Annie Pisgah Searsburg is a birth doula and therapist from Putney/Westminster West, and a doctoral student in the Department of Clinical Psychology at Antioch University New England in Keene.
PUTNEY-Last month, I attended an event in Bennington and stayed overnight in a motel. I ran into the couple next door, who were sitting on the bench outside their room as I returned from the event.
Eager to spend the night catching up on work and secretly dismayed at having to socialize, I tried to limit our conversation to the beauty of mountain roads.
The woman, however, wanted to talk, and the subject turned to how the motel had begun accepting guests "through the state," as she put it.
The two were frequent flyers at this Bennington motel, lodging there each time they traveled from Connecticut. Making her disapproval of the "state" guests apparent, she set out to loudly detail their comings and goings, doing so with such fervor that I wondered what motivated her to spend her time and energy scrutinizing others.
It was clear she wanted me to agree that the "state" guests were inexplicable in their ways of life, that they were almost inhuman, and that anyone who really understood the situation in Vermont would know that they were a bad idea.
Every ounce of me wanted to shut the door on my position of having Vermont and Vermonters out-of-stater-'splained to me. This, unfortunately, was not new. People assume that I could not have been around for long, being a person of color, and that I need my ignorance about Vermont dispelled.
Even so, this round of 'splaining crossed another personal limit.
I do not gossip. Period.
I tried to interject that I was hearing nothing out of the ordinary in her descriptions. Nothing outside of people living their daily lives: Doing chores. Going to work. Running errands. Returning home. Living as creatively as possible within a tiny space.
Moreover, I added, I recently had my own stretch of staying in Brattleboro's motels.
Illness at the time required me to remain close to amenities in town. Nearly all my neighbors for that period had vouchers through the state. Despite the palpable atmosphere of despair and futurelessness that cloaked our living situation (I could easily have been projecting my own grappling with despair), at no point had anyone treated me with inconsideration - or in any way remarkably at all.
After what felt like my umpteenth attempt to get a word in, the woman heard me. At least, the part where I mentioned an extended stay in motels.
Her eyes narrowed. She peered into my trunk full of clothes, dog and human food, portable appliances, shovels, toilet paper, tote bags, and a blanket - items I carry with me in case I find myself with a broken-down vehicle, caught in a storm or having to escape an untenable situation.
"Are you here through the state?"
I became immediately aware of the appearance of my 24-year-old car: her dinks and dents, her bumper held up with paracords and zip ties. I became aware of the walking cane on which I was leaning and all the ways I likely came across as weary or unkempt, having only recently recovered the strength to manage the level of activity I had accomplished that day.
In an instant, I had gone from being one of "us" (caveats notwithstanding) to one of "them."
* * *
The look on the woman's face was familiar.
Years ago, I was herding sheep and goats at Black Mesa (a part of Dinétah, also known as the Navajo Nation) in defiance of a federal mandate that those living there relocate to make way for a coal mine. One afternoon, tired, wearing a mud-splattered shirt and jeans, and having walked for miles, I entered a gas station and asked if I could use the bathroom.
I will never forget the way the white man behind the counter handed me the key. Holding it gingerly between his thumb and forefinger, he dangled it before me, arm outstretched, the way someone would offer a soiled sanitary napkin to a foul-smelling trash receptacle.
Now, here in Bennington, my neighbor did not seem convinced when I answered "no" to her query about whether I was there "through the state."
"Will you be staying here for a long time?" she pressed, her frown betraying suspicion and doubt.
* * *
Aversion to gossip aside, I am no angel.
I find myself hypocritical. Despite my activism directed toward colonially imposed borders and practices of land ownership, I have the (colonially drawn) outline of Vermont tattooed to my wrist and stickered all over my laptop and car.
I am as fiercely protective of what I consider "mine" as anyone else. Probably more so. Browsing town groups on Facebook, I have always thought neighbors' responses too retiring and mild in the wake of break-ins. Simply remember to lock one's car? If you do so much as lay a finger on my car, I will spread word around town of the fate you will meet when I find you.
I am as exacting about my environment and disdainful of transgressors as the next person. It frustrates me when groups of people walk in lines taking up entire sidewalks or stand gossiping in doorways, oblivious of others who need to pass through. Fantasies of revenge fill my head when someone blasts loud music without heed for who they might be impacting. When I learned of a bumper sticker that reads "Criminalize LED Headlights," I was all for it.
These are, for me, issues not only of personal preference, but of accessibility. Others encountering the same may not bat an eyelid.
* * *
This is all to say: I agree it is helpful to discuss what counts as acceptable ways for us to behave in relation to one another. Each perspective brought to the table moves us toward the ability to arrive at yet-unfathomed, life-affirming collaborations.
If that is true, however, something will remain awry until the very people thrust into the center of the Acceptable Community Conduct Ordinance debate are seated at the table. If the survival and well-being of farmers, choral singers, or athletes were factors in the equation, one could wager that the presence of farmers, choral singers, or athletes would be front and center at a Selectboard meeting.
What then of those unsheltered, who have so markedly become Brattleboro's subjects of discussion?
A group of community members are petitioning online for more public amenities and services.
A number of business owners have made their desire for increased policing known.
Here I am putting in my two cents with the help of a laptop plugged in, a soothing melody in my ears, wifi access ensuring that Google Docs is auto-saving my work. On the bed snoozes my dog with the assurance that she would not be taken from me. Within these walls, under this roof, nobody will question the way I am training or caring for her, even if I blunder.
That accounts for some of the people who have spoken - or are speaking - to the public ear. If you are someone unsheltered, have you received word of Selectboard meetings? Has anyone delivered flyers to you? Offered shuttles, either to a meeting or to somewhere you can use a computer to attend it via Zoom? Sought your signature on a petition? Joined your organizing, whatever your position may be?
Referred to you not as "they" but as part of "we"?
In the world of disability justice, we say "nothing about us without us." We say that leadership on issues should be in the hands of the people most affected.
We recognize, at the same time, the principle of universal design. A water fountain does not benefit only those of us whose lack of access to drinking water spans night and day. It benefits anyone thirsty making their way through town.
Likewise for public bathrooms and lockers. I cannot count the number of times, making my way across downtown Brattleboro, I have yearned to lay down my bag to relieve my aching body.
If I had to carry all my belongings with me on any given day, I would not be able to do it. I would have to set them down on a street corner or in the woods, and pray that they will be there when I return.
* * *
Truth be told, policing in Brattleboro has already increased. If nowhere else, then in me - in the form of a subtle self-policing.
These days, walking down Main or Elliot Street on my way to a café or a pub sing, I am conscious of my dress and gait, aware that I stumble when light, noise, and crowds overstimulate me. Someone could think me drunk. Or high. Or out of touch with reality.
I worry that we are becoming armored because of the growing narrative that Brattleboro isn't safe. That we are becoming less friendly to one another, suspicious of anyone who doesn't talk, move, or dress in a way that translates to the notion of being entirely put together - whatever that means. To continue in this direction would, to me, upend everyone's goal of a vibrant town and make a beloved town unsafe.
Like the gas station on Dinétah overseen by the white man.
Or like a hotel in Boston, where I once left a psychoanalytic conference and found that someone had ransacked my car and stolen items from the glove compartment.
Given that this happened at the hotel's garage and I had used their compulsory valet service, I returned to report the theft.
The receptionists regarded me as if there was no way I could have been attending a conference at their hotel and as though I must have instead wandered in a psychosis off the streets. I will never know if it was that my clothes were too plain, my skin not white enough, or my mannerisms too rural and working class.
In any case, the receptionists called the police on my behalf (as the hotel's protocol required) with the utmost reluctance, and only because I stood my ground. It was not until one of them, accompanying the responding officer outside to look at my car, saw a bumper sticker bearing the name of my graduate school that he withdrew his infantilizing tone toward me.
Looking back on that day, I am certain the hotel receptionists would have sooner believed that I had stolen from a car than think of me as a guest with items stolen out of hers. I then remember the links that have formed in some people's minds between the uptick in Brattleboro-area break-ins and the unsheltered status of an increasing number of people in town. (Ironically, these are the members of our community most vulnerable to burglary, given that they are without even a door they can shut.)
"Surely, bias can detract from detective work!" cries out the 9-year-old in me who had exhausted the entire Nancy Drew series, aspired to become a detective, and really, really wants to catch the burglar(s). "How are we to know that the culprit isn't some well-off person?"
Much as I would like to think myself untouchable by interactions like the ones at the gas station and the Boston hotel, I find myself, now that leaf-peeping season is upon us, going less often to the mountains.
When I do go (they are a favorite writing spot), I make sure to drive quickly. I take extra care not to lose my way or appear overly amazed by the beauty around me. Lest people mistake me for a tourist.
"Where are all the locals?" a cashier at Shaw's in Wilmington asked an employee last fall, looking in my direction with resentment.
I was on my way home from work.
* * *
These interactions are particularly painful when they happen in Vermont. Not only because Vermont is my only home (there is nowhere else to go, there are no other people to encounter), or because of the sheer inaccuracy of others' perceptions.
All my life, my most passionate relationships have been with places. Love leaves the being wide open, utterly permeable to input from around us. Other things, too - grief, liminality, and limbo among them - leave the being wide open.
Social psychiatrist Mindy Thompson Fullilove (1996) writes of displacement:
The disorientation and confusion that accompany a massive alteration in a familiar place are experienced as bodily sensations, as well as emotional feelings. People feel numb or limp or dazed. They may fall down. Physical pain is not uncommon. The bodily sensations are a clue to the extent to which geographic orientation is embedded in the whole body [...] Familiar spatial routines are indelibly etched on the nervous system and the musculature; the sudden loss of the exterior world that conditioned those motions is perceived as a loss of the self.
Eviction is a form of bereavement. To be robbed of ordinary expectancies, however humble, and however they came to be. Nine hundred more of our Vermont neighbors are now confronting this as the state evicts them from motels. Our neighbors join others already without shelter for other reasons.
In other situations where displacement of this scale occurs (though I say one is too many), gymnasiums would open to provide temporary shelter. "Vermont Strong" plates would appear on cars.
According to Gloria Anzaldúa, one of my favorite queer writers, we find ourselves in Nepantla (a Nahuatl concept) when circumstances collapse the sense we have previously made of ourselves and the world.
This liminal space can be pregnant with potential for new understanding yet incredibly painful. Unkind remarks, acts of scrutiny, and aversions of gaze - each makes for an additional bereavement, as does every communication of "This town is not your home," "You do not belong here," or "You must have come to Vermont just for a motel voucher."
(The latter is a common myth. Research shows that there is insufficient evidence for it, and that many voucher recipients who report most recently living out-of-state are returning Vermonters who ran into hardship while living elsewhere. See the Sept. 6 article in VTDigger.org, "Is Vermont's motel program a magnet for out-of-staters experiencing homelessness?")
By and large, the issue facing us is not only whether people in our villages and towns have or lack places to live. It is also about whether we are able to look into one another's eyes and see a place for ourselves in our communities. All of ourselves, including our backstories, our dreams, our grief, our perspectives, and our embodied needs.
Try saying it aloud to see how it feels: This is more than a housing issue. This is an issue of home.
Nepantla leaves us exposed and vulnerable. At times like this, the instinct is sometimes to close up. I was numb for a long time because of the memories that the Brattleboro-is-now-unsafe narrative brought up in me. It took a while for me to get out the words I am writing now.
We are towns - a state - in Nepantla. Our beings and the possibilities wide open.
* * *
Recently, for the first time in my life, I visited a ski resort: Mount Snow, which was hosting the Vermont Wildlife Festival. On the mountainside graced by changing leaves sat condo upon vacant condo awaiting skiers to flock in.
Many of us complain about second-homers and tourists. A common complaint is that people who do not know, and who may never know, Vermont are wielding power over what happens in the state.
If knowing Vermont and having a say should go hand in hand, I would say it is time to turn our ears to the nepanterlas and nepanterlos of Vermont: those among us who know Vermont quite literally from ground level - the ground that some spit upon and everyone treads with dirty soles.
As I was visiting Dover, a Margaret MacArthur song about the town began repeating itself in my head.
You gotta back way up, you gotta start all over
Gotta make ends meet on the hills of Dover
My friend who taught me the song explained that the chorus refers to a plow going over oft-impenetrable soil at high altitude. Each time a plow hits rock, a farmer must back the plow up and start over.
Practicing agriculture in mountain towns takes grit. So does contending with issues of home in a rural state where our greatest resource is one another.
Beloved Vermont: You, like your farmers and your displaced and unsheltered people, know about having to back up and start over. If we must do that - logistically, attitudinally - it wouldn't be a first.
All the grit and wisdom we need is already with us.
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.
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