An asylum-seeker mom and kids at the grocery store doors
Photo: Gerald Farinas.
In the shadow of fluorescent lights bleeding through glass doors on a cool Chicagoland summer day, a mother stands frozen in a tableau of quiet desperation.
Her baby sleeps fitfully in the stroller, oblivious to the weight of uncertainty that presses down on them all like the lakefront humidity.
Two feet away, her youngest daughter pushes a toy shopping cart, a bright plastic thing the color of forgotten dreams, around and around in circles that lead nowhere.
The wheels squeak a lonely rhythm as she mimics the shoppers who brush past without seeing, her small hands gripping the handle with the fierce concentration of a child who still believes in tomorrow.
She doesn’t understand why the cart is empty, why they stand outside while others walk through doors that might as well be made of solid stone.
Her older sister, barely more than a toddler herself, has learned to read the language of averted eyes and quickened steps.
She gently pulls her little sister back each time she ventures too close to the entrance, her young shoulders already bent under the weight of premature responsibility.
She’s become the guardian of her family’s dignity, protecting them from stares that cut deeper than the winter wind.
Hours pass.
The mother’s eyes hold the hollow ache of someone who has traveled impossible distances only to find herself invisible, reduced to a ghost haunting the edges of a world that has no place for her.
She fled violence only to encounter a different kind of cruelty. It’s the special American brand of violence called indifference, of laws written by people who will never know what it means to watch your children grow hungry while surrounded by abundance.
The automatic doors continue their endless dance of opening and closing, each cycle a reminder of all the thresholds she cannot cross, all the opportunities that remain just beyond reach.
And still, her daughter plays with her empty cart, practicing for a life she may never be allowed to live.
