What a difference having a family makes-when someone can drive you, when you feel safe enough to enter a car with them, knowing you might be trapped on the packed freeways for many more hours than you anticipated. What a difference it makes, between being able to leave as the storm fixes its eye on your shores, and where I am now, writing this from a pile of duvets on my closet floor as the roof of my house creaks from the wind. There was a time when I could drive, before my body landed in this much pain. Some flights opened up and the seats were gone as soon as I tried to book them. I searched for hours, gave up and cried, woke up on Saturday morning and searched for more hours, gave up and cried again. The hurricane is coming and there were no flight itineraries that would work, not with my disability and an accompanying pet. If I break in an airport, no one will protect me. I was housebound for days afterward, all for walking from one terminal to another. I got home last Monday and cried when I stepped through my front door. Even now, as I type, it is a stinging octopus latched onto my right clavicle, deep aching tentacles winding all the way down to my bones. The pain in my neck and shoulder kept escalating. The world is violent-I will say it over and over again, in as many books as I like, as many times as I like. My mask got damp from the steady tears, and I didn’t care. They always stare when you’re in a wheelchair anyway. I cried when the wheelchair finally arrived, and all the way to the gate, not caring who stared. In the end, she gave me a chair and I sat in it and cried and cried. I asked her to call the gate to let them know I was delayed, and she told me no one would hold the plane, not for me. The information agent asked me if I wanted the police, an unhinged question, and I replied as sternly as I could that I did not. I could not imagine what cops would do to me for being Black, for the way my speech was glitching, the way my body was folding, the way my mind was about to break. Sometimes it was because of my passports, sometimes it was because of how I dressed or sounded, or because tattoos cover my arms, or because my disability is invisible-there are so many permutations of punishable deviances in a space as heavily surveilled as an airport. I’ve had breakdowns in airports in various countries before, been detained and threatened by soldiers, had airport personnel deliberately try to make me miss my flights so I would be stranded away from home. I’ve lost my ability to speak before, and it horrifies me each time it happens. I listened as she told whoever she was speaking to that she had a passenger in distress, and then she suggested calling the police. On the other side of the counter, the woman panicked and started making phone calls. My words slurred as the muscle spasms spread to my throat and face, and I choked back helpless tears. I tried explaining that I could not walk to the gate unassisted without going into severe convulsions, but as I spoke, I began to stutter. When I got downstairs, the information agent-an older white woman-told me the cart had left without me. The ticket agent expedited me through security and called a cart to get me to my gate. By the time I got to the check-in desk, my body was seizing visibly, forcing short bursts of sound past my gritted teeth as my torso caved and convulsed. Last week, I fucked up and wheeled a trolley of luggage from one terminal to another in JFK. I haven’t been able to navigate an airport without being in a wheelchair for about a year now. It can’t bear the weight of a pet carrier with Güs inside while pushing through an airport packed with frightened people trying to leave a city before it drowns. I forgot it can’t drive anymore, not for the hours evacuation takes. Catch a flight to New York, to the only other city in this country I ever called home. I thought I would drive to Houston if it came down to it. I’d been gathering supplies-gallons of drinking water, boxes of soup-things I could load my car with. Hurricane Ida JournalĪll gates in the levee system are closed. Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work.
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