To Paradise

by Hanya Yanagihara

what we’re fighting against there: the oppression of the black man and woman, the oppression that’s gone on since America was founded and will go on and on until it burns down to the ground and we begin something new. Because there is no fixing what America is—there is no way to do work around the margins and say justice has been restored. No, brothers and sisters, that’s not how justice works. My mother worked as a nurse’s aide in what they used to call the Houston Negro Hospital, and she would tell me stories of the men and women who came in with heart attacks, about how they’d be gasping for breath, about how their nails would turn blue because they weren’t getting enough oxygen. My mother would be told by the senior nurses to massage her patients’ hands, to get the blood flowing through the extremities, and as she did, she’d watch their nails turn pink again, and feel their hands warm up with her touch. But one day she realized that this wasn’t solving anything—she was making their hands prettier, maybe even work better, but their hearts were still sick. Nothing had really changed after all.