I took the signs down

I took the signs down, not because I wanted to but because my husband asked me to. I thought they could stay. I’m not ashamed of our house or our signs.

He’s not ashamed of the house, either. It’s just that the signs, now, might make us a target. So I took them down.

He isn’t here right now. He is in an opposition state, but safe, I think. I’m not sure.

It has all shifted. Reality has changed, and I don’t know what safe is anymore.

Yesterday, I gave my students hopeful words. Tonight, I have lost hope. And he isn’t here.

The last time my nation spun toward authoritarianism, a mob showed up in front of our house. They weren’t mad at us. They were mad at our neighbor, a state representative. I couldn’t ask my husband to go talk to them. His skin color might make the mob violent. So I went outside.

“Are you a real American?” was the question hurled at me on my front yard.

“Yes,” I responded, stepping off the sidewalk and on to my property. The property I own with my husband.

I don’t know what that man, with his red-white-blue du-rag and his armed friends meant by “real.” He had clearly pegged me as something to confront. On my property.

I took the signs down because my husband asked me to. But the last time my nation spun toward authoritarianism, in January of 2021, I walked back into my house. I’m not going back inside this time.