A detour due to summer road construction compels Francine to drive a different route than usual to Jake's house. She opts to steer her car on a meandering path through the east side of Cleaveland past the ever-growing Healthy Hospital campus swallowing land like a drunk attacking a bag of potato chips after a night of bar-hopping, row upon row of identical gentrification homes, blocks of abandoned boarded up houses, and vistas of vacant lots returning slowly to nature. Stopped by a red light near a gas station, she notes that the station has a mural painted on its side of what looks to be Arab children threatened by devilish and vampiresque Orthodox Jews, complete with fangs, horns, and tails. Underneath the figures is the phrase "Kill all the Jews before they kill you. Look what they did to Jesus. Save Palestine."
Francine rubs her eyes.
She looks again.
She finds the mural still there. It wasn't an optical illusion. She stares at the mural trying to understand why it's there. The gas station appears to be open too, so it's not like some bigot used an abandoned building for a canvas. A young black woman fills up her car at the pumps around the corner from the mural. "Doesn't she notice the mural?" Francine thinks. Francine notices that the mural's too detailed to have been graffiti, so she concludes that surely the owner of the gas station knows it's there. Why doesn't it get erased? "Could it have been placed there on purpose?" she wonders, "Do people really want to shop at an anti-semitic service station? What customers like their gas mixed with a bit of hatred? 'Hello, I'd like a pack of cigarettes, a lottery ticket, and some prejudice, please?' 'Yeah, they hate the Jews, but their gas is five cents cheaper than the place on the next block.' "Yo, it's on the Klan's list of recommended businesses so I drive in from the suburbs to fill up every week' 'I ain't Jewish, so I don't care.' 'At least the dude is honest. A lot of people be fronting about stuff like that. I give him props for that.' ''This is a poor neighborhood and there ain't no Jews here to be offended anyway, so let the man have his say.' 'It's just talking about Israel and their treatment of the Palestinians, and it just means "Kill all the Jews" figuratively. I think Zionism isn't kosher anyway.' Is that what people who patronize the place would say?"
The light changes and a car behind her honks. Francine turns her attention back to the road and starts to drive forward but not before the car behind her zooms around her with a tire squeal, and the driver flips her off while yelling something unintelligible. Ignoring the idiot, Francine supposes the mural is free speech, and freedom of speech is exactly for speech we despise, as many have noted, since no one has a problem with speech he or she likes. But, still, she thinks, how can anyone shop there in good conscience? "This isn't Nazi Germany. What business owner thinks it's a smart idea to openly advocate the genocide of an ethnic or religious group?" Francine thinks.
She continues to ruminate that people still have their prejudices in 2012, but they usually hide them, especially where business is concerned since currency had no religion or ethnicity. "OK, currency does have a nationality, but as long as it's convertible or spendable, somebody will take it, no matter what it is," Francine thinks.
She's glad her period arrived last night. She decides that this might not be the best world to bring a child into. Of course, when was it ever that world?
Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.
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