I am doing dishes in an invasion

On Minneapolis, a place I call home

They took a 9-year-old from the parking lot of the Taco Bell where I used to eat drunk burritos my first summer in Minneapolis. They smashed in the car windows and took a child and two adults. My friends and I used to leave the car running while we ate, filled with the promise of an easier hangover and a better year. They left the car running, too, boiling the fuel of a child’s future with the key in the ignition, a kid gone to a mysterious prison none of us have seen.

I am writing at the bar. Someone is donating a sandwich-size Ziploc bag of whistles to the stash. As we speak, there are SUVs with masked drivers and out-of-state plates circling the hospital where, weeks ago, I walked in to have an ear infection treated. Back then, my doc gave me some drops on the house. She opened her palm and dropped them into mine, an intimate exchange that communicated a silent understanding of the rigors of the healthcare system. It was a quiet conveyance of: Hey buddy, you could use a win, thank you for taking care of yourself. Now, there are escorts needed for vulnerable folks to get from the hospital’s revolving doors to their car and not someone else’s.

As you certainly have heard, a Minneapolis mother was killed in broad daylight. She was a transplant, looking to build a life here, creating community by showing support for her newfound home. I understand.

Of all the devastating photos that came from the scene of her shooting, there’s one image that sticks with me the most. It’s not the blood on the headrest, or the bullet hole in the windshield. It’s the unfinished business. There are stuffed animals in the glove compartment and an in-progress bottle of mints on the floor. A dog’s leash waits in the backseat. Up front, there’s a university information pamphlet and a reusable water bottle in each cupholder, decorated with stickers that were probably placed with intention. There were plans for the future. There was lunch to go home for. I understand.

Renee Good was shot less than 50 feet from where I reported on my first story as a Minnesota journalist. Working as an intern, I wrote a lighthearted article about a local art collective who installed sculptures in front yards. The neighborhood where a 37-year-old woman was shot and killed is the neighborhood of life-size great white sharks and T-rexes in driveways.

They parade these creatures through town every summer. Powderhorn Park is a neighborhood of diversity and whimsy, a typical Minneapolis district where trees angle for a better view of you as you drive by.

And they killed her. They fucking killed her. I will never understand.

I am doing dishes in an invasion. The knives and straws are not dishwasher safe, so they are sorted into their own pile. The plates are stacked parallel. The utensils are placed handle-down. There are pyrotechnics just over a mile away. There is the sweet American siren of flash-bangs being thrown at a father’s car with his six children in the backseat. The youngest one, just six months old, reportedly stopped breathing and is now hospitalized.

I am making the bed in the morning. I am scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. I am driving to work, taking the long way to keep eyes on streets where I’ve taken walks with ice cream cones and now neighbors are hiding from windows. I am zipper-merging and listening to John Prine.

I am looking for free parking outside the local pizza joint. I am deciding between the #1 and the #4 and getting a box to-go. I am walking back for napkins, watching keenly out the window and making judgment calls on the threat level of suburbans with black windows. I am reading the national headlines, which refer to every region of Minneapolis as “downtown” because they know what connotation that has.

I am putting gas in the car at a station similar to the one where they carried Orbin Mauricio Hernandez Serrano unconscious and bloody into a car against his will, for the crime of not rolling down his window.

Target is running deals on wellness drinks and Valentine’s Day candy and letting armed agents kidnap their teenage laborers — who are citizens, by the way, not that it matters. The Quesarito is back. The corporate job I used to have in (the actual) downtown Minneapolis is probably sweating whether the Coca-Colas are logo-out when visible for clients.

They are going door to door, asking people to point out which neighbors have thicker accents, and I am brushing my teeth. Thirty seconds in each quadrant, spitting and rinsing before going to bed to the sound of sirens down the road.

I am disheartened by the mundanity. I am heartened by the humanity.

I am proud to live in a neighborhood where the local punk venue empties at the sight of ICE presence. I am proud to immediately understand who the headliner was, knowing only that their fans are willing to take a little tear gas if it means wasting the bully’s time.

I am walking past a half-dozen citizens standing guard outside my favorite local Mexican restaurant at closing time. They stand with a posture that says: We’re okay, we’ve got this; You’re okay, I’m sorry.

I am visiting Renee Good’s memorial, where a scrapbook of posters, candles and poetry covers the ground. I am standing on the asphalt where, 9 days ago, someone was alive. And today they are not. For the first time since she died, it is starting to snow. Before I even notice the flakes on my shoulders, the locals lingering around the memorial are grabbing a tarp. They are laying it atop the many hand-written notes and flowers. It’s a gesture of preservation, a message to all those who came by that says: Your words will not be forgotten and neither will she.

You don’t have to look hard in this city to see adversaries. They move in convoys, backed by propaganda and a brazen hankering for violence. But you don’t have to look hard to see the helpers either. I see Minnesota in ear drops and neighborhood parades and whistles jingling from coat pockets.

I see us in unspoken exchanges that convey a message to the oppressed: I might not know you but I will help you get home safe. I love you and I will protect you as one of my own, because that is the right thing to do.

I hope you see us, too.