bailey loveless
Gummy Bear Soup
Brother-in-Law is sitting in jail, and his newborn has his nose.
The baby wasn’t supposed to come till the end of the month, but as soon as I heard the news from Gummy Bear, I knew she would pop sooner than later—the stress of your husband being detained on Halloween night will do that to a person.
Gummy Bear and Brother-in-Law are romantics, early twenties, eloped less than a year ago. A whirlwind, but she loves him with all the gooey, sugary sweetness of her nickname’s sake.
As the eldest, I take the matters of my sister’s heart seriously—I wish the rest of the world’s richest country would as well. No nine-month pregnant 20-year-old should ever have to hear the words, “Your husband is at risk of deportation,” or “You might get evicted,” or “Your baby might be a stillbirth,” much less all three in the same week.
God, has it only been a week? Has it been eight days or eleven? Four or six? Time is soup.
Brother-in-Law’s coming home from his first Halloween party when the cops pulled him over for a broken tail light. Gummy Bear wanted her new husband to have the quintessential American experience, even though she had to stay holed up in bed on account of pregnancy complications. She’s sobbing when she calls me: “If only I’d done this, if only he’d done that.”
“Let’s get something clear here,” I say. “Neither of you did anything wrong.”
Gummy Bear goes to the Utah county jail to pay his bail. The men-in-masks stalk outside.
The police officer at the front desk looks at my sister’s pregnant belly. She leans forward in a merciful whisper and pushes the bail money back to Gummy Bear. It’s safer to leave Brother-in-Law in jail then out where he might get nabbed and taken god knows where.
Safer. In jail. I do not know what it means for the world when a man who has done no harm is safer behind bars than walking free.
Gummy Bear takes her money back and leaves him incarcerated. He could be there for days, he could be there for months. I text her a list of criminal attorneys.
One Halloween party has truly become a horror show—I cannot fathom the cruel irony of being threatened by ICE mere hours after attempting to culturally assimilate into the American melting pot. But it feels like child’s play when Gummy Bear’s body revolts, boiling over like tomato soup with the stove heat ratcheted high.
She’s wailing that she doesn’t want to have this baby without him–but the baby is coming. Admitted into the hospital, the doctors spend at least 36 hours (maybe more; it’s hard to tell at this point) betting over the risks to her body. One minute she’s headed to the O.R.; the next minute it’s wait and see. It’s like watching a game of Russian roulette.
My life isn’t even the one getting completely fucked right now, but I’m seething. I need just a simmer of control. Opening up a list of expenditures on my laptop, I squeeze the family budget for extra cash for a lawyer’s retainer. Brother-in-Law is about to take on a whole new meaning.
When we were kids, my parents got super into survival prep. Mounds and mounds of canned goods were piled into our basement, Campbell’s tomato soup a favorite among them. The adage was “eat from the food storage,” and a meal often consisted of grabbing a can of chili or beef stew or whatever soup caught our fancy.
“Hey, Gummy Bear, do you remember when we’d get tomato soup and it was so old that it started tasting metallic, like tin, but Mom and Dad would tell us to eat it anyway?”
Dad calls me, freaking out because Gummy Bear is still on some insurance thing even though she’s not supposed to be. He’s worried Brother-in-Law’s stint in jail will somehow increase his premiums. “I asked him when I met him, are you here legally?” Dad says.
I’m too tired to try to convince him of the complexities of American immigration law. Nor can I begin to unpack the pure hypocrisy spewing from his mouth, since he’s the one in the room who hasn’t done his paperwork properly.
Dad rambles: he’s excited about the baby—he’s angry that the supreme court allowed the militarization of police—he doesn’t understand why the cops booked Brother-in-Law if he did nothing wrong—he’s scared that Gummy Bear is too naive to live in Brother-in-Law’s home
country.
Dad voted for Trump. We’ve reminded him more than once that the baby’s skin will be brown too.
The baby arrives—tiny, furious, beautiful. She has my Brother-in-Law’s nose, and Gummy Bear’s smile. I can’t help but melt when I see her. She’s here, she’s alive, and she’s born under a full moon, which I consider good luck.
EPILOGUE:
As of June 2026, Brother-in-Law has been deported to his home country. He has never met the baby, who is beginning to learn to crawl.
bailey loveless (she/they) is a queer writer haunting a far forest ledge on S’Klallam land along the Washington coastline. She is also a patron of the odd, the outcast, and the lost, with a particular fondness for ghosts. She is currently completing an MFA in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University, where her thesis explores care, magic, and ways of being amid political upheaval.
Please consider donating to the American Civil Liberties Union. Your generous contribution to the ACLU fuels the legal frontlines to help protect reproductive freedom, secure the right to vote for marginalized communities, defend LGBTQ+ youth from discriminatory laws, block government overreach, and protect the erosion of our fundamental civil rights.
Banner Art:
Photo by Raychel Sanner, Unsplash, 2024
