Seeking Permission

Lauren woke up as the most hated woman in the world. 

Deranged mothers who had hurt their own kids for Youtube views; women who had poisoned their rich husbands for the inheritance; fake countesses who had scammed people out of millions of dollars. Even glamorous wives of former Presidents with the wrong politics.

Lauren was now far more reviled than any of them. And certainly more infamous.

The worst part was that she still had absolutely no idea why.

She shook the sleep out of her eyes and sat up in bed. Her husband Andy was already at her bedside with a cup of coffee.

“How did you sleep dear?” he said, face pulled tight with concern.

“I got a few hours,” she said. “I had some very strange dreams. Please tell me that this thing was all a nightmare. That it’s all over.”

Her husband shook his head sadly.

“They are still out there,” he said. “And it seems like there’s more of them than yesterday.”

Lauren gingerly swung her legs out of the bed and moved towards the window.

Andy flung out a floppy arm to try and stop her.

“Don’t,” he said meekly, as if in physical pain.

As usual, what he said had little effect on her.

She pulled back the bedroom curtain a couple of inches, just enough to see what was happening outside. Their beautiful, tree-lined street; their peaceful retreat from the ugliness and struggle of the world: it was now unrecognizable. 

The outside world had come to them.

There were two large TV vans emblazoned with the networks’ logos standing right in front of the house. Then at least half a dozen smaller vehicles parked where the street was usually empty at this time in the morning. Around the cars stood a gaggle of reporters with microphones, cameramen and others such as a skinny young man rushing around who looked like he was applying make up to the reporters.

Lauren felt the sense of panic rising inside her chest. She tried hard to breathe deeper, to try to calm herself down. But she just couldn’t. 

She turned her head to look further down the street. A few yards away from the media corps there was a group of younger people holding placards. They had also been there last night and this morning, at barely 6am, with the morning light still young, their number hardly seemed diminished.

Lauren strained to read one of the placards. 

“Hate has no place here,” it said.

She felt a tear roll down her cheek. She thought she had cried them all out following the events of the previous evening but her fitful night’s sleep seemed to have replenished her supply.

Suddenly, one of the younger people in the protest pointed to the window. 

“There she is! There’s the bitch!”

Lauren let go of the curtain like it was a scalding hot plate. Her heart began racing. Now, she was struggling again to breathe at all. 

She turned away from the window and looked back at a helpless Andy who was still standing by the bed. The noise from outside was getting louder. It sounded like a lot of scurrying and banging.

Then the chanting started.

“Get the bitch, make her pay! Get the bitch, make her pay!”

She didn’t deserve this sudden hell that her life had become. How could it have happened?

---

For as long as she could remember Lauren had always played the game.

She and Andy had moved into the affluent New Jersey suburb a couple of years earlier and instantly connected with its vibe. Unlike the other bedroom community two towns over they had moved from, there was no danger here of spotting even one lawn sign expressing support for that horrible orange man. 

People celebrated and commented on their mixed relationship: Andy’s parents were both from Korea. In the last place they lived, people had either just ignored that fact, or, Lauren was sure, had a certain coldness in their dealings with the couple.

In their new home, life fell into a satisfying pattern. Andy continued his job as a vice president at the New York City office of the West Coast tech giant that had employed him now for over a decade.

Their three children started at a top private school that happened to be a five-minute drive from their home. By 8am the kids were out of the house. By 10am the housekeepers had finished cleaning up the previous day’s detritus and the day was Lauren’s to do with as she pleased.

The first year she had flirted with volunteering with various campaigning organizations in the town but her top priority in those early days was getting the family’s large new home exactly the way that she wanted it. 

That had meant selecting and managing various contractors. Parts of the home were already in reasonable shape but others she found horrifically dated. She’d convinced Andy that some of the rooms needed to be torn down to the studs and remodeled from scratch. He had not put up much more than token resistance. 

She threw herself into the work with enthusiasm and found that she enjoyed the technical side of it. In fact, it involved considerable administrative effort and attention to detail to navigate the bureaucracy at the municipal offices. But she embraced it all. 

Perhaps most surprisingly of all, she found she enjoyed dealing with the clerks in the buildings department and what for others would have been the laborious process of applying for the required permits.

Walls were rebuilt, re-plastered and painted. Fifty-year-old crumbling floorboards ripped up and replaced with state-of-the-art wide plank hardwood. Bathrooms were retiled and refitted with the finest stone resin bathtubs and sinks. 

Everything was, of course, then tastefully furnished. Andy’s earning power meant that no expense needed to be spared.

With the inside of the house more or less rendered to the standard she had envisaged, Lauren turned her attention to the part of their home where her real passion lay – the outside patio area.

“No way,” Andy had said when she presented her plan. “We’ve already spent a fortune on the inside of the place. The yard and the pool are perfectly nice as they are.”

But “perfectly nice” was not what Lauren had in mind. She had been networking a lot more in the town as the inside renovation of their house had drawn to a close. As a relative newcomer to the community, she had dipped her toe in the water with various organizations. They included one that was committed to defending Asian Americans from a new wave of abuse and discrimination – a group whose mission resonated with Lauren given her marriage to Andy. 

There were other organizations including ones defending women’s reproductive rights against what they saw as the lunatic fringe of the red state pro-life zealots; and one focused on protecting women from domestic violence. 

There was also a longstanding civil rights group with its origins in the town’s Black community but which today not only welcomed but seemed strangely dominated by well-heeled white liberals like Lauren.

Many of the meetings, Lauren had noticed, took place in the salubrious outside spaces of affluent sponsors. She saw beautifully landscaped areas with well-tended horticulture, sleek modern ppols, water features, high-end patio paving and, of course, very fine outside furniture.

So, Lauren, and Andy’s reluctantly provided capital, got to work. Their starting point was a large but rather overgrown and unloved back garden. It was true that the kitchen doors opened onto an existing patio, but it was small and constructed out of dated dull-looking tile.

Lauren soon identified the area at the bottom of the garden as providing the perfect balance of midday and early afternoon sun as well as shade from a combination of trees and the large hedge that separated her property from that of her neighbors, the Cohen’s. 

Another big bonus: the Cohen’s were well into their 70’s and hardly ever seemed to venture into their yard, let alone to the area at the end of the garden near where Lauren was planning her oasis.

Nearly a year later, her vision was realized. One spring morning, Lauren was beaming as she led a group of ladies from the local chapter of a group called Organized Child-rearing down the garden path to her new favorite space.

The opulent looking area gleamed in the sunlight. Its plush furniture and intricate designs in themselves a display of power. The various plants and especially selected wild flowers surrounding the patio added a touch of beauty and elegance to the space. The old 1970s stone pool covered in moss had been transformed into a stunning feature that could have been plucked from a seven star hotel in Dubai.

The hostess purred with contentment as she saw the reactions of her guests.

“Gosh, it’s such a beautiful space Lauren!” one lady gushed.

“Who designed this? It’s beautiful!” another enquired.

“I did!” Lauren declared with pride.

With the unveiling of her elite new patio, she had cemented her position in the group. Now it was time to spread her wings.

Just three weeks after that grand reveal, however, the world changed. Everything changed.

The TV images that were played over and over again were simply sickening. A Black man prostrate and helpless, crying out for his mother while a white officer, almost nonchalantly, knelt on his neck. The victim’s crime? Allegedly passing a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill.

Lauren, along with everyone else she knew, was appalled. 

“We’ve got to do something,” she had said that very night on the phone to one her fellow activist girlfriends from town. “We’ve got to show them we won’t stand for this; that hate has no place in our community, or anywhere.”

Within days, Lauren and some of her closest friends had swung into action. Partnering with the legacy civil rights organization where she already had contacts, they had arranged a weekend march that culminated in a torchlit rally in the town’s central park.

Through her contacts in the municipal offices and in the local police department, Lauren had managed to arrange the appropriate permits for the event and even to secure the cooperation and backing of the town authorities.

Thousands attended the event and Lauren was delighted that she managed to secure a short speaking slot: her comments, positioning her as a key white ally, followed the longer orations of Black leaders. Even better, the local newspaper carried a photograph of the rally on its front page and the image captured Lauren besides the Black activists.

After the success of the first rally, she knew it was important for the community to continue to show its support for the movement. 

Now, Lauren’s prized patio had a higher purpose indeed. She hosted countless meetings through the warm Spring days and evenings, sometimes several over the course of one day. Besides providing a space for her burgeoning coalition of activists to meet, her outside oasis remained the setting for more relaxing social gatherings with her close friends and with family.

Meanwhile, alongside the civil rights organization, there was now a newer, brasher national organization championing the cause of Black rights. Its chapter in Lauren’s town was opened shortly after the horrific crime gained worldwide attention. 

She immediately made contacts with its leaders and they had an idea that they wanted her to help with. Could she help spread the message? The organization had produced millions of lawn signs, which it hoped to supply to households across the country.

Lauren immediately ordered three different variants of the signs for their own front yard. One declaring proudly that “hate has no place here”; the other proclaiming that “this household believes no person is illegal”; and the core message sign which affirmed the importance of the lives of the racial group most impacted by police brutality in America.

Within a week a few more of the signs had started to go up on their street. Many homes, however, still remained without them.

“I just don’t get how many folks just don’t seem to care,” Lauren lamented to Andy one evening. “Or worse, maybe some of our neighbors don’t agree with the movement.”

Then she had an idea. She could help things along by buying up more of the signs and encouraging her neighbors to display them.

“That’s brilliant dear,” Andy had said.

Emboldened by her ever-supportive husband and then some of the progressive ladies in her circle, Lauren put her plan into action. She purchased another 30 lawn signs from the website of the national organization and began to do the rounds door to door.

“Can I put you down for one?” 

Janice, her neighbor two houses down drew her face tightly into a mask of polite reluctance. But, despite Lauren’s suspicions that Janice didn’t really care for political or social causes, she acquiesced quickly.

“Ok, sure, we will put one up.”

Thankfully, many other neighbors had been more enthusiastic than Janice. Soon, there was a veritable forest of fresh new signs dotting the front yards of their street.

The one holdout had been the small ranch-style house located right in the middle of the road. It sat incongruously in between the more typical and far larger colonials and Victorians that made up the rest of the street. 

And it seemed the people that lived at that ranch house were just as different.

In fact, Lauren had become very concerned about the owners. Not only was it the man that was mainly visible, rather than the wife, but there was something off about him. Something that didn’t fit in at all as far as she was concerned.

Rob – yes that was his name she thought – was the big beefy sort. That was unusual in itself in a community of slightly built and appropriately sensitive husbands in touch with their feelings. Then there was his ever-present baseball hat, thick beard and reflective sunglasses. All of these aspects of his demeanor, Lauren worried, suggested serious problems in terms of his potential political orientation.

“No, I am good thank you,” he had replied tersely as Lauren stood on his front porch.

She had felt her face reddening in anger and disbelief. How could anyone in their community be so callous and uncaring.

“But, we are all doing our bit to show our support,” she had protested as he closed the door.

“I said I am good, now if you don’t mind.”

Lauren had been stunned and saddened. She felt that she had escaped these kinds of people when she had moved to town. But somehow some of them were still in this community. There was no doubt in her mind now that Rob and his wife – if she even really existed – were secret supporters of the nasty orange man.

Nonetheless, within a few days she had forgotten about Rob. There was always another activist meeting or social gathering in her beautiful backyard to take her mind off such things.

In fact, it was at an early summer gathering of the newly created Intersectional Alliance that she first heard the news that would change her life.

“Have you heard about the Cohens?” another neighbor and activist called Susan asked.

In truth, for many months Lauren hadn’t given a second thought to the elderly couple who lived on the street parallel to hers and whose backyard abutted her own. After all, she never heard a peep out of them.

“They sold the house.”

Lauren felt a sudden twinge of anxiety.

“Oh, do you know who bought it?” she asked, trying hard to sound indifferent.

“Well, that’s the best bit,” Susan said. “It’s a young Black couple. He is some kind of TV producer and she is a radical writer. The Smiths I think they are called.”

“That’s great,” Lauren said. But the words came out flat.

She knew she should be excited. For some reason though, all she felt was unease.

Ever since Lauren had created her outside paradise, she had never once heard the Cohens moving around on the other side of the large hedge that separated the two properties. However, just a few weeks after learning of their impending arrival, she certainly heard the Smiths.

It was a late Saturday afternoon and she had a few of her best girlfriends and their families over for drinks. At first, she had tried to ignore the voices and what sounded like furniture being moved around just the other side of the hedge. Then the music started and that was impossible to ignore. It sounded like a modern strain of hip hop, though Lauren was hardly an expert in the genre.

What she did know was that it wasn’t just loud. It was deafening and any conversation she had been having with her friends was now impossible.

Fuming, she jumped out of her wicker chair and started toward the hedge.

Andy, as usual, saw where the situation was heading before anyone else.

“Just leave it dear,” he said.

Lauren looked back at him and their guests. She took a deep breath and sat down.

“Let’s go back into the kitchen for cupcakes,” she said.

The next day she was in her oasis alone reading the weekend newspapers when she heard the Smiths again. This time they were just talking among themselves and there was no music. It wasn’t ideal having them just the other side of the hedge but perhaps their loud Saturday antics had been a one-off. Perhaps things would be ok?

The very next day brutally disabused her of that notion.

In fact, shortly after 9am that morning she was nowhere near her own patio when she heard the noise coming through her kitchen door: crashing, banging and shouting in a foreign language.

With no Andy to stop her, Lauren raced to the bottom of her garden and looked through the gaps in the hedge. To her horror, she saw what looked like a team of workmen stacking up gray concrete blocks; decking planks and various other materials. Then, the icing on the cake: a bright yellow digger rolled down the slope of the Smiths’ backyard, its giant black wheels crunching on the turf as it moved.

For a moment, she felt like she was going to faint from shock. Then, anger took over. She dragged an outside bench to the hedge, stood on top of it and poked her head over the top.

“What on earth do you think you are doing?” she yelled in the general direction of the workers.

Even if they had heard her over the din they were making, they ignored her at first.

“Excuse me,” she tried again. 

The man closest to her turned his head slowly in her direction and eventually spotted Lauren’s head bobbing over the hedge.

“Yes?”

“What are you doing here?”

“We are building new patio ma’am,” the man said in thickly accented English. His delivery was matter of fact, almost proud.

“Do you have a permit for that?” Lauren asked.

“I don’t know ma’am, sorry,” the man replied.

Lauren jumped down from the bench. She knew what she needed to do.

Back in her own kitchen she called the buildings department at the municipal offices. The manager, whom she knew well, was only too happy to take her call. No, there was no record of a permit application for a patio at the property in question. 

Would the town investigate the matter and enforce sanctions against any unauthorized development?

“Yes, Lauren, we take such matters very seriously. We will look into it and let you know.”

Two days passed and she had heard nothing. Meanwhile, the noise on the other side of the hedge continued. There was lots of shouting in a language which she eventually figured out could be Polish and the grinding hum of the digger as it churned up the Smiths’ backyard. Lauren also smelled cigarette smoke. Another peek through the hedge confirmed, adding insult to injury, that the group of workers were apparently chain-smoking as they toiled.

Her oasis had been shattered: she would not schedule any more hang outs or planning meetings until this was resolved. In fact, she could barely bring herself to sit down in her own patio area now. She would loiter there, look through the hedge at the fiasco unfolding on the other side, and stew as she tried to work out what to do.

The third day after her first call to the town buildings department, she could wait no longer. She called back, asking for the manager she had spoken to.

“Angelo is on leave, I am afraid ma’am.”

“When is he due back?” 

“I am sorry but I cannot give you that information,” the young clerk said.

“Well, can you tell me about the permitting at number eight Woodbridge Road?”

“I regret ma’am,” the clerk said robotically. “But we are not authorized to provide that information. I can assure you, however, that, as a general matter, the town takes any unauthorized developments extremely seriously.” 

Lauren ended the call. She was devastated. How could she get to the truth of the situation? How could she get justice?

Then she realized what she needed to do. If she couldn’t get anyone in the buildings department to take this seriously she needed to escalate it to the people in the town who actually enforce the law. After all, she still had some very good contacts in the police department.

A plan began to form in her mind. She would confront the Smiths with the facts and if they did not see the error of their unauthorized building works that had ruined her life, she would enlist the help of law enforcement.

Less than an hour of searching online through the town’s ordinances and she located what she was looking for: “no new impervious structure may be constructed less than ten feet from a property boundary without authorization”. Lauren printed the document out, grabbed it in her hand and headed for Woodbridge Road.

“Can I help you?” the young Black man said as he answered the door, a pleasant smile spread across his face. He couldn’t have been more than thirty-five years old. Behind him stood a woman who looked even younger. Early thirties at most. 

“Mr. and Mrs. Smith?” Lauren asked.

“That’s right, What can we do for you?”

“I am your neighbor. Not from this road but your property backs onto mine – we are on the next road.”

The smile left Mr. Smith’s face. His wife looked on quizzically and seemed to be reaching in her pocket for something.

“Did you know,” Lauren continued, that the patio or whatever it is you are building at the bottom of your garden needs a permit from the town?

Mr. Smith raised an incredulous eyebrow, still appearing somewhat relaxed. His wife took a step toward Lauren, almost drawing level with where her husband stood.

“I have printed out the town ordinance for you,” Lauren said. “It’s all very clear.”

Mr. Smith let out a little chuckle, but it was not one of amusement. 

“Such a nice way to welcome us to the neighborhood,” he said. “Well, we will take it all under consideration. Now, if you don’t mind, we have things to do.”

Lauren did not move. Her feet remained planted on the Smith’s porch step as if stuck in concrete.

“Has what I have said registered with you at all? You have to stop the building activity right away.”

Mrs. Smith took another step forward.

“Enough,” she said. “Can you please leave our property right away.”

But Lauren still did not move. She stood rooted to the Smiths’ front porch, brandishing her printout. Why couldn’t these people understand that what they were doing was wrong?

“Ok,” said Mr. Smith. “It is time to leave now please ma’am.” He stepped across the door threshold and put out a guiding right hand that may have brushed Lauren’s shoulder.

Then, she finally lost it. Everything she had been bottling up inside these past few days just exploded.

“Do not touch me!” Lauren exploded. “Do not put your hands on me!”

Lauren stepped back from the front door but only a couple of feet. She reached inside her own pants pocket for her cellphone. As she did so, she was only vaguely aware that Mrs. Smith now had her own phone in her hand and appeared to be recording proceedings. 

By now, however, Lauren had lost all control. She could see what her fingers were doing as she dialed the police department. And she could hear her own words as she said: “a man, a Black man has just assaulted me. Please come quickly.”

But those words and actions may as well have come from somebody else.

After that, the rest of the afternoon was a blur. 

A police car did eventually arrive at the Smiths’ property. However, it was Lauren – not the Smiths – who was warned about her conduct and urged to go home.

The real hammer blow, however, arrived within the hour thanks to Mrs. Smith’s social media post. 

“This entitled woman weaponized the police against my husband to further her selfish interests.” The text was under a picture of Lauren at the Smiths’ front porch. The picture was in fact the still of a two-minute video that showed Lauren’s call to the police department and her refusal to leave the Smiths’ property.

“The police could easily have killed my husband thanks to this woman’s reckless and racist behavior. Her actions fit a pattern of abuse that we, as a people, have suffered for generations. That abuse has been inflicted on us from the most privileged members of society such as this White woman.”

One of Lauren’s closer girlfriends forwarded her the link to the post with a simple three-word question: “wtf?”

In fact, that was to be the last that she heard from the dozens of well-heeled women in town she had spent the past few years cultivating. She thought they were her good friends.

An hour after she first saw the social media post it had already garnered well over 100,000 views, as well as many hateful comments directed towards Lauren. Within another hour that number had increased to a mind-boggling half a million and was continuing to climb at an alarming rate.

By now Lauren had managed to summoned Andy home early from his Manhattan office. He sat on the couch with his stricken wife. She had barely been able to speak to him when he got home. Now, he just sat next to her, holding her hand as she sobbed without any control.

Thankfully, Andy had managed to persuade the family’s afternoon nanny to stay for the evening so at least there was someone to take care of the children as they processed the trauma that had suddenly hit them.

Shortly after half a million view of Mrs. Smith’s post, the first online pieces hit: NJ.com and the New York Post reveled in the story. Andy almost threw up as he read the article by the latter publication, which provided his wife’s full name, hometown and links to her social media pages supporting various organizations focused on racial justice and women’s reproductive rights. 

At that point he stopped Lauren from viewing any more of the content. He rushed to her laptop in the upstairs study and was quickly able to unpublish her main social media accounts he knew of. Screenshots of them, however, had already been grabbed by the first reporters and were splashed all over the now dozens of articles that were sprouting up like mushrooms on the Internet.

It was then they heard the knock on the door. Reluctantly, Andy answered.

A young woman stood there with a CBS Local logo on her bright blue vest and a large microphone in her hand.

“Can we speak to your wife? What does she have to say about allegations that she racially profiled her neighbors and threatened them with the police?”

“No comment,” Andy stammered and slammed the door back in the woman’s face.

He peered out the front window. There were now multiple vehicles outside their home, some emblazoned with the logos of TV networks. 

Andy looked a little further down the street and saw the crowd that was beginning to gather. The young people with placards looked angry. Very angry.

Silently, and sadly, he led his wife to bed. 

The din that drifted in from outside suggested that the people camped on their street weren’t going anywhere.

And so the following day dawned and both Lauren and Andy realized this wasn’t a nightmare. It wasn’t a scene from some crazy movie. This was what their life had suddenly become.

By mid-morning, the media and the protesters were still there. Perhaps they were feeding off each other by this point. Who knew.

At any rate, the TV reporters were able to keep doing pieces to camera: it seemed like their studios were keen on regular updates on the latest “Karen” story.

For them, it was just a day’s work. For Lauren, it was her entire life, cruelly ended in less than 24-hours.

At one point, Andy left her for a few minutes to take a work call in the next room. That was when she decided what she needed to do: she had to face them. Face all those people who now hated her.

Lauren took three deep breaths and opened the front door. She stood in her doorway and for an instant it seemed as though nobody had noticed. Then they spotted her. Suddenly, the media folk stopped the conversations they were having and swarmed forward up the pathway, clutching microphones, notebooks and any other tools of the trade they had to hand.

Lauren kept moving and parted the throng of news folk as they clamored around her. By now, however, the mob down the street had also seen her leaving the house.

“There she is!” shrieked a young woman. “Let’s get the racist bitch!”

At least half a dozen protesters started running towards Lauren’s front yard. Then she felt it, a sharp sting on the side of her head. She put a hand to her temple and looked down at her fingers: they were covered in blood.

They were throwing stones at her.

She opened her mouth the speak. To the reporters, to the mob. To anyone that would listen. But no words would come out.

It was then she saw her neighbor Janice, standing watching. And there were other neighbors with her too. Neighbors who not long ago had been taking lawn signs from Lauren. 

She tried to make eye contact with Janice but the woman, who she thought was almost a friend, just shook her head with a stern look and then turned away.

In that instant she felt another sharp hit, this time on the back of her head. She crumpled on the floor and felt feet, many feet, trying to kick her.

She would die here, she thought. Collapsed on the ground in front of her luxury home on this beautiful, tree-lined suburban street, her life would end.

All of a sudden, however, she became aware of a pair of strong arms picking her up, guiding her forcefully through the crowd. The man pushed her towards a pickup truck. It wasn’t a vehicle she was familiar with. In her past life, she had prided herself on knowing every neighbor on the street by the car they drove.

And yet, something about this man was familiar. She sat now in the passenger seat of the Chevy Silverado and turned to look at him: the muscular arms had a light smattering of tattoos; the chestnut brown beard was bordering on unkempt; the baseball cap and the reflective blue sunglasses – all so foreign to this town and this culture.

Who was this guy? She knew him, she was sure.

The man read her quizzical look.

“It’s your neighbor Rob, remember me? Now, let’s get you out of here.”

The Silverado sped away past the 25mph sign. It was doing at least double that.