The One Percent
by L. B. Zinger
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
conclusion
“An Executive Order from the President declared Blacks, Jews and Hispanics ‘undesirables.’ Government contracts with any company that had a Jewish or a Black person on their Board were terminated. Jews were advised to move to Israel and kept their U.S. citizenship if they left by 2035. Congress changed a bunch of laws in Washington and suspended term limits for any elected official, including the President, making it all legal. The Supreme Court was full of Justices that just went along with it all.
“Our family was white, so I wasn’t worried. Yolanda was terrified and started hiding in the apartment with her daughter.”
I tried to picture my mother, now almost 40 as a happy eight-year old, unaware of the adult problems going on around her. “What did Mom think about this?”
Grandma shook her head. “I kept as much as I could from her. There wasn’t anything I could do, and having her upset wasn’t worth it.”
She started coughing and belted down the rest of her whiskey. Then she took our plates and went into the trailer. I heard the clink of dishes in the sink, then the cupboard opened, and she returned with the half-empty bottle of whiskey. Before she said more, she poured another shot with shaking hands, and took a sip as if that would steady her nerves.
“So how did you get here?”
She laughed. “We had given our dad a DNA test kit and it showed that he was almost 2% Nigerian. We joked that one of his French sea captain ancestors must’ve had an African wife. Dad got mad and insisted that all of the family had been ‘white.’ At the time, we thought it was pretty cool.
“When the government had finished deporting people who “looked” Black or Hispanic, they used the DNA databases to weed out more. They found your great-grandparents. One percent African made you Black. Mom and Dad were taken. That’s when my sisters left for Canada. They weren’t taking any chances. Later, I tried to find them but couldn’t.
“They came after the rest of us. We were busy in the shop when Marshals busted in, stood us against the wall, and swabbed all of us. A week later, they were back with orders of expulsion on four of us: one customer, Yolanda, your mother and Yolanda’s daughter Lisa. We were given twenty-four hours to pack and were picked up by armed Marshals the following day.
I was startled. “Not you?”
She shook her head. “Nope, I squeaked by as under one percent. But I couldn’t let your mother go by herself, and I fought them. So they arrested me.”
That explained her criminal charges and order of expulsion. Tears started running down her face. She went on. “We were taken to a detention center in Texas and held there until this island was ready. They had already filled up Guam, Samoa, the Marshalls and Puerto Rico, displacing the natives if they had to. Then they repurposed old military bases. Calhoun was last used in the Vietnam war, and everything needed to be fixed.”
She snorted. “It wasn’t like they put in new stuff, and these trailers are worthless. We arrived on transport planes with a bag each and no money, clutching our U.S. passports and birth certificates. They call us ‘ex-pats’ like we wanted to leave.” She spat on the ground and reached for another cigarette.
The new textbook said that the exile was voluntary and that the exiled were all freeloaders on society. Grandma’s story fit what Connie and Amia had told me: a story I hadn’t wanted to believe. I wondered about the other families whose kids I went to school with. Why had I never asked them?
For a few minutes, neither of us spoke. Finally, I asked: “How did they get away with this?”
Grandma looked at me sideways, cigarette trembling in her hands. “All I had was a few genes from another continent in my blood and an arrest for punching out a Federal Marshal. We were told that if we went quietly and didn’t sue, every year one percent of our children would get scholarships to U.S. colleges and get their residency permits.
“Exile seemed temporary; eventually we would all be able to go back. But there weren’t any schools to get your parents ready for the exam. They had to find jobs on the island or join the ADF. We saved money to educate the next generation so that you could have a shot.
“The nuns at St. Mary’s let your mother stay as a boarder while I worked,” she added. “I worked 60 or 70 hours a week to pay them back and put something aside for your generation. I was still a kid-only 28-but I grew up real fast.” She shook the bottle: it was almost empty.
I shivered at the thought of being in my late 20’s with an eight-year-old, kicked out of my home. All because of my DNA.
I knew the camp history: disease, contaminated water, no access to healthcare cut the lives of the first expats short. Exiled doctors and nurses, engineers and teachers filled in where they could and made the camp better. I wondered why they didn’t just leave, but maybe they couldn’t go anywhere because they weren’t real citizens of any country. Even without bars, Naneeda was a prison.
* * *
Grandma looked tired. We sat in silence listening to the murmur of the grasses bending in the wind and the whirring of insects. I had asked enough questions for one night. She got up and went into the trailer, then I heard her bedroom door close. I leaned back and shut my eyes, trying to understand it all.
I got the History book and started reading about the purge of undesirables in the 2030s and tried to picture how that had been implemented. Who were the big guns behind this? Who was really in charge? It had to be just as Father Paul said, the powerful top one percent of the economic chain. This afternoon had given me a crash course in cynicism. I needed to find another option than a U.S. scholarship. When I was too exhausted to read further, I crawled into bed and threw the book on the floor.
The next day was my hospital volunteer day. As I walked through the streets, I ran into people I knew: kids whose arms I’d helped set when they fell off a bike, or wounds I’d sewed up when they got cut on glass, moms whose babies I had helped deliver. I tried to be pleasant, but I was distracted, and I saw at least one kid pout and act like I had hurt their feelings.
There were the usual elderly patients to feed and a few babies to rock, but it was Saturday, so there wasn’t any surgery going on and no one was in labor. The matron eyed me.
“You aren’t yourself today, Dinah. What is wrong?” Sister Mary Catherine was a large dark-skinned woman with an Australian accent and a stern attitude. She was in charge and had been for over thirty years.
Like Father Paul, she was a mentor: answering questions and giving me references when neither of us could figure something out. I could trust her, so I told her my tale of woe. Afterward, she said, “Let’s get a cuppa together.”
We sat at an old Formica table that rocked, as all of them did in the cafeteria. Our teacups rattled until, laughing a little, we both leaned our elbows on it. Somehow steadying the table made me feel calmer inside.
“Dinah, all you’ve ever wanted is to be a doctor. Why would you give that up so easily?”
I shrugged.
She went on. “I never understood why the U.S. government put you all here. You weren’t criminals, so what had you done? Then it was so hard for the kids to get a decent education. The U.S. abandoned you. You want to be a doctor? Don’t count on them.
“It’s not just schooling. A real doctor is committed to helping people, and empathy is just as important as brains. Most doctors are persistent and stubborn, like you.” Here she gave me a little smile. I grinned. “Real doctors never give up, even if they have the ‘wrong’ genetics. Don’t let others’ prejudices define you.”
She gave me the same steely-eyed look I’d seen shared with a novice who dropped a bedpan. “You have other options, and I will contact my old Nursing school to see if they can help. Don’t be intimidated so easily. When you get to the interview” — here she shook her finger at me — “don’t be afraid to show your true self.” With that, her beeper blaring, she left me to address another crisis on the floor.
I didn’t believe that I was as strong as she said, but I kept mulling her words over as I went home. At some point, I thought I had it all figured out.
Within a few weeks, we were notified about who had passed the exam, and five of us were selected for the oral interviews. That brought me to my confrontation with the head examiner.
* * *
June 13, 2060
I stared back at my nemesis, forcing myself to be calm. I had rehearsed what I was going to say and now just needed to stay cool and say it. I tried to put her comment about my grandmother being a criminal behind me. Instead, I let Sister Mary Catherine’s words echo in my brain: “Don’t be intimidated so easily.” This examiner lady must have thought I looked like a wimp.
I straightened up and began. I gestured to all of the examiners. “Thank you all for letting me interview today. In answer to your question, my family committed no crime other than having the wrong genetic profile to live in the United States. Although many white citizens have minority genes, in 2030, the ruling class, the top one percent of the wealthy, decided that those minority genes made individuals poor citizens. This was the same bias that allowed the Eugenics movement in the 1920s, when traits like imbecility and laziness were thought to be inherited.
“Rather than look for socioeconomic solutions for poverty, civic unrest, and joblessness, the rich and powerful decided that all their troubles could be solved by ridding themselves of the congenitally unfit.”
I turned to face her directly. “My mother was only eight years old, but because over one percent of her DNA was African, she was undesirable. My grandmother became a criminal in your eyes by trying to protect her daughter. This all violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.” Our stares met again.
Strangely, she didn’t cut me off. Afterwards, I wondered about that, but I plowed on. I engaged the panel with my eyes, one by one. Some looked away; others looked puzzled. I told them about my dream of serving people as a doctor and that I wanted training at the best U.S. hospitals. She let me go on for another minute or two before she stood up, raised a hand, and cut me off.
She turned to her panel. “You see the paradox in our work here. These young people don’t appreciate what we are offering them. This granddaughter of an avowed terrorist and prostitute thinks that she has something to offer the United States if we will only, please-pretty-please, educate her at our expense.”
Her eyes glittered malevolently. “These are the same type of people Oliver Wendall Holmes meant when he said, ‘Three generations of imbeciles are enough’.” She pointed to me and my friends. “These are all potential criminals and urban terrorists that we should not let back into our country, no matter how forceful their arguments about injustice are.” Then, to me: “You are dismissed, Dinah Armstrong.”
I didn’t bother going back to my seat; there was no point. I went home from there, crying a little, but feeling somehow satisfied with myself. I had held it together and spoken the truth as I saw it after months of research and careful reading of the propaganda in my not-so-new History book. The victors write history, right? At the time, I was looking for my own kind of victory.
Once home, I re-read the essay I had already sent in. It contained everything I had told the panel and more. I was satisfied that I had done the best I could. Hopefully, schools outside the U.S. would see my application and want me. I didn’t expect the U.S. schools to be impressed.
* * *
Four months later, I was anxiously awaiting rejection e-mails from U.S. schools. I finally got them in early October, just before the rainy season. I was working with the other kids to help harvest sugar cane, a dangerous and messy job that left me scratched and bruised. I acted as a junior medic since there wasn’t anyone else to dress field wounds. I wondered where I was going next.
Alfie and Dimitri signed on with ADF. Connie and Amia got letters from schools in Jakarta and South Africa offering them full scholarships to study Indo-European languages and Economics.
One day, I straggled home to find Grandma and my mother waiting for me outside the trailer. My mother was home on leave. They both looked excited. Grandma handed me three fat envelopes, two of which were postmarked Perth. My hands shook as I opened them: they offered me a full scholarship for three years of undergraduate training and four years of medical school if I would agree to serve in the outback for three additional years. The second envelope contained information about the school and its outreach programs for underserved people. The school was not glamorous but was fully accredited and had an impressive list of graduates.
The third letter was from the hospital where Sister Mary Catherine had trained, offering me a Nursing program with no obligation to pay them back. I clutched the three envelopes to my chest. It wasn’t the fanciest medical school in the world, but it wanted me. I hoped that Sister Mary Catherine would understand when I told her that I really didn’t want to be a nurse. She had obviously gone out of her way to help me.
“What will you do, Dinah?” asked my mother, looking a little worried.
Grandma put her arm around me. “I know what her choice will be. She will go to Perth. It’s what she has always wanted. Then she will come back here and be our doctor.”
* * *
July 4, 2076
I didn’t return to Naneeda for another 16 years. By then, Grandma and both of my parents had moved into town. I met my husband, an anesthesiologist, working in aid camps and had our daughter while we were stationed in Kyrgyzstan. I named her after my mother and grandmother: Anna Sylvia.
I went to New York to speak at the United Nations and found that the U.S. was still divided on what to do with people of color. I knew I couldn’t stay there, and decided it was time to return to Naneeda.
The island had become a vacation destination for wealthy people of southern Asia, bringing in much-needed money. Calhoun had been abandoned, and any remaining expats had moved on. The military pulled out, and there was no longer an American presence on that part of the island. The local government had invested in schools, and there was even a junior college. The hospital was expanding to provide more advanced surgical and maternal care. My husband loved it on sight, as did Anna. After roaming the world, we had finally come home.
I learned that I didn’t need to prove myself worthy to be an American. I am a proud American resident of Naneeda and servant to 20,000 people who appreciate that I have come back to them.
Copyright © 2022 by L. B. Zinger
