They’d see her if she stood up. It seemed almost impossible none had already caught her crouching in the grass. Although, didn’t they want to be seen? That was what these reenactments were for. To be witnessed. She should stand and watch, at least get a better view, but she remained still, barely breathing as she let the brush be her cover. Standing meant acknowledging what was in front of her in a way she wasn’t prepared for, not out here, not alone, with her their only audience. When she was surrounded by the crowds watching the reenactments, it was easier to wipe her hands, to shrug in the admission that this is how it is and how it’ll always be, but alone she couldn’t ignore it. Alone she had to face the reality of what she saw and her own participation in it, because watching was participating, wasn’t it? Allowing it to continue? Any movement might disrupt the veil, the one that kept her invisible, watching. Her whole life, she’d existed on this side of it—keeping quiet, following rules, doing whatever possible to continue in the safety of being unseen, fearing the slightest transgression would put her on the other side. How many times had she watched as people like her got their spirits ruined from the unfairness of this world? She’d lived in the false promise that because she was invisible, she’d be spared, and while she knew now this was a lie, she stayed crouched to the ground, hidden from view, too afraid of any other choice beyond watching as they worked.

A white man supervised in the background. Young, clean-shaven, with dark hair. He carried the look of a man who’d never been told no, who acted as if the world had been built for him, and for most of his life it probably had been. In this heat he still dressed in his finest clothes because a man like him could afford to. He wore dark trousers with a matching frock coat. Underneath he wore a single-breasted blue-and-green-checkered vest. On his feet were ink-colored leather shoes, which he tapped impatiently against the grass.

He yelled at the others as they dug, impatient, yet his gaze betrayed a sense of gratification in watching the men as they struggled. “How much longer?” he barked.

“Almost done, sir,” a voice down in the hole yelled back. “Almost done, sir. Almost done,” he repeated. His tone was of someone who’d lived a life of acquiescence, someone who’d become intimate with the strain of a bowed head and bent back. Like the other men, they did what they were told because they knew of no other choice. They dug their hole. A hole for graves or a hole just because. They dug.