man who was still masculine. And still, well, if Janet was being honest, being attractive in that way proves women are cursed by nature because they don’t get better with age as men do.
But still, why was she hesitating? Men like Skip Taylor were a dying breed. They are the losers of history, the colonizing, white supremacists who exploited black and brown people to get ahead, so why shouldn’t he feel the same kind of pain and suffering he causes?
But Janet had to be sure. “How do you know he works for ICE?” She said.
”Because,” said Jodi, finally exhaling and sinking onto a bench. “I saw him at a raid. He wore a mask, but I knew it was him. I tore his mask right off his face, and I called him fascist scum. Right to his face. FASCIST scum.”
“Wow,” Janet said.
”He tried to say he was arresting a guy who raped kids and was fleeing the law, but that’s just another lie because that’s all they do is lie, fascist Gestapo murdering American citizens, kidnapping them off the street, disappearing them, who knows where, just because of the color of their skin. They have to be stopped.”
“Okay,” Janet said, finally relenting. “Tell me what to do.”
Jodi laid out the plot to destroy Skip Taylor’s life. They would plaster fliers all over his house that said ICE worker lives here! They would run an ad in the small-town newspaper, The Daily Butte, with his name and his face. They would tell all of his friends on Facebook.
They wanted him to be broken, to have nothing and no one to turn to, so that he finally realizes that America is a land of immigrants and anyone can come here any time for any reason, and there is nothing he can do about it.
Then, they would gather outside his house and throw bags full of dog shit and rocks through his window, forcing him out and then telling him he had to leave town because ICE OUT of Vista Butte.
Janet believed in Jodi’s vision, even if deep down she felt a tiny pang of doubt. Was this the right thing to do? Was she on the right side of history, or just another member of a pitchfork mob?
The rest of the women eventually showed up at dusk with their protest signs. They would hit the trendy wine bars, the outdoor restaurants, even the house parties if they knew people were having a good time instead of protesting Halloween.
They marched outside of the infamous restaurant Live Laugh Love and chanted “ICE OUT! No Trump! No Kings! No fascist KKK!” They got a thumbs up or two, but most of the diners ignored them, which infuriated Janet. The white privilege!
They came upon a party house with teenagers dressed up like superheroes or sexy devils. One teenager dressed up as Catwoman projectile vomited a little too close to Janet, but splattered all over her sign. The red “fascist” began to smear and drip.
They could see a group of boys inside laughing at Jodi and her friends, marching around and mocking them. Jodi just yelled louder: FASCIST LOVER! Racists! All of you are racists! Your white privilege is showing!”
The boys laughed even harder, and when Janet looked closely, she could see they weren’t white, or at least most of them weren’t. They were brown or Hispanic, Janet assumed. Maybe Asian? Jodi was imploding and then exploding. She threw her sign down and stomped into the house to confront the boys.
“We’re fighting for you!” She said. “We want you to feel welcome in America! We don't want you to have to worry about ICE on Halloween! This is all for you! Why are you laughing?”
One of the boys dressed as a mud monster waved her off. “We’re not afraid of ICE. We’re Americans. We were born here, you dumb bitch.”
Then several of the boys started chanting “USA, USA, USA.” Jodi had no words. She just stared at them in horror.
One of the women, a plump redhead, elbowed Janet. “Should we go get her?” But before they could, one of the boys dumped a pitcher full of red punch all over Jodi’s head. She looked like Carrie at the high school prom.
Janet dropped her sign and ran inside. The house smelled of weed and nachos. The music was loud. The air was thick with smoke. She grabbed Jodi by the shoulders to lead her out.
“You young boys should be ashamed of yourselves,” Janet said. “You think you’re so cool now. Just you wait. None of you will have any chance at a good life. You’ll never get jobs. You’ll be lonely, miserable incels because this is still a white man’s world! And there is no place for you!”
A scruffy-haired kid with vampire teeth laughed right in Janet’s face. Without realizing it, without even thinking about it, driven to a point she could not explain or control, Janet hauled off and slapped the kid. Hard. He reeled back and finally stopped laughing.
“You can’t do that,” the kid moaned. “My dad will sue you! You’ll be arrested for assault!” Even Jodi turned on Janet and pulled away. “You hit him?”
“I…I…” Janet stammered. Suddenly, everyone was staring at her. Jodi, the other women, and all of the teenagers at the party stared as the teen whimpered. “I’m gonna call my dad,” as he pulled out his phone.
“I think you should go home, Janet,” Jodi said, wiping off the red goo from her face as they headed out to the street, like it was all some act, some game, like none of it had been real. “This was a mistake. You aren’t ready. I regret this, all of it. Go home.”
“But I was protecting you, Jodi. They were laughing at you.”
”Your racism, Janet, it’s impaired your judgment. I’m sorry, but I can’t be a part of it. This was a mistake. I thought you’d done the work, but it’s in too deep. Goodbye.”
The women took their signs and walked away from Janet, leaving her standing there alone. She could hear the boy inside crying on the phone to his father and several of the kids repeating the story, which was, of course, getting more dramatic; now Janet had been wielding a knife.
Janet tried to rationalize her actions as she turned and began walking home. There were still trick-or-treaters moving from house to house. Janet’s was dark, and they would not stop there, she figured. She hadn’t bought any candy anyway. She’d have to sit in the dark until they finally went home to sleep.
The little ghosts, the Darth Vaders, the Spider-Men, the Disney princesses- all of these kids who believed in their own version of the American dream, dressing up in a costume to get free candy. Now it was all for profit, not like the old days of homemade treats and costumes. No, now it was all about the brands.
Janet closed the door to her tiny house and flopped on the couch. She just couldn’t win. Everything she tried to do blew up in her face, despite her best intentions.
She glanced over at Skip Taylor’s house. All the lights were out, and he wasn’t even home. But a sign stood on his lawn. It said:
No, Janet knew, change was not coming to California. But that sign was enough for Janet to try to salvage the last moments before the midterm vote. She could hear a siren in the distance, getting closer.
She tried not to notice the two rats who were sneaking into the kitchen, looking for something to eat. It’s not their fault they were hungry.
She wasn’t going to destroy the moment. She knew what she had to do.
No fear! No hate! No ICE in our state! Say it once. Say it twice. We will not put up with ICE.
No more cages, no more fear, ICE and hatred out of here!
To get to our neighbors, you have to go thru us!
Janet cracked open her laptop, signed on to Facebook, and typed in the name “Skip Taylor.” It was finally time to take it to the next level. But just as she was composing the post she knew would ruin Skip Taylor’s life, the music came back. That Mexican music. It was coming from across the street.
She lifted her blinds and saw Skip Taylor’s house was now fully lit up, and he was inside dancing to the music with a margarita in his hand and a sombrero on his head. There were a few people dancing and laughing, some dressed in costumes - a nurse, a cop, Harry Potter.
Without thinking, Janet wandered to the front door and slowly opened it. Something pulled her toward the party, even if she knew it was cultural appropriation and very, very wrong, but it all looked so inviting. Fun. It was Halloween, after all, and everyone was at a party.
Skip Taylor glanced out of his window and spotted Janet. He smiled and waved, even after all they’d been through as neighbors. “Come on over!” he said. But the siren was getting closer and closer. In moments, it would be on her street, and everyone at the party would turn and look.
Janet couldn’t face the shame. She ran back inside and slammed the door. She saw a rat, then another, scattering the moment she opened the door.
She couldn’t save everything or even anything, not even herself, but she could finish the job. At least she could do that. She looked at Facebook and hit “post” just as the red lights and siren rolled up in front of her house.
