Winter Parker

I broke my mother’s “Trump 2024” mug on purpose, but I told her it was an accident.

          Red, white, and blue. An orange-faced felon. My mother’s favorite mug staring at me with the other water-spotted dishes in the sink that I had avoided too long. My finger pads, and blood, are the same shade as the red on the cup, the red of the flag, and they are pressed against the pristine white dish rag, my skin a variation of the same whiteness, and wiping the water droplets off the blue stripe—something like my sadness, which would become a Rothko when the results of the election are revealed.
          Putting that mug back in the cabinet day after day, I cracked into more disparate pieces than it did when I dropped it and watched it fall and hoped it would cure something in me.
          The first time America failed in this one, large, way, I was 12 and unspeakably more naïve. I believed that Trump’s vision for America was a vision that echoed America’s values—I wasn’t wrong, but I didn’t know how the truth applied to that statement. My parents convinced me. I still feel guilty.
          Red, white, and blue. My friend from Junior Optimists International (J.O.I. Club) that only spoke Spanish at home. My fervent defense for Trump being the same words constantly hurled at immigrants: “they should come here legally,” I said like my parents told me. Red-faced transfem reflects on their white privilege—how it was okay, easy, to be blind-folded, and how it is still okay now to be embarrassed—and blue was a false wisdom weaponized.
          At age 16, my sister got my mom the “Trump 2024” mug to add to the other one: a cartoon rendition of Trump imitating his speech in my mother’s favor, “You’re the best mother—the best, no one else like you.” I didn’t know how much longer I could argue. Over and over.
          Red, white, and blue. Red with rage, or frustration, because my parents are the kind of white people who don’t see color or respect culture, but they go blue if I criticize that.
          I am 20 now, and my parents voted to get rid of me. My parents saw my gender identity and sexual orientation and everything I love and consider special about myself and the world on the ballot, and they voted against it, which wasn’t a surprise because they were very enthusiastic to do it and had been waiting to for 4 years.
          My mom called me a couple days after, the first time we had talked since it happened, and she told me she was disappointed in her kids because none of them would be coming home for Thanksgiving.
                      I wanted to tell her that I broke that awful fucking mug on purpose 4 years ago, and I am disappointed that she has never heard any word I have ever said or known me at all.
          I said nothing.
          Red, white, and blue illusion swept from the floor and carried out to the bin.