The video went viral in a day,

the Kentucky woman standing in

line at a JCPenney, an arm on the counter

like she’s leaning against a bar

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waiting for some guy to buy her a drink,

won’t allow two Hispanic women

to leave without saying, Go back

to wherever the fuck you come from...

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You’re nobody as far as I’m concerned!

Then the classic Speak English,

you’re in America! She turns to those

behind her as if expecting high

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fives and fist pumps with You tell ’em

lady, a sudden chant of U-S-A!

U-S-A! A year ago I’d just assume

she was a first-thing-in-the-morning

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drinker, at it for hours. I’d figure

that her husband lost his job, or it’s cancer,

or she never finished eighth grade.

An isolated case, as they say, nothing

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sinister. In the kitchen at a party,

a close friend of mine shrugs when I bring up

the incident, has only three words

for me, Same old shit. She walks off

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to look around for baby Jesus, the nativity

set by the fireplace a crime scene.

I shout, Gives new meaning to second

coming if the dog ate him. She laughs

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but not her usual split-the-ceiling

sort of laugh. I think of her story whenever

we get together, how twice she’s had

to sneak across the border, the first

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time pregnant with her son, squeezed in

the back of a freight truck. I see her

sitting on the couch holding my three-

year-old daughter in her lap, rocking,

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humming songs into her light-brown hair.

I tell myself this is goodness. I tell

myself I’d do anything for this woman

and her family. And yet I can’t say

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I’d have the guts to be a Gies or Kugler

with an attic, tool shed, my mother-

in-law’s basement. I can’t say I would’ve

acted any different than the shoppers

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in the video, swapping grins like it’s nothing

they haven’t heard before. On a stool

at the counter I pick bits of radish and carne

asada from a plate, thinking of a girl

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in Schindler’s List, not the one in red

wandering a ghetto, not the one beaten by

Amon Goeth, but the Pole throwing

mud at a crowd filing past along a road

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in Kraków, her scream Goodbye Jews! Goodbye

Jews! Goodbye Jews!, a glint of pride

in her eyes as if she herself wills this departure,

and knows exactly where they’re going.