It’s a day like so many
others for Michonne. Despite having lost two friends, life goes on, refusing to
allow them to pause. It had been that way before the fall, and it hadn’t
changed. The world doesn’t let you stop for grief. You have to find a way to
keep in inside while you go about your day, trying to care for yourself, and,
if you’re lucky to have them, family and friends. In the world before, money
had to be made to pay the mortage or rent, to keep the utilities on, and food
in the belly. Now, they had to go on merely to survive, while they tried to
enjoy moments of life between the slaughters and the tears.
Judith’s diapers still need
changing. Carl still needs breakfast. That doesn’t change just because Negan
and his men are in her territory, pissing all over everything and everyone,
trying to mark it as theirs, and enforce the idea that she and her people are
only borrowing what the Saviors are gracious enough to dole out. Michonne still
has the job of handing Judith over to whoever’s volunteering to take her. Today
it’s Mrs. Camden, a lovely older woman. Gray haired old ladies were as rare
nowadays as toothless babies, and just as treasured. She takes Judith into the
clinic, the one house allowed to tax the power grid for power so the old folks
and babies don’t get sick from the heat. They’ll sit under the fans and watch
old DVDs of Bugs Bunny, while the women work away the hot hours of the day
doing knitting and repairing people’s worn clothes as best they can.
It’s just another day, like
so many. The wall is manned, looking for walker threats, though having a
lookout for living threats is moot with the enemy walking freely about their
streets. Michonne watches Rick oversee repairs to the wall, while Negan makes
an obnoxious pest of himself. He comes by now with smaller contingents of men,
and forces Daryl to stand out in the sun and heat in that hot uniform of
sweatpants and sweatshirt. Michonne tries to sneak him some water when he
begins to sway on his feet. Negan catches her. She pleads the case that
whatever Negan gets out of torturing Daryl will be denied him if the man dies
of dehydration and heat stroke. In an uncommon act of mercy, he allows Michonne
to lead Daryl into the house where he catches an hour of rest and downs half a
gallon of water in one. He gulps down the venison she shares with him, but
doesn’t have in himself to meet her gaze. He silently returns to his place, on
his own, with a defeated droop to his shoulders.
Wash has to be finished and
hung up to dry. Michonne goes about the task, using an old drum secured between
two posts, with a handle in the side. She’s able to fill it with clothes,
water, and a meager amount of soap, before she sets to spinning it in one
direction, and then another, cranking the handle and listening to the clothes
slosh inside, getting clean. She drains the drum, fills it with fresh water and
rinses the clothes before she begins the task of taking out each item and
cranking them through a ringer. It’s hard work, but necessary, and it takes up
most of her day. When she’s done, the back-yard clothes lines are loaded with
clean clothes for her family.
Of course, there’s always a
man who must come around, making his little comments, offering her ‘affection’
she doesn’t want. She politely declines, wishing she could bash the man’s face
in, knowing she could take him in a fight. She’s waiting for the day one of
them tries to rape her. Why that hasn’t happened yet is a mystery to her. She’s
heard Negan has a so-called no rape policy, but she’s never believed his men
would actually hold to it if they thought they could get away with it. One day,
one of them would think they could. They’d try her. They’d pay for it with
their lives. In fact, she often finds herself wishing one of them would cross a
line with her so she’d have an excuse to rid the world of one more Savior
scumbag. This man doesn’t make that mistake.
Dinner is an uncomfortable
affair. The kitchen is filled with Negan's chatter as he enjoys the sound of his own voice,
while the rest of them answer only when necessary. They pass the time and wait
for it to be over, for Negan to finally leave. He takes his time, runs his
mouth, makes his cruel comments and snide remarks. He taunts Daryl. He makes
innuendos about Michonne. She puts up with it, and clears the dinner table,
hoping to signal that the evening has drawn to a close.
There’s something
distinctly sexual in the way Negan approaches everyone, Rick included, and
Michonne isn’t comfortable with it. She’s not comfortable with the way he
slides up next to Rick and says he missed him, or that he’s just slid his dick
down Rick’s throat and Rick thanked him for it. She doesn’t like the way Negan
eyes Rosita, or asks about Maggie, threatening to take her back to his
so-called sanctuary to do God only knows what to her.
She definitely isn’t comfortable
with the way he put his hands on her hips while she stands at the kitchen sink,
washing the dinner dishes, or how he presses himself against her when he leans
over her to get a cup for some after dinner coffee. She hates the feel of him
against her. She hates knowing he’s aware of her disgust and getting a thrill
from it. She hates that she can sense Rick and Carl watching, aching to make a
move to defend her, but they can’t, because he’d kill them for it. She hates
how they’re all helpless and he can do whatever he wants.
When she moves away from
him, pulling herself away from what feels like the start of an erection, which
is firmly pressed to her ass, a cold, angry look appears in Negan’s eyes. He’s
sulking like a spoiled child. He fancies himself a god among men, that he
should be denied nothing, but Michonne will deny him this. She’ll deny him the
opportunity to force his unwanted touches to her body.
When Negan finally leaves,
taking Daryl with him, she tries not to worry too much of what will become of
her friend—and fails. She sees Carl off to bed, and tucks Judith into her crib.
She showers a day’s worth of sweat from her skin, under a spray of cold water,
before she crawls into bed with Rick. She seeks comfort in his touch, in the
feel of his body moving inside her, and in the passionate fire of his release,
which he mutes in the crook of her shoulder as she holds him tight. All she can
do is hold him while he weeps for all they’ve lost, and all they could still
lose, to the maniac with a barb wire-wrapped baseball bat.
Such is this woman’s work,
caring for the family she never thought she’d have again after losing
everything at the start of the turn, and she wouldn’t trade it for anything.
When the time to fight came, she would fight. Right now, it was time to wash
clothes, cook, change dirty diapers, listen to her man and her boy talk about
their hopes, their fears, and their dreams. At night, it was time to slip beneath the
covers on the floor of the bedroom she shared with Rick, to make love to him,
to hold him, to find rest and peace in his arms. It was the best job in the
world, one she wouldn’t trade for anything, one she hoped to have for many
years to come, until she, too, was a gray haired old lady, as rare and
treasured as the toothless babies in the safe place they called home.
