My offering for this prompt comes in the form of a correspondence written in a (possible) future. 500 words. Full critique acceptable. The first two paragraphs are based on a true event (except it wasn't oranges, her real name isn't Maria, and I don't know if she has a cousin named Angel in Ecuador).
{Content Warning - Immigration in America, dystopian realism, environmental concerns}
Dear Angel,
I was born to nothing, as you know. An immigrant daughter of migrant workers in an orange grove in 2018 was as nothing as one could be. Perhaps harvesting fruit wasn't so horrible, once upon a time. But the grove gave no place to hide. Both my parents and three eldest siblings were deported when I was eleven. My younger sister and I landed in a border detention center not long after. Not sure if you knew that. She died in my arms.
I didn't know it then, but it was from infection. The sores on her body weren't treated. Sitting in her own filth for days made it worse. I remember telling the guards she was hot. They told me it was because I kept holding her, that my body heat was making her that way. They didn't care.
They do now. As you said in your correspondence, you know I'm a lawyer. Actually, I'm a senior partner at the most renowned law firm in the country when it comes to prosecuting those who ran those centers. We've won against every level in the chain of command, from the janitors who didn't meet required standards to the monster at the top who allowed the centers to exist. I had orange stripes painted on our third branch office, to represent the grove where my parents once worked.
No amount of money can replace my sister. Or the years lost with my family. I still wake up screaming in the night, fighting off the rapist guards who took me against my will. I'll never marry. Sleeping beside someone, much less marital intimacy, isn't something I can bear.
Instead, I've adopted wildlife. The lands and animals are my children, my legacy. I bought an area that was once a national park, back when such things existed. It would have been mined, drilled, or fracked by those who refuse to let go of the ways of the Industrial revolution. It's protected now, for the next five hundred years at least. I even have a provision to make it a country on to itself, should the States, Union, and New Confederacy break apart even further.
I invite you to visit, dear cousin. I realize you're busy running Ecuador and preparing for your journey, but I do hope you'll be able to make the trip here first. Neither of us has much family left. No one does these days with the shrinking population. But I wish for you to understand why I won't be among the ones on the last space ship to depart. I know all the reasons to leave, and that those who can afford it go. And I know how many have sold themselves into slavery to get onto the ships. I thank you for offering to spare me from such a fate.
But I will stay here. There are still people to help. And if the heat, droughts, storms, or radiation gets me, so be it.
All my love-
Maria
*************************************
Thanks for reading!
Update from previous post:
Still no word on when I'll get the furniture I paid for in September.
https://uniquelymaladjustedbutfun.blogspot.com/2019/10/mealeys-furniture-delivery-scam.html
I have started a letter-writing campaign. Much harder to ignore actual mail, I hope!
If you're willing and able to help, please print and mail this letter: https://docs.google.com/document/
If you'd like to edit it:
