Ignoring the Obvious: A Response to "How Hitler's Enablers Undid Democracy in Germany"

Nazis burn the archives of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Opernplazt, Berlin. 

            While I appreciate Prof. Browning’s history lesson on “How Hitler’s Enablers Undid Democracy In Germany,” I was left utterly bewildered by the argument he furthered therein: Americans should be suspicious of using the term “fascism” to describe our current historical moment, even if the fate of the Weimar Republic does provide “some instructive parallels and important warning signals” as regards what is happening in our own ailing democracy. In other words, he’s telling us that yes, American democracy is under threat, and yes, there are parallels between the rise of Hitler and the rise of Trump, but no, there is no reason to think that problem might actually be fascism because America is too different from interwar Germany to ever become a Nazi dictatorship. While Browning’s position may have merits, there are serious gaps in his reasoning that should leave any reasonable person unconvinced. 

“Fascism,” Browning reminds us in the second of two instances where he uses the term, “openly condemned parliamentary democracy.” Well, America is proud of being a democracy. According to Browning, America is much more prone to adopt the “illiberal democracy” being forwarded by Western authoritarians such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán than we are Nazism. These “illiberal democracies,” Browning says, prefer to exploit the appearance of free and democratic elections as a legitimizing force for their agenda while consolidating their power through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the like. In essence, Browning would have us believe that fascism just isn’t America’s style and that is why we aren’t actually facing the threat of a Nazi dictatorship. 

Throughout the article, Browning’s argument relies heavily on an equivocation of the term “fascism” with the term “Nazism.” “Fascism” as such is only mentioned twice, as the article is primarily concerned with Nazism–a specific for-instance of fascism that arose in interwar Germany. The result of Browning’s equivocation is to create a sense of ridiculousness at the idea that America could become a Nazi dictatorship, which in turn obscures the possibility that we could very well still end up with fascist authoritarians as the political majority in D.C. It’s easy to point out how different contemporary America is from interwar Germany and claim that as a reason that such a thing will never happen here. It’s much more difficult to look closely at what is happening legislatively and socioculturally in America’s red states and deny that they are clearly being overrun with Christian Nationalists pushing a punishing and oppressive fascist agenda. By sticking to Nazism in his argument, Browning can sidestep reckoning with the fascist impulses that are steadily growing in red states and still claim that America is not threatened by fascism. 

Browning’s equivocation also obscures the facts that fascism was born in Italy, and that Hitler created his Nazi ideology by borrowing some ideas from Italian fascism. He took those ideas and applied them to the historically and culturally specific context of interwar Germany to create his Nazi ideology. Hitler’s creation of Nazism is proof that fascism is a protean ideology; any sufficiently motivated person can adapt it to their purposes. Indeed, when one looks closely at the suppressive laws and oppressive agendas being passed in red states by the Christian Nationalist regimes that have come to dominate the GOP, that is exactly what is happening here, now. These American fascists have borrowed parts of their tactics and ideology from both Mussolini and Hitler, but they are mixing it with heaps of jingoism, evangelical Christian authoritarianism, Adam Smith, and ill-informed constitutional literalism. Browning might be right: perhaps Nazism is impossible in America. That hasn’t stopped Americans from creating their own version of fascism in the same way that Hitler created Nazism. Nazism is indeed a strain of fascism, but not all fascists are Nazis. Some fascists are American Christian Nationalists, and Christian Nationalism is very much the GOP’s preferred style of fascism, if not all of America’s. 

Of course, anyone reading Browning’s examples of how the Nazi party exploited the machinery of German democracy to wrest and consolidate their absolute power cannot fail to notice that the ultimate goals of American “illiberal democracy” under the GOP aren’t really all that different from those of the interwar European fascists. The Christian Nationalist wing of the GOP has been in the ascendancy since 2015, and they want to consolidate as much power at the state and federal levels into their hands as they possibly can. So far, it’s been pretty easy: several influential GOP stalwarts–Graham, McConnell, Jordan, Cruz, and Rubio among them–have openly embraced the discrimination, nationalism, misogyny, theocracy, and authoritarianism that have come to characterize this subset of the Republican Party. Just as Germany’s traditional conservatives cast their lot with the Nazis to gain power America’s GOP has cast their lot with the Christian Nationalist fascists to achieve the same end–a fact that Browning practically admits.

Is it really so impossible, then, to think that the GOP would likely go much farther than “illiberal democracy,” given that one of their main objectives is to have enough states in their camp to call a constitutional convention? The interwar fascists in Italy and Germany won legitimate elections to get into power, and as soon as they were in office, they brought out the authoritarian sledgehammer to rewrite their constitutions in the image of fascism. Is it really so ridiculous to think that the Christian Nationalists in the GOP will try exactly the same thing when they get the chance? 

There is one particularly instructive comparison between 21st-century America and interwar Germany that Browning makes–a “big lie” has victimized both. Hitler’s early propaganda campaign was a “big lie” intended to delegitimize the Weimar Republic: he claimed that the republic had been installed by the “November Criminals” to enrich themselves and destroy the German people. Trump’s “big lie” came in 2020, as he claimed that a rigged election had cost him the presidency and America was laboring under an illegitimate Democratic administration. 

The goal of Hitler’s “big lie” was to undermine the Weimar Republic. His ruthless excision of any democratic impulse within the German state came only after he had come to power. The goal of Trump’s big lie was to delegitimize the institution of voting, without which we cannot have democracy. Of the two lies, Trump’s was the bigger. Hitler’s “big lie” destroyed a democratic republic; Trump’s big lie destroyed the only means by which a nation can achieve and maintain a democracy. If this lie doesn’t display the hallmark fascist contempt for parliamentary democracy, I don’t know what does. 

Despite this obvious circumstance, Browning assures us that America is not under threat by fascism because “Trump is no Hitler,” He goes on to argue that, “compared with Hitler’s national-socialist ideological fixations, which led to brutal dictatorship, war, and genocide, Trump’s preoccupations seemed mainly to involve attention, adulation, and fundraising.” The only way that Trump’s “preoccupations” could seem so anodyne is if one utterly ignores the massive waves of authoritarian hate speech that have been spewing from Trump since he hit the campaign trail in 2015–as Browning clearly has. 

A massive number of the January 6th rioters honestly believed that they were acting at the behest of Trump; some believed they were following his direct orders. The Proud Boy militias no doubt think the same thing whenever they march, armed to the teeth, into libraries to terrorize families and library patrons who are enjoying public programming offered by the library and minding their own business besides. I’m certain that the 31 heavily armed Patriot Front militiamen also believed that they were acting at Trump’s behest when they decided to violently demonstrate their opposition to a public Gay Pride event last June in Idaho. The fact that Trump is “no Hitler” doesn’t really matter. Trump IS Trump, and what he has done has eroded America’s democratic institutions and civil liberties. Trump doesn’t have to be Hitler; he just needs to command the same loyalty from his followers, who he knows will act–with certainty and violence–on the hatred he habitually vomits forth. No Hitler comparisons should be needed here to recognize Trump as the dangerous, pro-fascist force that he is.

In all honestly, Browning is probably correct in surmising that Trump has no chance to take back the presidency in 2024. To be honest, Trump currently serves the GOP as a figurehead and a propagandist who spurs Christian Nationalists onward toward committing acts of terrorism and violence against their neighbors and the children of their communities. Trump’s hatred and his minions’ vicious antics distract the rest of us from paying any attention whatsoever to the clever pro-fascists currently working over the leadership of the GOP. At this moment, there are at least three major pro-fascist front-runners who are jockeying to take the Republican nomination in 2024. Former Trumpist and current autocrat Rick DeSantis is a darling among Trump supporters. White supremacist replacement theorists J.D. Vance and Blake Masters–who are both backed by a shadowy, foreign techno-elitist billionaire–are practically champing at the bit to take that nomination. We need to start paying close attention to them.

Unlike Trump, these men don’t act out in piques of cranky toddler narcissism, and they are far better at building alliances with the traditionalists and moderates within the Republican Party. Any of the three of them would take the task of enshrining Christian Nationalist fascism in our constitution quite seriously indeed. And they would all make certain that we were too busy reacting to Trump’s antics to notice what they were doing until it was too late. Trump is no Hitler, but that is no matter. DeSantis, Masters, Vance, or some other pro-fascist figure will be very keen to institute policies at the federal level in service to this newly emergent American strain of fascism as soon as they can get away with it. 

Browning criticizes the “facile comparisons” being made between contemporary America and interwar Germany that invoke “fascism” as an “imprecise epithet” to describe the political tides currently drowning the American system. Unfortunately, he doesn’t really succeed in dismissing these comparisons altogether because he fails to define fascism precisely enough for us to recognize–or deny–those comparisons for ourselves. 

A user-friendly definition of fascism is clearly in order, and the Merriam-Webster online dictionary happens to have a great one. Therein, Fascism (“a term often capitalized”) is defined as 

“a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.” 

Granted, some of the aspects of this newly emerging American fascism don’t much seem to resemble that definition at first blush. But just because fascism is manifesting differently in contemporary America than it did in interwar Europe doesn’t mean that that’s not exactly what is happening. One need only be willing to look past the pedantic in order to see the obvious. Despite formal differences, the underlying impact of Christian Nationalist fascism will more or less prove to be the same in America as was seen in interwar Europe. 

For example, one would be hard-pressed to deny that the Christian Nationalist fascists in the GOP exult national identification over individual freedoms. Civil liberties are one instance of a government preserving an individual’s freedoms and human rights. The red state GOP fascists keep passing laws to curtail the civil liberties of people they don’t like, or who are likely to say things they don’t like. They are in favor of any and every measure that would compel Americans to work with as few job and safety protections as possible, for as little pay and benefits as possible. They continue to champion the notion of socio-economic mobility as a justification for clinging to an economic system that has generated incredible socio-economic disparity and gutted the American middle class.

About the only aspect of fascism that doesn’t seem to be in place currently is the “centralized autocratic government aspect. Now, it is absolutely true that America is federal system built to ensure that any centralized federal government will not impinge upon the rights of the states to govern according to their leaders’ wishes. Logically, that should be enough to prevent a centralized autocracy from ever happening. However, it is instructive to remember that neither Italy nor Germany had an “autocratic centralized government”  before the fascists took them over. Indeed, the fascist demand for centralized autocracy was one of the things that both Mussolini and Hitler managed to heed as soon as they possibly could after they had seized power in their respective nations. There is really no telling what in our constitution would be rewritten if committed Christian Nationalists in the GOP managed to have enough power to call a convention and shape the future governance of our country according to their fascist objectives. 

As we all know, the constitution is the supreme law of the land, and any state laws that conflict with what is in the constitution are inevitably struck down. If the Christian Nationalist faction of the GOP were to achieve the super-majority they would need in both houses of Congress, they would absolutely change our constitution to reflect their bigotry and their priorities. In that case, blue states that have enshrined democracy, equal protection under the law, and civil liberties for all of their citizens in their state constitutions could very well end up having those constitutions struck down for being out of compliance with the federal constitution. Those states could lose hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for infrastructure, social safety net programs, and education–and that’s just to start. 

In the face of such a devastating turn of events, how many of those beautiful blue bastions could successfully resist the demands of a federal government that has found them to be out of compliance with the “law of the land?” If any managed to resist at all, it would be very few who successfully could for any length of time. As it turns out, you don’t need a ready-made centralized government to inflict fascist autocracy upon the whole of this nation; you just need the willful and egregious tyranny of a pro-fascist super-majority willing to exploit the mechanisms of federalism so that they could force every state in the union to follow their agenda. 

Ultimately, Browning’s argument that America is in trouble, but not actually fascist trouble, falls flat because he fails to take his own warning signals seriously enough.  He’s right that America is unlikely to become a Nazi dictatorship. He is wrong to use that idea as a justification for dismissing the fascism already occurring in our midst and the very real threat it poses to all of America–not just the red states. America is in danger of becoming something far worse than an “illiberal democracy,” whether Browning wants to admit that or not. Fascism is already here in America, it just isn’t evenly distributed…yet. 

Doppelganger and Symmetry

 

It isn’t every day that you meet your metaphorical doppelganger, much less possibly acquire your next residence from them, but that’s exactly what transpired of late. As it turns out, Scott, the realtor who sold my friend W his house, is also a rental agent. Unbeknownst to me, Will asked Scott to help me out. That is how I came to see this cute little midcentury tract home. Now, it’s smaller than I would like, but it has a big, dry, basement. It also has a huge fenced yard. Both my cat and my dog will be very happy there. This is my intention for myself as well. Having a place of my own is just the foundation I need both personally and professionally to get back on my feet and hit the floor running. 

Perhaps the best part of all this is that the owner of the house is leaving most of her furniture behind. She’s relocating and renting the house out for extra income. Now, I have radically different decorating tastes than Mrs. B., that much is certain. However, as I basically fled East with my pets and a carful of clothes and other essentials, I have zero furniture to put in any house, anywhere. Having that stress gone along with my housing shortage is 100% worth living with Mrs. B’s cave-like, earth-toned abode until I can finally find my forever home. 

When I accompanied Scott to visit the property and see if I would want to rent it, I was rather surprised by both Mrs. B and her household. Mrs. B is about five years older and five inches shorter than me. I was dressed in a teal dress with peacock-feather print leggings. She was in sweatpants and a teal T-shirt. I noticed decorative peacock feathers arranged in a knot on the wall behind Mrs. B. I noted the interesting synchronicity, and then turned my attention to my potential landlord. 

Mrs. B is an army vet from the Dominican Republic. She’s also a retired vet who spent her post-military career as a staff veterinarian for the ASPCA. Her house was full of rescued animals. I mean, there were animals in every single room of that house including the basement and the bathroom. And I don’t mean just a jumbled menagerie of many cats and many dogs. Mrs. B. specialized in rescuing exotic birds from their abusive or neglectful owners. There were more birds than dogs in that house.

When she first invited us into her house, I was struck by the smell. It was literally the warmest, cleanest-smelling house I’d seen that day. In front of the window was a 50-gallon fish tank with Koi, Angelfish, Molly fish, Swordtails, Gourami, and a clown loach. They burbled happily just under the water’s surface in their own little school. Mrs. B must have just fed them. Pumpkin spice scent wafted through the living room, courtesy of a wax burner on the table just inside. Before pointing out any other feature, she introduced me to the trio of lovebirds who resided in a bamboo cage in the living room. Hero, Bruno, and Jose sat huddled together on the bar in the center of the cage. Their eyes were closed in what could only be described as cozy contentment as they huddled three abreast on the bar. I’ve never seen lovebirds huddle in a group of three before; they’re kind of known for being “couple birds” for lack of a better descriptor. Yet these three were in their own little world of happy, nestling close. Maybe it works out so well because they are all male. 

The fish scattered to the far side of the tank as we moved through the living room and into the kitchen. Before I entered, I noticed the 3-foot dark blue, green, and purple Macaw perched atop its open cage. Her face was a muddy purplish-blue color, and out from it shone piercing yellow eyes gazing upon us with absolute malevolence. Mrs. B introduced us to Marlena the Macaw by warning, “That’s Marlena. Don’t get too close. She gets testy when there’s a man in the house. She don’t like being separated from her boyfriend.” I had no idea what Mrs. Be meant by that, but I could see that Marlena was chewing anxiously on a chunk of a resin tree branch that jutted haphazardly out the far side of the cage. I honestly felt like she would rather have been chewing on my face. Gave me the willies. 

Scott and I made a wide berth of Marlena as we squeezed by into the truly tiny kitchen. Scott and I stood side-by-side mere inches in front of the Macaw habitat and listened as Mrs. B pointed out all the things she would be leaving behind for me to use, absent-mindedly remarking at the end that the stove was electric because she had just then realized a potential renter might want to know that. At just that moment, I felt a drippy heaviness drop on my shoulder. Splattered across my right shoulder was parrot crap. “OOOOH. I’m so sorry. She always gets like that when there’s a man in the house.” Scott is 6’5” and 300 lbs, and his build is indistinguishable from that of a grizzly…or a sasquatch. But for some reason, the bird shit on me, the nonbinary potential renter. I guess she saw me as more manly than the grizzly man beside me, and that thought kind of amuses me. It amused me more than scrubbing that shit out of my heavy velour jacket, I assure you. 

Mrs. B. handed me a towel to wipe it off and scurried to find some cleanser. Scott and I moved out of the kitchen and into the tiny hallway. Not long thereafter, Mrs. B emerged from her room–two doors down to the right–which was apparently where she kept the caca cleaner. Before she could step all the way out of her door, a small tidal wave of dogs rushed out from behind her to crash on the shores of my flocked peacock leggings. There were two chihuahuas, a husky, and a golden retriever. She called her yappy canine brood to go back into her room and be good. They reluctantly did, mostly because neither Scott nor I was going to pet them. I really wanted to, but given my luck thus far with pets in the house, I thought it better to keep my hands away from their excitable and yapping jaws. I looked to the left and saw the bathroom at the end of the hall. I moved past Scott to get a better look. On the way, I glanced down and noticed that my shins were matted with dog hair. 

My gaze fell on the pipe sticking out where the tub faucet should be and then stopped.  “I’m gonna fix that tonight!” Mrs. B assured me, as she moved past Scott to address my curiosity and forestall my decision to pass on the house. She knew exactly what I was staring at. I noticed a lonely, homely little turquoise parakeet in a sire cage hanging just outside of the shower. Under other circumstances, he’d have been a little gem of a bird. But after seeing a polyamorous triad of male lovebirds and a menacing if magnificent Macaw, this little gal was kind of…basic. “That’s Pedro. I’m pet-sitting him while my friend is in DR.” I noticed a faucet, a caulking gun, and an assortment of small hand tools were laid out on a faded magenta beach towel in the large, deep, gorgeous old cast-iron tub. I am a bath person, but overly complicated whirlpool tubs are lost on me. Give me one of these mid-century cast-iron tubs any day. The tools in the tub told me that Mrs. B really was planning to fix the faucet spout soon. I relaxed a little.

“Let me show you the basement!” Mrs. B said, gently grabbing my forearm and leading me back across the kitchen and towards Marlena. Mrs. Be lead us to the basement stairs and said, “Her boyfriend is down here. She don’t like being separated from him” Scott glanced at me, eyebrows raised. I just kind of shrugged and followed Mrs. B down the steps. As soon as I got to the bottom step, I saw what Mrs. B. had been talking about–or, rather, who. Perched atop an enormous iron cage was a 3.5-foot brilliant vermillion, saffron, cerulean, and white Macaw with a bright yellow face and eyes. He opened his wings to their full 3.5-foot width and flapped them briskly up and down a few times. He dipped is head twice and then stared me down with a level gaze before emitting a loud, screeching honk. His call was met and matched by Marlena, his erstwhile upstairs Juliet. “That Raoul. He misses his girlfriend,” said Mrs. B. Oh. Marlena the menacing Macaw was Raoul’s girlfriend. “I use to put them together, but then they made babies. I had to find homes for four baby parrots. Never again!” said Mrs. B as she moved in to show the basement. 

The bone-dry basement was huge, bright, and fully furnished. The furnace, water heater, and washer/ dryer set were all less than four years old. Could not say the same for the pristine but obsolescent fuse box keeping the lights on in the place. I loved the basement of that house more than anything else. I turned slowly in a 360-degree loop to survey the whole space. My eyes lighted on the cages next to Raoul’s. A smaller red, yellow, green, and white Macaw was inside his wrought-iron filigree cage, munching contentedly on a carrot. Next to him was a bamboo cage with a dark shape huddled in the center, staring out hauntedly. Upon closer inspection, I saw that he was an African gray parrot. 

Improbably, Scott’s phone rang. “I gotta take this. I’ll just go upstairs.” With that, grizzly man tromped up the basement steps, leaving me with Mrs. B. 

“Do you like the fish?” she asked.

As a matter of fact, I did, and I told her so. “Would you like to have a fish tank? Here with you?” No I would not, but I didn’t say so. While the rest of the house was ho-hum, the basement was fantastic and I could see myself just actually living down there most of the time. Between that and the yard–which I had only seen pictures of, by the way– I knew that this was the place my dog and cat would be happiest, and I already loved the bathtub–a major consideration for me, to be honest. 

“Why would you leave it?” I asked.

“Because it won’t make the trip to Kansas. They all die before we get there.” Having recently traveled to New York state from Oklahoma, Kansas’ neighbor to the south, I understood exactly how she felt and knew that she was 100% right. Getting this far in a car with a dog and a cat was pure hell and torture for all three of us. “If you rent the house, would you take care of the fish?” It was very hard to say no to that. Before I could say so, she added, “I can find someone to take care of them, if you can’t.” 

“That might be the best thing.” I responded, “I don’t know that I’d be able to keep them alive. I’ve only ever owned three fish and all three of them died within a week. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you for being honest,” she added, sincerely. I asked where she was moving to.

“To Pittsburg, Kansas. My sister lives there,” she said. “I have cancer,” she added, “I’m doing chemo right now.” She paused a bit and then said, nodding emphatically, “I want to be near my family.” She went on to explain that her son lived with his family in Florida and that she didn’t want to burden him. 

“That is extremely rough luck, Mrs. B,” I said. “It couldn’t be happening to a kinder, nicer person,” I added ruefully. She cracked a smile at that. After a moment, I looked at her and said, “I truly wish you the best of luck on your journey to Kansas. You seem like the sort of person who really deserves it.” With that, Mrs. B got a bit of a look in her eye, like she was measuring me. Her eyes had become a bit misty, and she wiped at them before saying, “Let’s go. I show you the backyard.” 

We schlepped slowly up the steps in silence. As we went, I reflected on the uncanny coincidences at play. This woman was as hardworking and handy as I was. She had clearly done every bit of interior repair work on that house–much like I had my own home. I recognized the bathroom faucet as her desire to finish one last thing to make the house more appealing to a renter. I’d spent weeks doing the exact same thing to my old house before I left. 

Mrs. B took in stray animals and cared so well for them that her house smelled only of warmth and love. The only fur in evidence was matted on my leggings. Otherwise the place was spotless and yet completely accommodating of her much-loved menagerie. Both my furbabies are rescues. While the trip East would have been much easier without them, I was not about to part from them. You don’t dump animals you rescued from near oblivion, no matter how hard it gets. I knew for a fact that she absolutely did not want to leave those lovely little fish behind, either, but she knew as well as I that they had a better chance of surviving if she left them here and could re-home them. My being honest about wanting them to live long and healthy lives had actually sort of impressed her, it seemed. 

Mrs. B. stopped so abruptly at the bottom of the steps that I almost ran into her. She gestured to a small pile of tchotchkes and assorted small appliances. “That is all I am taking with me from the garage,” she said. “The rest is yours. If you decide to rent the house.” Mrs. B. then led me on a tour of her garage to see the abandoned DIY projects she must leave behind. She showed me a new Shower/tub enclosure with frosted glass doors. “I did not have the time to do that one. You can put that in, easy, if you decide to rent the house,” she said. She gestured to a perfectly vintage midcentury minibar that only needed to be restrained. “You can do that if you decide to rent the house,” she said. We stopped in front of a few more projects scattered around the periphery of the garage. It felt for all the world like I was walking the Camino de Santiago with a fellow pilgrim, and both of us had serious prayers to make at the shrine of our final destination. Finally, she takes me to the back door of the garage, behind which lies the enormous fenced yard. She gently swung the door open, and then stood aside so I could step through and get a better look. 

The yard has an enormous hill sweeping from the east to the northwestern edge. I was very happy that Mrs. Be was also leaving behind her a weedeater, two lawnmowers, and a snowblower because I was definitely going to need all three to keep up with that glorious yard. I noticed that a lovely little niche was created by the downward slope of the hill and the curve of the yard. A pit group and chiminea sat in the clearing. Mrs. B stepped in close to my left side. “I need to ask you a favor. For if you rent the house.” Having had to refuse the fish, I was hoping this was a request that I could actually accommodate. 

“Lay it on me, mama. What do you need?” I asked. 

Tears gathered in her eyes as she turned her face toward the far back of the yard. With a sweeping gesture, she pointed to a tiny tree with a wind chime hanging from its lower branches. 

“There. That’s where my first baby is buried. My chihuahua, Maria.” she then swept her hand across and down the hill to rest at what looked like a tiny grotto. “I put that pond in for her. She love it.” Mrs. B. stopped for a moment and stifled a sob. I fervently hoped that whatever favor she wanted, it was something I could grant. 

“Will you…look after her?” Mrs. B. looked at me, eyes pleading. “After her grave? Make sure nothing happen to it? If you rent the house?” 

Boy, howdy. Did she ask the right person for that favor. I smiled gently and told her, “Ancestors and graves are sacred to me. I’m happy to look after it,” adding, “If I rent the house.” She smiled widely and wiped her tears away. “I hope you rent the house, then.”

In that moment, I knew for a fact that although my life has been extremely rough for the past several months, I was still in a better place than she. “I would never trade places with her,” I thought to myself. A moment passed before I realized that in taking her house, I was doing EXACTLY that. A chill trickled into my spine and settled heavily on my limbs as the realization hit me. 

Mrs. B, like myself, had spent her professional career being referred to as “Doctor,” just like me. She was alone and bravely facing an uncertain and foggily dim future, just like me. She barely had anyone other than family to rely on, just like me. She was being forced to part from a home she loved so very much and had planned to live in until she grew old, just like me. She was being compelled to flee halfway across the country to avoid a dread, implacable, and deadly fate, just like me. She didn’t deserve to be going through any of it, just like me.  And to top it all off, she was moving to a Kansas town less than 2 hours from Tulsa. I’ve even been to Pittsburg–several times. My college theater department at NEO A&M had a reciprocal course-sharing agreement with Pittsburg State University that I took advantage of.

At that moment, Scott came into the garage. “Well, what did you two decide? 

I paused for a long moment, lost in thought. Mrs. B was most certainly my metaphorical doppelganger. We were both shedding dire circumstances and setting forth, cross-country, into an uncertain future with only the hope and intention of making a better life. Mrs. B knows that with me as a renter, her Maria’s grave will be respected and tended, and that thought lightened her mind considerably. The thought of having a mostly furnished place so accustomed to and accommodating of pets lightened my mind considerably. Given that zero of the other AFFORDABLE properties I had seen that day were actually habitable, much less safe for pets, I decided that Mrs. B’s place might be a trade I would have to live with. 

“Let me talk things over with my agent, and we’ll get back to you this afternoon,” I finally said. Scott was happy to escape Mrs. B’s feathery menagerie. 

“Ok. But if you rent the house,” she asked “you will take care of my Maria?” 

My gaze leveled at hers. Nodding slowly in the affirmative, I replied, “If I take the house.”