"Some people have ordinary childhoods, but ours was truly unforgettable. Our family lived in a beautiful house. It was everything you could imagine. With the best money could buy. We were tucked in every night, safe from harm, behind closed doors, that were always locked." Fine, the money part and that last part might have been a bit of an overstatement, but the rest of it I sincerely mean. Just like the speaker of these words, I too lived away from the world. My mother, father, and twin brother lived in a two-story home in the outskirts of town. It was a rare event that we would ever get out of the house.
My mother, Lillian, would always make sure there were no strangers around before she would let my brother and father play in the backyard. I never really enjoyed playing outside; I would only play outside when my father would take me outside. My mother would also join in the play, but she always had a worried face when my brother and I were outside. I once asked her why she always looked as if she thought someone was watching us whenever we were outside, she replied with "I couldn't imagine someone taking my babies away," before kissing the top of my head and walking away.
The only kind of "going out" I ever enjoyed was when we left the house. My parents would take my brother and me to San Bernardino every year for our birthday. This was a stressful time for my mother, who tried her hardest to disguise herself from who knows what. My brother William, whom my parents, their friends, and I would just call Bill, always enjoyed the places he could run around. It reminded him of all the fun he could have in the backyard, except in a more open space. I always enjoyed the indoor events much more. One birthday, my parents took me to a museum in Redlands for my birthday. I enjoyed it very much, much more than my father and brother, whom appeared bored throughout the entire experience, and even my mother who faked her enjoyment, probably to please me.
On other occasions, my Aunt Kimi would take me out into the world. She wasn't a biological aunt, or an aunt of any official kind, she was just a friend of my parents who always offered to take care of me when she could. She was an Environmental and Animal rights lawyer who worked for the city, I always saw her law degree as something to aspire to. I remember when I told my mother I wanted to be a lawyer like my Aunt Kimi when I grew up. She was so sad after I had said that.
"I know you have the willpower and the brains to accomplish whatever you set your mind to," my mother said before walking out of the room, sobbing.
I never understood why my brother and I were never allowed to leave the house, or why my mother was always nervous and paranoid whenever we were in plain sight. That was until I discovered my parent's secret, something so controversial and confusing that I could only process it by reading my most treasured books. These eight treasured books were more like the Bible than novels for public consumption for me.
Because of my parent's secret, a secret that only their friends, my brother, and I knew about, if we needed anything, my parent's friends had to buy and bring it to us. It must have been really hard for them to buy everything we needed during the earliest years of my life. The previous president had completely ruined the economy by the end of his presidency, and the effects of the economic meltdown lingered for years. Luckily, the initiatives of the new president, who was inaugurated a month before my brother and I were born, helped stabilize the economy.
As the economy became less unstable, it was easier to get the adequate supplies we needed. Unfortunately, all of that ended in 2016 when the nation elected a racist, misogynist, four-times-bankruptcy-declaring, self-proclaimed billionaire to the office of President of the United States of America. Less than two months into his presidency, he had ordered all American troops stationed overseas to return home to execute his plan to deport all of the "illegal immigrants," although it was quite obvious that this was not the case. As long as you looked "illegal," you would be rounded up and deported.
I remember one time seeing a military convoy pass through the street outside. My entire family hid in the attic, just like the protagonists in one of my books. I reasoned that I, or anyone in my family, would not be deported because our fair skin and green eyes were not what the soldiers were told to look out for. We hid in the attic because my parents did not want to get caught. As I said, we weren't "illegal," but another way that the new president pandered to a key block of his constituents, the "Christian" right, was by promising to "protect traditional marriage." This sent chills down my parents' spines; they had seen what the new president was doing to the "illegals," meaning that they had no reason to believe that the new president would not do something similar to those who weren't in a "traditional marriage." We knew it was safe to leave when one of the soldier's superiors told them that their records indicated that the house was vacant, and the convoy drove passed the house.
With the new president focusing the power of the military on deporting millions of people, nations with a former American military presence soon fell into chaos. I would stay up way passed my bedtime and watch the international news for hours. I would see that Afghanistan and Iraq were overrun by militants hell-bent on killing everyone who didn't share their views, North Korea was able to threaten the South with missile strikes, China threatened Vietnam and the Philippines over control of the South China Sea, Russia constantly provoked Georgia, Ukraine, the Baltic states, and the rest of Europe, and Venezuela was able to continue their guerrilla campaign the Colombian jungle without the fear of American intervention. Although, some people like myself would argue that the American presence created the tension for these conflicts to occur in the first place, but that is an intellectual debate for another time.
Adding insult to injury, the new president's economic policies sent us down a downwards spiral, one worse than any other before. His policies ignited a trade war with China, and alienated many important allies, such as those in NATO, a military alliance he no longer saw useful and terminated the United States' membership in. If all of this wasn't bad enough already, the remaining money the nation still had he used on plating the White House in gold, and building a wall on the US-Mexico Border, even though he promised to make Mexico pay for the wall.
Eventually, the situation got so bad that my family could no longer continue to live the way we did. With international crises and the military focused on deporting "illegals," and "controlling" protestors, we had to find a way to get away from it all. Luckily my parent's ingenious friends were able to get us really far away from all of the conflict, but before I tell you that story, I feel as if I should tell you the story before that one.