M. Yazzie. (intertitle) wrote in mnhttnprjct, @ 2010-03-13 16:21:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !narrative |
2026.
WHO: Margaret Yazzie, with mentions of persons both familiar and not so much.
WHAT: The Processing Centre: An Introduction.
WHERE: Fort Polk Refugee Processing Centre, Leesville, Louisiana
WHEN: Early October, 2026.
RATING: PG-13 for naked time.
The relief she feels when she steps into Fork Polk is, naturally, only temporary. Margaret Yazzie is not used to this spectre known as humidity, you see. She is not used to humidity or cities that come in clusters, nor seas of cars on highways that stack a thousand deep in either direction. The shimmering waves of heat off the black tar pavement are beautiful for the first minute or two that you behold them in the mid-morning light but the novelty wears off quick, often around the time you have to cut the engine to save it from overheating. Now she knows what claustrophobia feels like: clammy, hot, sticky, and relentless. Claustrophobia is feeling every eye on you, even in the comfort of the cab of your Ford pick-up, and knowing that shotgun isn’t sticking close by for too much longer. So yes, the air conditioning feels nice. It soothes the trickling condensation of sweat down her neck and back to nothing and tames her frazzled hair. The line, however, soothes nothing. It is a line separated by sex and the one person she knows – that she loves, really, at this point in her life – is decidedly of the masculine persuasion. And so she waits among strangers and feels their eyes boring into her scalp and back and the claustrophobia comes back, stronger, harder, with more of a suffocating force. When she emerges at the front of the queue, a hawk-eyed TSA attendant hands her a towel and points to a glass door. “You’ll strip your clothes and put them into the sanitation crate.” When Margaret tries to ask what this means, the woman only becomes irate and shoves her forward. It isn’t until the door clicks and she realizes she’s on a conveyor belt with a series of showerheads mounted in a row that Margaret registers the woman’s refusal to grant her a translator. But really, she realizes with a snort and a shove of her jeans into the bottom of the hamper, that involves a desire to want to communicate in the first place. The first siren goes off and CONTAMINATION PHASE A begins. It’s hot water that feels as if it’s almost boiling, but Margaret welcomes it – and the subsequent deluges of suds, disinfectants, and ion layers – with an eerie amount of resignation. She knows these machines are attempting to wash away the film of toxic nuclear residue from her flesh and bones, but she wonders if it’ll wash away the blood spatters too. But it’s probably not hot enough, really, as steamy as the tiled hallway manages to get and all. The spirits and screaming children have settled in her bones by now, the withering clusters of grass and Hopi corn, and even after reaching FINAL PHASE G, it doesn’t come out. Her clothes look the same as she left them as she scrambles to put them on, down to the paint stain on her sleeve. There’s no time to think about it, though, not as they usher her through the next series of hoops like some damned show dog. There’s the photo room, the blood test room, the weight room, the questionnaire room, all of them blurring into a smear of frustrated faces and cold equipment as she’s jostled about between one port of entry and another. Eventually, she has a few things to show for it: a destination, a plastic card, and the face of someone who can make sense of the shapes she pulls from thin air and gesturing. Still, her relief continues to be fleeting, only coming in those brief moments when she almost forgets what it’s like to be orphaned from family and home. |