Cockroach Crumbs

Nobody remembered exactly when the word, “people,” disappeared. Perhaps it happened after the bombs. Perhaps before. After years of escalating conflicts, America's enemies had formed an alliance no one believed possible. The first strikes came before dawn. Government buildings disappeared. Military installations followed. Hospitals overflowed until there were no hospitals left to overflow. Schools became shelters, shelters became rubble, and cities that had glowed from space became black patches on satellite maps. Alaska was hit. Hawaii was hit. Puerto Rico was hit. The mainland burned. The United States of America ceased to exist. In its place rose OppTor—the Oppressive Tormenter—a regime controlled by those powerful enough, wealthy enough, ruthless enough, and fortunate enough to survive. The rest became something else. At first they were called refugees. Then migrants. Then illegals. Then burdens. Then vermin. Eventually someone called them cockroach crumbs. The name stuck. Maria Bennett had once been a third-grade teacher in Ohio. Nobody cared. Her husband, David, had been an electrician. Nobody cared about that either. Their daughter Lucy was six years old. Their son Matthew was two. Nobody cared about them at all. Now they were four cockroach crumbs walking north. Maria carried Matthew against her chest in a sling made from strips of David's shirt. David carried Lucy whenever her feet became too blistered to walk. They had heard Canada was accepting refugees. Then they heard Canada wasn't. Then someone said Mexico was. Someone else said Mexico had closed its border too. Nobody knew what was true anymore. They walked anyway. Around them traveled thousands of people who had once possessed names, addresses, jobs, mortgages, driver's licenses, college degrees, credit scores, retirement accounts and opinions about what should be done with desperate people who crossed borders. None of those things mattered now. They were hungry. They were homeless. And they were immigrants. At the Canadian border, Maria stood among hundreds of Americans pressed against a newly reinforced fence. A guard shouted through a loudspeaker. “THE BORDER IS CLOSED.” Someone cried. Someone begged. A man held his infant above his head. “Please! She's sick!” “THE BORDER IS CLOSED.” “We have nowhere else to go!” “RETURN TO YOUR COUNTRY.” A strange silence passed through the crowd. Their country? Behind them, smoke rose from what remained of it. Maria looked down at Lucy. “Mommy, why won't they let us in?” Maria couldn't answer. She remembered television reports from years earlier. Families at borders. Children sleeping beneath foil blankets. Mothers carrying babies across deserts and rivers. Politicians arguing about walls and laws and invasions. Maria had never thought much about those people. She hadn't hated them. That was what she told herself now. She simply hadn't thought much about them. Lucy tugged her sleeve. “Mommy?” Maria looked through the fence at the Canadian guards. “Maybe they're afraid of us.” “Why?” Maria swallowed. “Because we're immigrants.” Lucy frowned. “But we're people.” Maria pulled her closer. “Yes, Honey,” she whispered. “We are.” The new government of OppTor had little use for people who could not increase its wealth. Those captured were assigned to labor camps. They cleared rubble. They rebuilt roads. They planted crops. They repaired electrical systems. They manufactured goods. They constructed enormous homes for the oligarchs who governed what remained of the country. Guards watched from towers. The workers were given enough food to remain useful. No more. Words began disappearing too. Charity. Mercy. Compassion. Refugee. Eventually even love became dangerous. Those words suggested that one human being might owe something to another merely because both were human. OppTor considered that idea ridiculous and subversive. Far south, another stream of Americans moved toward Mexico. At the border stood Captain Alejandro Ruiz. His orders were simple. No Americans admitted. For three days he obeyed. He watched them arrive: accountants, nurses, mechanics, grandmothers, construction workers, teenagers, babies, and others. Some carried backpacks. Some carried grocery bags. Some carried nothing. On the fourth morning, an elderly American woman, carrying a little girl, approached the barrier. “Please,” she said. Ruiz shook his head. “The border is closed.” “My granddaughter needs food.” “I cannot help you.” The woman stared at him. “Please,” she begged. Ruiz looked away. His own grandmother had once told him about relatives who had tried to enter the United States decades earlier. Some succeeded, but some were deported, and others were treated as criminals before anyone knew their names. He had grown up hearing those stories. Now an American grandmother stood before him holding a hungry child. For one terrible moment, revenge felt remarkably similar to justice. Then the little girl looked at him. Not American, not foreign, not legal, not illegal. Just hungry. Ruiz reached into his lunch bag, grabbed an orange, and pushed it through the fence. The child grabbed it. The grandmother began crying. Ruiz looked toward the other guards, then toward the hundreds of Americans waiting behind her. He unlocked the gate. Canada softened next. First children with their parents were admitted. Then the elderly. Soon officials stopped inventing categories of suffering worthy enough to deserve mercy. People crossed. Not Americans, not immigrants, not cockroach crumbs. People. Some Canadians objected. Some Mexicans objected. “Why should we help them after the way they treated us?” It was a reasonable question. But eventually someone asked a better one. If we become cruel because someone else was cruel first, when does cruelty end? Meanwhile, the rulers of OppTor congratulated themselves. The troublesome population had been greatly reduced. There were fewer mouths to feed, fewer sick people requiring medicine, fewer elderly people requiring care, fewer poor people requiring assistance. The nation belonged to the powerful now! But problems they hadn’t consider arose. The crops began failing. “Find workers.” There weren't enough. Factories slowed. “Find workers.” There weren't enough. Electrical grids failed. “Find workers.” There weren't enough. Sewage systems broke. Hospitals had too few nurses. Buildings had too few electricians. Warehouses had too few drivers. Restaurants had too few cooks. The oligarchs became furious! Who would grow their food? Who would repair their homes? Who would build their mansions? Who would manufacture their precious commodities? Who would clean their rooms, cook their meals, maintain their yachts and produce the wealth upon which their superiority depended? They had spent years deciding which human beings were worthless. Then they discovered something extraordinary. They needed them. OppTor eventually collapsed, not because compassion defeated cruelty, not because good defeated evil, not even because another country conquered it. It collapsed because the people who believed themselves superior eventually turned upon one another. When there were no powerless people left to blame, they blamed each other. When there were no outsiders left to hate, they created new outsiders. When there were no cockroach crumbs left beneath them, they began deciding which among themselves should become the next cockroach crumbs. And so they destroyed one another. Years later, children in Canada and Mexico learned about the country that had once called itself the United States of America. Their teachers told them about its enormous cities, its wealth, its inventions, its armies and its power. They also taught them about its refugees. One child raised her hand. “What were cockroach crumbs?” The teacher was quiet for a moment. Then she answered. “They were people.” The child looked confused. “Then why did they call them that?” The teacher looked around the classroom. “Because sometimes the easiest way to justify cruelty to human beings is to stop calling them human beings.” And that, perhaps, was the lesson the world came closest to learning. Not how to prevent World War III. Not how to build stronger borders. Not even how to defeat tyrants. A lesson much simpler – never allow a word to convince you that the person standing on the other side of a border is less human than you are.