Crochet the Rabbit Proof Fence

There is this couple at the next table and she was waiting for a while for him. When he came he had this present for her. It was this box like you get in Japanese stores shaped like a chocolate box and inside it there were four crocheted chicks, or critters, he had made for her. She was overcome and hugged him. Now they are sitting and drinking lattes and crocheting more chicks together. Or whatever they are. I was trying to read Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence for work. It isn’t literature or meant to be but it is devastating. There are worlds within worlds. That couple at the table beside me who are Asian Australians might in another world be taken outside and bashed if they were for example somewhere outside of Dallas, TX, or Warren NSW crocheting for each other. When Molly in Rabbit Proof Fence was removed for the second time to the girls home in Freemantle, WA, this time with her own two children, a female relative she’d left behind died from self inflicted head wounds, a display of separation anxiety that the whites, who’d separated themselves from their own people by half a planet, could or would not fathom.

The boy at the table beside me only looks up from his crocheting to meet the gaze of his girl. I might cry.