Not in Texas

Chapter 1

"We'll just get out of Texas," she promised. "Everywhere else is golden."

"Everywhere else has immigrants," Susan told her.

"That's what we'll be," Karen replied. "Just like everyone."

Looking around at the ICE checkpoint, Susan knew they were not just like everyone. Everyone was black, brown--Latino or Indian, she wasn't sure--but certainly not white. Well, there were a few. White trash, her father called them. Not like us.

"Where are you going?" The ICE officer asked her. She squeezed her hands together, trying not to look scared.

"The Midwest," she said. Just like Karen told her. "I'm visiting family."

The officer nodded and handed her ID back. The picture was real, but all the information was fake. Susan didn't know where Karen had them made, but she knew people. Criminals, probably. Not like us. She crossed into the foreign waiting room that looked exactly like the domestic waiting room. But now she was going to a completely different country.

Karen had chosen Texarkana because it was a border town. Tons of people crossed from Texas to Arkansas daily. Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana were states in the New South, having succeeded 20 years ago. Arkansas had stayed in the Old Union, and now the Bowie County Detention Center was was both an border checkpoint and jail. Susan was now waiting for the bus to take them across the line. Once Karen made it through, they would be free.

The ICE officer was asking Karen a lot more questions than Susan had had. She watched Karen talking at length, giving the backstory she had made up--and probably adding more. The ICE officer was shaking his head sternly, still holding her ID. And then, he motioned to some others. The uniformed officers, like clones, took one shoulder each and led Karen away--toward the Texas side. Susan forgot to stop the panic in her voice.

"Karen!"

Karen looked back at her and shook her head slowly. Remember the plan, she mouthed. Susan shook her head.

I can't. Not without you. A few people had turned to look at her. She crossed her arms and shuffled further away from the checkpoint. Into the crowd of ethnically mixed people. She was just like them now.

It was five hours to Memphis, then a transfer to another bus. Susan had a Charlotte address on her phone, but she had no idea what to do when she got there. She wasn't the planner. She just knew she wanted to go and be with Karen. Laying in bed together, they had dreamed about everything.

"We'll become spinsters sitting in rocking chairs on a big porch," Susan remembered saying.

"Aren't spinsters old people?" Karen asked.

"Maybe. I read it in a book somewhere. It's what Southerners do. We'll be Southerners."

"We won't have time for rocking chairs. We'll be making money. I have the perfect plan."

"What kind of plan?" Susan asked. She trusted Karen, even when she didn't understand what she was doing.

"Trust me, we'll get out of here. You won't have to live in that crystal palace anymore."

Right now, the crystal palace seemed a lot nicer. The bus was full, and it smelled of sweat. The bathroom was so revolting that Susan had been holding her pee the entire trip. Even the rest stops were crowded and dirty. A fight had broken out at one, and the bus driver broke it up by waving his gun at the crowd. Susan wrapped herself up in her sweater, pressed up against the window and didn't speak to anyone. She had one bag clutched in her lap. Her phone was running out of battery. Hours had passed, and Karen hadn't written to say she was OK, that she was on the next bus and would see her soon.

The transit station in Charlotte seemed bigger than all of Texarkana. There were signs pointing to train platforms, buses, ride shares, and taxis. Susan stopped in front of an ATM. They might not take old money, Karen had said. They had split all their cash on two prepaid cards. She wondered if she should get money now or later. She decided later. She hailed a taxi and repeated the address she had been staring at for hours.

Charlotte had a lot of trees. It was more than she expected for such a big city. She wondered if there were secluded houses with long driveways bordered by trees like in the movies. She and her father had lived in a high rise, surrounded by other high rises. Wealthy people literally towering above the masses. Houston had felt stuffy and crowded, but she hadn't known anything else.

The address was a two-story house surrounded by other two-story houses. SUVs lined the streets or sat in front of garage doors. There were trees and flowers everywhere. The car left, and she walked up to the front door. There was a mat on the porch that said, Welcome Home. She thought she heard a cat inside. She knocked on the door. After a short wait, the door swung open. A blond man, about her age or a little older, squinted at her. He was wearing a wife beater and jeans. "Where's Karen?"

"She...she got stopped at the border." Susan struggled to find her voice. She hadn't spoken in a full day.

"Shit," the man said, looking down. Then he looked back at her. "So what, you're going to put out?"

"I..." Susan shook her head, stepping backward.

"You got cash?" Her hands started trembling. "We're not going to do this unless I got a good reason for it." Susan shook her head. The man sighed and slammed the door. Susan looked at her hands and squeezed them together. It was the only thing that kept her panic from boiling over into tears. She turned around and walked down off the porch. She kept walking, leaving the quiet cul-de-sac and turning onto a narrow street. And then to a busier road. There was a bus stop shelter. She sat down and stared at her hands. The plan. The plan. There was a plan? What was Karen thinking? She reached in her pocket to look at the phone.

Don't talk to anyone back home on it. She checked the messages. Nothing from Karen. Nothing in her contacts. Just this one address.

"You strung out?" She jumped at the voice suddenly too close beside her. Before she even saw the person, she smelled them. Alcohol, sweat, urine. Susan held her breath and tried to figure out if they were a man or woman. Their hair was long and raggedly, layers of clothes were too dirty to distinguish. The person repeated their question. "You need something?"

Susan shook her head and clutched her phone on top of her bag. She was the one out of place now. She had deliberately chosen simple, non-descript clothes, but compared to the people on the Greyhound and now, this person, she was the Queen of England. The person leaned closer to her. "The shelter is having Thanksgiving dinner tonight. On a Tuesday, don't know why. Get there early and you'll get a spot to sleep." Susan nodded absently. She had eaten once during a bus stop, but the prices at the transit station had confused her. She didn't know how far her money could go. "It's good eatin', I promise." The person stood up, and Susan heard the squeaks of a bus stopping in front of them. "Come on."

Numbly, Susan stood up and followed her. She didn't have change for the bus. The driver waved angrily at her card and the new person pushed her down the aisle. They sat down near the middle.

"You running away?" The person asked her. Susan nodded. Their breath was foul and they were missing a few teeth, but Susan wanted to cling to her like a flag in a rainstorm. "This is a good place as any. Lots of shelters around. The one we're going to gets big money from the gangsters. It's like a castle. And," they dropped their voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "There's no cops around." Their voice returned to normal. "They got black, white, Latino, Asian, whatever all over the place, and no one ever calls the police. That's what I like about it."

The person rambled on, but Susan was stuck on her description of the shelter. Texas had segregated almost all of the towns, and Houston had cities within the city. She had never driven through a non-white area on purpose. The most she'd seen was when her school did a service project with a black school in the suburbs. The kids were loud, but for the most part they seemed normal. She didn't know what kind of people would she find at a homeless shelter.