Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

by Clay McLeod Chapman

When Noah was just a boy, growing up in Virginia, his mom would take him to the library. She’d let him check out two books. Any two. His choice. Their deal was simple: One for you and one for me. Mom would read one book to Noah at bedtime while he had to read the other on his own. He’d pick a picture book to tackle—the easy reads, Sendak or Silverstein—while for his mother, he’d tug the doorstoppers off the shelf. The cinder-block books. Tolkien. Dickens. King. He can still remember the sound of her voice, a soft southern lilt gamely taking on the personas of every last character, her words filling his bedroom, his mind, his dreams.

Noah hasn’t picked up a call from her since; just lets Mom go to voicemail now. Lets her ramble on for as long as she wants, filling up his inbox with her endless messages. He traps them. Suffocates them, like bugs in a jar.

Noah has felt so isolated from his family—his own mother—ever since she tumbled down the rabbit hole. Whatever crawled back up isn’t Mom anymore.

Then something changed. The channel changed.

They were a family once. They still are. Bound by blood, even if not ideology.

“I got you,” Mom whispers in Noah’s ear as she rushes up their lawn. “I got you, I got—” You. The memory’s been waiting for him, right there in the middle of the street. Like it happened only yesterday.

Their chyron flashes BREAKING NEWS, but isn’t news always breaking nowadays? Isn’t the news all broken by now? Smashed to bits?

Do not attempt to adjust your screen. The revolution will now be livestreamed!

“You think this happened overnight? You think this country just went bad now?” This father pulls down his bandana. He’s chewing through his anger, ready to spit it out. “Now you’re paying attention. Where the hell have you been the last ten years? Fifty years?” “I didn’t mean—” “This ain’t new. It’s just new to you. Rest of us have been out here dealing with this shit for decades now. Centuries. It’s only because life got all bad for you white folks that you’re opening up your eyes to it all, but the rest of us have been faced with this shit since the day we were born…”