The Gold Club
The price of freedom
The hall shimmered with red lanterns, their glow flickering like rising moons. The Taiwan Friendship Association’s Mid-Autumn Festival was always the highlight of the year—a night of reunion and moonlight, where even the vague memories of the holiday felt sweet for a few hours. Children chased each other between folding tables, and someone had arranged a tray of moon cakes shaped like rabbits.
Yet beneath the laughter, there was a palpable silence. Conversations paused mid-sentence when the door opened. People smiled too widely, spoke too softly.
When the association head finally stood up to make his announcement, his hands trembled around the microphone.
“I’m happy to see all of you,” he began. “It’s been a difficult year, but we’re still together. That’s what matters.”
Polite applause. Then, his eyes drifted toward me.
“You’ve all heard about the recent ICE raid,” he said, his voice lowering. “Trump told us it was lenient. But he warned us that the next one… might not go so well unless we all joined the Trump Gold Club.”
A few people laughed uncertainly, assuming it was a joke. But he wasn’t smiling. Trump failed on the promise to his base to deport millions of violent, criminal, illegal aliens. To recover, he was aiming for easy targets, mothers and fathers, senior citizens who had lived in the US for decades on green cards, always assuming that citizenship wasn’t a priority.
The raspy recorded reed music stopped. The hum of the fluorescent lights grew louder.
An elderly woman whispered, “How much is membership?”
The association head looked at her sadly. “More than it should be. It’s the price of freedom.”
The elderly woman continued her questions. “What does membership get us?
The association head gulped nervously. “We’re still, uh, negotiating on that.”
No one moved.
I stared at my untouched moon cake. Through the window, the full moon hung over the parking lot like an interrogation light.
My recently immigrated wife opened her purse to make sure her US passport was there, always ready to identify her as a US citizen. She worried that the passport might be revoked because it had been issued under the administration of Trump’s enemy.
It was supposed to be a festival of reunion. But that night, the moon looked like an eye. Watching. Waiting.
© Zachary Alan Patterson, October 2025