Help Comes from the Sewers
sadly, it won't be the Turtles
I keep hearing people say, “Look for the helpers.”
It rubs me the wrong way. I am not a child, to be comforted. I want to help; I want everyone to help. I don’t want to wait for a saint or hero to appear; I want ordinary flawed folks to pitch in and do their best and I want to pitch in too.
But these days, I do. I do look for the helpers.
Sometimes they’re so few and so far between, and the work so large, that the helpers seem like a dozen ants trying to move an entire landfill.
I don’t see their successes. I don’t see even their small successes. I just see the landfill, and the people being crushed under the weight of garbage. I look for more helpers, and I don’t see them coming.
I believe they’ll come. But when help comes, it will be too late, and too little. It won’t undo the damage. It won’t bring back the dead. It won’t work miracles. I know this.
Everyone who saw this coming did their best. Everyone I know and love is already working so hard, and already maxed out. Everyone who knows and loves me is already helping, and already maxed out. There is only one place left from which help will come. It will come from outside that circle, which means that worst of all:
It will come from people I don’t like. From people I don’t agree with; from people who have betrayed and disappointed me. And from people who don’t like me.
I’m told that Black women are resting, after their long sprint. I (Bookseller Quinn) am a bona fide Karen, and our allies have no reason to like me, or the rest of my demographic. No reason at all.
We’re all tired. We’re all scared. Many of us are suffering, and when help comes, it won’t heal us. And yet: we’ll have to accept the help.
I read a story long ago:
A young man went out into the wide world, to have adventures. He took his nest egg and wasted it on fine things and parties, and as he grew poorer and poorer those fine things vanished and his party friends left. Finally he took a job as Second Assistant Pig-Keeper. As he sat glumly beside the exploding lagoon of pig manure, he thought: I wonder if they’ll let me come home.
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. When he got home, he was welcomed with open arms: not with judgment, but with joy.
It’s going to be extremely difficult to welcome our wandering neighbors with joy. The German variety is both seductive and satisfying.
I keep thinking about rabbit holes, though. People keep calling this ideology a rabbit hole.
A rabbit hole is full of rabbits. If you go down a real rabbit hole you find a warm cozy furry den full of little snuggly bunnies, and if you go down a magical rabbit hole you find Wonderland. The people who have gone into this temptingly dark and convoluted hole are not going to find either.
The tunnel of white supremacy, whether it’s the ordinary everyday everywhere kind or the redpilled conspiracy kind, is not a rabbit hole. It’s a sewer. Just like that Second Assistant Pig-Keeper’s lagoon, it’s full of shit.
Our neighbors did not build that tunnel. They stumbled in by accident or they dove in eagerly or they were born into it but they didn’t actually build it. They voted for the construction; they agreed that your backyard was a good location; they allowed the builders to pull funding from art and food and medicine but they didn’t design it, and they didn’t build it.
It’s a trap laid for all of us and they failed to escape. If they emerge they’ll be covered with all the things you find in a sewer. Trash, and slime, and junk.
And blood and bruises, because the only way out of that hole is to be chewed up and spat out by the Machine that runs its relentless churning pumps in the dark depths. Those turbines are powered by pain and suffering and when they finish with you, it’s because there is nothing left for them to destroy.
It’s so hard to welcome the rejected survivors of that Machine. We’re already working hard, and nothing we do is ever enough, and no one is grateful and no one is happy, and we are just daily slogging along. And then when someone gets thrown out of this machine and lands back on the doorstep covered in pig shit, we have to be excited to see them, and welcome them home.
We can’t reject them, because that will send them back to feed the Machine. We need their help. If that means offering them a clean towel and a cup of coffee and a friendly hand, we do it. If it means they keep their bigotries and fears and delusions, but they make one phone call sending the right request in the right direction, even for the wrong reason, we thank them. We accept the one phone call, and we don’t bother judging each other’s hearts.
We don’t have loyalty pledges or purity tests. Those tools will not dismantle this house.
Our Board President says: “We work together on the places where we align, and on the places where we diverge we diverge.”
This antisegregationist bookstore accepts help gratefully from anyone. None of us are perfect. None of us are living lightly on this earth. We practice humility, generosity, and kindness knowing that we also need to be greeted with humility, generosity and kindness.
If you come and pack books once for a book giveaway, you’ve helped. If you come to Story Club or Galentine’s Day, you’ve helped. It’s not up to us, your friendly Booksellers and fellow Readers, to judge the purity of your intention or your character or your behavior. It’s up to us to accept your help happily, and to be grateful for it.
Maintaining the ability to accept and be grateful for the presence and contributions of people we dislike requires us to make space for grief and for anger and for sadness and for disappointment. It requires that we stay safe from the people who would harm us personally.
It requires that when we’re in the front lines and can do no more, we step back and allow someone else to pick up the fight. It requires long, long periods of rest.
It will require naps and snacks and treats, along with all the hard work.
But we are led by a tiny dog, who like all her people is an expert on snacks and treats.
We have a lot of treats planned for this year! We’ll have chocolate and books and coloring pages and stories and sequins and sparkles; we’ll have joy and feasting and singing and dancing; we are leaning in to all of the good things of this life. For 2025, as our Board agreed Wednesday night, we’ll help all we can, and rest all we can, and rejoice all we can; we’ll cultivate the skills of hope and gratitude because we’ll need them when help comes.
It doesn’t matter who shows up with a nail. Even if they just show up with a rough lump of iron. We have an anvil and we can find a hammer. We will be ready to greet that gift, not grudgingly but gratefully, not judgmentally but joyfully, not with condemnation, but with welcome.
This bookstore is open to everyone, and we always will be. We are all Readers together.
We look forward to seeing you this year!