The pickup truck is matte black. It has a twelve-inch body lift over big mudder tires on blacked-out rims. It has bronze-tinted windows. Slowly it drives past Frieda's yard sale, its exhaust throaty and hungry. Frieda sees the "Border Boys" Iron Cross decal in the rear window. She reads the bumper stickers on the tailgate: Pet the Dog, Beware of AR-15; America First, Oil Second, Jesus a Close Third; Build the Wall; Make me a burrito, Bitch! 

"Benito, come here," Frieda calls to her five-year-old son. "Now mijo!" Benny is down the sidewalk at the street corner. Frieda was letting him ride his bicycle one last time. 

The truck suddenly stomps its brakes. Frieda was being careful to keep her ankle monitor hidden under her long skirt, but the boy is wearing shorts and his is clearly visible. The truck eagerly reverses, jostling and bumping a rear tire up onto the curb like a black and bronze Rottweiler lifting his leg to mark a tree. 

Benny's ankle monitor had quietly announced that this wasn't just a yard sale—it was a moving sale. Everything had to go because the government only allowed one medium-sized bag per person. The agents had left behind a pamphlet, Remigration and You, and it said the buses were going to be jammed—"at capacity-plus utilization levels" it said. And when they arrived at the barracks, the "semi-permanent staging center," it said there wouldn't be any storage space. 

When one of these yard-sale people saw an ankle monitor, Frieda knew her negotiating power was torched—joining the ash heap of all her other former powers. 

"How much for the china cabinet?" they would ask. 

"Two hundred. It's solid walnut, with these, uh, mother-of-pearl inlays. After the war my grandfather became a master—" 

"I'll give you thirty bucks." 

In this manner, piece-by-piece, Frieda's modest life was being dismantled by bargain-hunting hyenas. Slowly they circled, darting in to rend away bits and chunks of her household carcass, yipping with excitement as they carried away their bloody prizes. 

Out of the Rottweiler truck a middle-aged couple emerges. The blond-haired man is tall, wearing a black t-shirt, black jeans, and black combat boots. His bronze-mirrored sunglasses complete the color coordination with his truck. The chubby woman is wearing a fresh, bright pink sunburn that matches her bright pink tube top which says "fancy" in silver-glittered script. When she raises her arms to adjust her ginger ponytail, her pure-white armpits flash like a white-tailed deer's alarm. 

Frieda watches the couple pick through the tables of items on her front lawn. The woman's fleshy hands, shiny with sweat, muss a neatly folded stack of table linen. Hours and hours Frieda had sat with her mother and embroidered that linen. Frieda's hands are calloused but not yet her memories, and she pulls her crocheted shawl tight around her thin body. 

The fancy woman's phone rings. "Hey momma," she says. A frown appears. "That's highway robbery. Don't be payin' those grocery store jew prices... Look, go out Old Route 9, go pas' Fairplay Road. Them fields got tomatahs, peppers, melons—all ripe.  Everything.  Go rotten soon enough." The woman seems interested in the Christmas decorations, especially the nativity scene. "Oh the lil' wire fence ain't nothin', and ain't no one 'round anyway... Yeah, yesterday... hey I gotta go momma... kay bye." 

The woman is now inspecting a set of kitchen knives. They are made of top-grade German steel. She tests an edge, drawing it across the soft pad of her left index finger. Blood appears. 

"Ow!" She shoots a disgusted look at Frieda and sticks the finger in her mouth, sucking the wound. "How much for the knives?" she mumbles. 

"It's a set of ten. A German brand, Henckels. A new set would—"

"How much?" 

"Fifty dollars." 

"Ugh," the woman grunts, rolling her eyes. 

The woman's bleeding fingertip reminds Frieda of how this nightmare all began. 

You’ll receive a free ancestry report, the friendly census worker had said. You can locate lost relatives, she said. It's just a little finger prick for each family member. "No thanks," Frieda had replied, speaking through the screen door. Oh it's not optional, the woman said, motioning to her partner—the burly man standing in the yard. 

The blond-haired man waves at Frieda, interrupting her daydream. "How old is this bonsai tree?" he asks. 

"Oh, it's..." Frieda looks up, calculating. "It's about 95 years-old now. My great great great grandfather found it as a sapling—at the Tule Lake internment camp." 

"During World War II?" 

"Yep." 

The man's brow furrows. Frieda knows what he is thinking. "Your grandpa was, uh, 

Japanese?" he asks. 

"My great great grandpa, yes. Half Japanese, half Mexican actually. But Japanese enough for a bus ride to Tule Lake." Frieda holds her gaze steady on the mirrored sunglasses.  The man drops his head. 

"How much you want for it?" 

"Two thousand." That will probably end the conversation, Frieda thinks. In truth, the three-foot tall Rocky Mountain Juniper was worth much more. Over the decades it had been carefully cultivated into an exquisite piece of living art with five distinct horizontal branches of greenery. Each of these branches grew out of the central, twisting trunk at a different elevation, creating a multi-layered aesthetic. It's a masterpiece of nature's quiet labor. 

The various layered branches had each been given a family name. The lowest, and largest, was called "Shinzo" after Frieda's great great grandfather. The next highest branch was known as "Ruth" for the great grandmother who next cultivated the tree. Up from Ruth was "Viktor," Frieda's grandfather, then "Carmen" her mother. The highest branch was "Frieda." 

"Mommy, this one is baby Benny" Frieda's son would always say, fingering the new high growth she was training with a twisted wrap of wire. 

"Be gentle, mijo." 

"Mommy, tell me the story again." Benny loved how his mother told of the tree's history, reading the craggy twists and turns of the central trunk. Some of those twists were tortuous, like when Grandpa Viktor was jailed for six months, falsely accused of being a communist. The tree nearly died of thirst, evidenced by the large patch of dead tissue that still retains. Then there is the visible burn scar, from when Grandma Carmen's house almost burned down when she was a girl. Some men wanted to keep her dusky type out of their sparkling schools and swimming pools. 

"Hmm, two thousand," the man repeats after hearing Frieda's asking price. Gently he inspects the tree, his thorough manner betraying keen interest. Frieda watches him poke and pinch the potted soil and then sniff his fingers. Was he trying to discern the acidity? Could his nose be so refined? Watching him reminds Frieda of that horrible day when the federal agents came to her door. 

"But I was born here!" Frieda had cried as the men held her facedown and strapped on the ankle monitor. The rules have changed, they said. It's now blood, not soil. "What? What's that even mean?" Frieda asked through her sobs. It means your test came back, and you're done poisoning our blood, you stupid whore. 

The tube top woman approaches the blond-haired man. "How much she want for that?" the woman asks him. 

"She wants two thousand," Frieda says, looking straight at her. 

"Ugh, is she serious?" the woman huffs. She holds her phone up to the man. "Look, they're on the green route. Them buses pick up tomorrow. See." The woman had found the bus schedule on the government's remigration website, and Benny's green ankle monitor had given away their departure date.

"I'll give you two hundred for the tree," the man says. 

Frieda purses her lips. She shuts her eyes for a long moment. "Benny, go inside please." 

"But momma!" 

"Now Benito!" The child slumps. "I'm counting!" Slowly the boy shuffles across the patchy lawn and stomps up the front steps, arms hanging at his side. 

As the screen door bangs shut, Frieda walks over to the Henckels knives. She's done with hearing all the hate. All the talk about blood. It's time for action, she thinks. My turn to wield some German steel. 

Frieda approaches the man with a hefty meat cleaver in her right hand. She swings it through a high overhead arc like a tennis serve. As the man cowers into a crumpled ball, the cleaver comes down and guillotines its target—the Frieda bough is cleanly severed from the twisted trunk. Again and again, with a fury remarkable for its precision, the executioner swings her blade and decapitates every branch from the gnarled tree. Generations of wealth—that only time and toil can accrue—are felled in a single act of scorched-earth vengeance. 

Realizing he will live, the man slowly rises from his crouch, brushing pruned detritus from his head and neck. He carefully backs away from Frieda, keeping his mirrored sunglasses trained on her. 

"You're freakin' crazy," he says. "You people gotta go." 

"Go where?" Frieda asks, chest heaving. "Go WHERE!?" she screams. A moment later the Rottweiler truck growls away in hasty retreat. "Puerto Rico and/or Guam and/or American Samoa," the brochure had said, "may be utilized for those others without definitive ancestral options." 

Frieda turns back to her handiwork. She clears a severed bough from the tree's base, exposing the matte black pot that holds the root ball. The shallow clay vessel provides enough soil—just enough—to keep the trunk alive and upright. It's main purpose is to constrain the roots and keep the tree dwarfed. And moveable. 

Frieda pokes in the soil, bringing a pinch of the dirt to her nose. She expects the musty scent of moist organic matter. Instead her nose is punched with an unruly odor she's never experienced—a pungent combination of blood, hope, toil, and outrage. It's the smell of struggle becoming rotten, fermenting into rebellion. Frieda picks up the baby Benny cutting and puts it in her breast pocket.  

Later that afternoon, a horde of black sedans converge on Frieda's house from all directions. Squealing tires squawk out the agents' excitement as they careen into skidding stops; these alarms are rare, and the men were eager to deploy their government training and toolkits. 

Standing on the top step of the home's entrance, patiently awaiting the agents, is a naked, three foot tall, dwarf tree trunk. It is half-scarred and half-scorched, but still fully defiant.  It sticks up out of its pot like a crooked, discolored, 95 year-old middle finger. Fuck you, it says. And in a final dying act of defiance, the little tree has sprouted brand new greenery—two severed ankle monitors hang around its gnarled trunk.

‍

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Everything Must Go" was originally published in the 2025 PEN America Prison Writing Awards Anthology.

‍

Enjoyed this piece and want to write to the author? Send mail to:

Todd Winkler CDCR# AV3989

San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, 3D-12

San Quentin, CA 94974

‍