It was a day that had been filled with strange events. While at work, I received an alarming message on my cell phone from an old email account that I had long ago closed. The notification was from someone who wished me harm.
I asked a colleague if he could check and somehow see my closed account online. His eyebrows raised when he saw all the blood drained from my face, but he obliged my request. My closed account was not visible. I had a sick feeling in my stomach.
Days before, I had received another message that made my stomach turn. There was an organization-wide email sent by my employer at that time, a healthcare organization, about the need to allow government agencies to access patient medical records as long as the government agents presented proper ID. I had been going for EMDR therapy for PTSD, and I suddenly felt exposed. And then angry.
When I left work that day to run my typical errands, I was followed, but not by the cars that I was accustomed to trying to lose in crowded neighborhood streets. These cars were black SUVs with tinted windows. They followed me from work to my medical appointment, and I noticed them again as I stopped at the grocery store.
Returning to the underground garage at my temporary safe house, I was relieved. I no longer thought I was being followed, and I was glad to be “home” in a locked garage inside a locked building that contained my locked apartment. I gathered my grocery bags, one in each hand, and proceed upstairs to my apartment at the end of the hall on an upper floor. Ten feet from my door, I fumbled for my keys, before hearing footsteps behind me. I had a moment of terror.
“Are you [First Name]?” I turned around to face those who had cornered me at the end of my own hallway.
“Who is asking?”
I turned to see a tall, thin man wearing causal, dark-colored clothes, sporting a short haircut and a clean-shaven face. Alongside him was a medium-sized woman with long brown hair who was wearing a funky knitted scarf of a pink color and a knit hat of another. She dressed like a hippie.
“We are from the FBI and would like to ask you some questions.” They showed me no IDs. I had been properly trained by social justice activists; activists who called me comrade, that is, until I went too far by loving one of their own.
“You can ask me whatever you have to ask me right here,” I said.
The agents didn’t budge and there were a few moments of silence. “We think it is better if we come in,” the lady said.
“Why, am I in some kind of trouble?” I asked.
“No, we just think the nature of the questions are best asked in private space.”
I paused for a moment to consider ramifications. On the one hand, I had been trained for this moment, a moment I never in my life thought I would see. I knew that I didn’t need to let them in if they did not have a warrant (and they did not), but on the other hand, I knew that three weeks prior they locked up my recent ex in kind of a hold where for an entire week he was not given the right to call anyone on the outside and he was not told why he was being held.
That was how I came to learn of his double life; when he disappeared for days and I reached out to some of his connections that I had not spoken with in a while.
This shit of a man was far from any kind of graces in my mind. He called me from jail as soon as he was allowed to use the phone, and for a while I refused to answer. Once I was able to bring myself to answer, for days I was only able to read him passages from religious texts. The night before this night however, I ended a heated call with him with a solidly screamed “Fuck you!”
Perhaps that was why these agents chose today. Still, I knew what it meant for a man of color to be behind bars and suspected of something. And anyone, including him, deserved better than that. I decided to let the agents in out of worry that, if I didn’t, it would result in a suspicion that could keep a man locked up indefinitely. I had done nothing wrong. A middle-aged, light-skinned, educated women with a decent job and a relatively boring life, I knew they were limited in the ways they could push me around.
“I feel sorry for whoever you’ve had following me,” I said as I unlocked my apartment door. The agents dismissed my acknowledgement that I had been followed. “As you’ve come to know, I live a boring life. I go to work, to yoga, to medical appointments, and the grocery store. That’s it.”
I stepped inside my apartment and stood in the foyer. “If I’m going to let you in, you will need to remove your shoes beforehand.” The agents paused and looked at each other with silent concern. It was then that I realized that I was a suspect.
“Look, I’m taking off my shoes too,” I said and then proceeded down the hallway with my back to them, carrying my two grocery bags to the kitchen counter. The agents removed their shoes and followed me down the hallway. I motioned to each of them to take a chair at the dining room table and I offered them a glass of water. Both agents looked at each other and then nodded “no.” They were carefully watching me move around the kitchen as I attempted to unpack my grocery bags. I could tell they were uncomfortable, so I stopped and got myself a glass of water before joining them at the dining room table.
The cats were surprisingly curious and wanting the attention of the male agent. Animals have a way of seeing the good in people even when they are behaving otherwise.
I looked at the avocado green color of the walls I had painted in this room, an attempt to bring life to a place I was living temporarily; a bit of life in this second phase of captivity.
I looked down and saw that my hands were shaking, in fact, my entire body was shaking. The female agent noticed too.
I remembered the time I was raped by my first boyfriend the summer after I had just turned 13, in the attic room that I had created as my secret refuge in the house, the place where I could escape from the world for a while. I remembered staring at the ceiling waiting for it to be over, and how after it was, I could never sit in that attic refuge space again.
The agents began pelting me with questions. “Are you a member of his temple?” the female agent asked.
They hadn’t done their homework. If they had, they would know that I was not the right religion. Even worse, I was not the right color. “No,” I stated.
They proceeded to ask me if I knew this or that person, although most of the people were not familiar to me. The ones who were familiar I responded carefully about as, while I did not know them well, they were people of color. I knew what that meant. I thought of Fred Hampton and what the FBI did to him back in 1969.
The questions got more personal. “Why do you have a post office box?”
I sighed. They had no idea that I was being hunted, and that they were in my dining room, now also hunting me. I was not going to tell them that there are people who wish to kill me. They do not deserve to know!
I stood up, “I need to put away my groceries. You can leave if you’d like,” but both agents stayed seated at the dining room table. They turned towards me as I unpacked the bags. I moved slowly as I could still sense their nervousness, and I wasn’t sure if they were armed.
“Of course, they are armed,” I told myself, “They are the FBI.”
I continued unpacking, taking a deep breath as I turned my back to them to put things into the refrigerator, my body still shaking immensely.
“Do you have drugs or guns in your home?” I took a deep breath and shook my head in disbelief.
How dare they! How dare they come into my home and decide who I am! I continued to put my groceries away as I thought about the first time I met Throma Nagmo. Or rather, I was introduced to her and later found out her name.
I had been hosting a meditation group in my studio apartment. I was in my early 20s and was a new Buddhist practitioner. I was delighted when someone suggested that those of us working on the same practice should meet weekly, and even more delighted when one of the elders suggested that we meet at my place. It was central for everyone. And I was happy to contribute space for the group. I was young and broke and had little else to offer. Each Saturday morning, I’d wake up early, happy to make some kind of sweet bread and tea for my fellow practitioners. We would watch Buggs Bunny on my TV and then meditate together for a couple of hours.
One day, one of the elder practitioners asked if he could stay afterward to show me some Monty Python recordings that he had in his collection. I agreed. And after everyone left, we laughed as we watched the recordings. It was a nice day, so we took a break on the patio for some tea. He chose to sit close to me, and I got a knot in my stomach. Then he started caressing my hair with his hand, telling me that everyone saw how I look at him and that they think we would make a good couple.
The bright sun was shining in my eyes. I squinted as the knot in my stomach became active nausea. I was confused. This man was more than twenty years my senior, and on top of that, I had assumed him to be gay.
Had I really been giving signals that I was interested in him? And had everyone really noticed? I told the man that I was not aware of giving off such signals and that I did not have any intentions to get involved with him. The man persisted, insisting that I must not be aware of my own person and feelings.
I searched my mind for a way to get him out of my apartment. “I’m not feeling so well right now,” I said. “And I am willing to sit on what you’ve said. I will search my mind/heart on this matter.” The man smiled and agreed to leave and let me rest. When I went to bed that evening, I heard a loud, booming voice in my dreams shouting “NOOOOOOOOO!.”
I called my dharma brother the next morning to tell him that, after further contemplation, I know for certain that I am not interested in an intimate experience with him. The man’s tone changed to hot anger, and it became apparent that he had already told people in our circle that we were together. I decided not to worry too much though; he was an elder practitioner who would eventually calm down and come to his senses.
The following Saturday, however, the man attended the weekly group meeting at my apartment still angry; a quiet sort of brewing anger that felt like it could erupt at any moment. The energy he emitted felt like thick poison in the air, as the others noticed an energy in the room that they could feel but did not understand. We all went into my space to do the weekly practice, and I could feel the tense energy swirling around the room as I sat on my cushion. My body started to shake uncontrollably, and I tried to keep still as to not disturb others meditating in the room.
“It’s OK,” two voices said in unison as they stood on either side of me. They were women dressed in silk robes with skin the color of pure snow. “Do not be afraid of what is happening, it has a purpose that is not for you. You are here as a witness.”
My body started shaking more uncontrollably as I heard a scream like I had never heard. Suddenly, a woman with a lion’s mane of fire came riding into the room on a golden horse. She was mostly naked, and her was skin the color of the darkest night. She held a sword in her right hand, pointing it at my dharma brother as she screamed, and he started to shake on the cushion in front of me.
“Do not be afraid” the ladies of white on either side of me repeated again in my ear. After what felt like a few moments and an eternity, the screaming woman with the lion’s mane and the two ladies of white left the room.
My body stopped shaking as did that of my dharma brother. He stood up, crouched down in front of me, and told me that he was aware that he had done something terribly wrong. He left the room and quietly left my apartment without saying goodbye to anyone.
I knew his realization would be brief, and that I would never again be able to host the meditation group at my house. I knew that I was again going to have to change my community.
The agents’ questions became more intense, and they started taking a good cop/bad cop approach. The man questioned my financial accounts, that they had clearly reviewed, to verify where I had spent money. The woman looked at me with puppy dog eyes and asked when I found out about my recent ex’s betrayal, stating that they had already been to see his wife and their new baby.
I took a deep breath, the shaking stopped, and I said firmly, “Now you are being disrespectful. It is time for you to leave.”
Both agents stayed seated and our eyes locked. They were waiting to see if I was serious.
“But before you leave, show me your badges so that I take pictures of them.”
“Why do you want to see our badges?” The female agent asked as she flashed a look of concern to her partner. “Now you are setting off red flags for us, and we were about to leave you alone.”
“Red flags?!” I asked. “I know that it is my right to see your badges and to ask for your ID numbers.”
“Pictures of our badges can be shared, and if either of us were harmed, YOU would be implicated.”
Astonished to be so boldly seen as a criminal, I walked toward them.
“I am looking to have your information so that I can share it with my mother immediately after you walk out my door. Based on your line of questioning here and how you have treated me, I will ask her to share it with the family lawyer. If your agency comes to harass me again, I will sue your pants off.”
There was, of course, no family lawyer, but I knew I needed to be unflinching.
“I am not interested in making either of you uncomfortable, and I have already told you that I am a pacifist; I do not wish you or anyone harm. Show me your badges and I will write down your names and badge numbers on a piece of paper.”
The two agents again flashed each other concerned glances. “After we leave, what will you do with the paper containing our information?” the female agent asked.
“I will call my mother immediately after you leave and I will share it with her. Tomorrow I will take the paper to work and put it in the shred bin.”
The agents agreed and pulled out their badges. I sat next to them at the table with a piece of paper and noted their names.
“There are a couple of numbers on this badge, which one is your badge number?” I asked.
“This one here,” the female agent pointed to the number on her badge. I laughed at my own ignorance.
“That is a good thing that you don’t know where the number is. By the way, if you help him at all going forward, you need to know that you will be implicated.”
The female agent had thrown down her last threat as if to take one last stand before being kicked out of my safe home.
I walked the agents to my apartment door, “can you see yourselves out of the building?” I recognized that they had not noticed my camera doorbell in the hallway. All these years of knowing that the government was spying on its own citizens, I expected more awareness, more cross-agency communication; that they would come prepared with accurate details, much less notice a camera in the doorway.
I closed the door. I had just faced a group of high school bullies, operating off of he said/she said rumors and their own imagination. The difference being, of course, that this group of bullies is funded by the people, and their whims backed by big government.
I called my mother to speak what had happened in few words. “If anything happens to me, I want you to hang on to these two names and badge numbers as well as the images that my doorbell has captured.” My mother responded in few words as well. She had lived through the events of the 1960’s; she was no fool. Both of us were aware that others were listening to our call.
My ex was released two days later with little explanation.
©Cardinal Speaks