Wide Awake Now, page 16
That was, I discovered, the good thing about a crowd: You didn’t have to hold hands to be united. You just had to hold close.
Jimmy and I watched as Holy Ghostwriter continued to perform. Some screens were still showing the names of all the people supporting us from afar. Others showed the concert, and every now and then they’d pan across the crowd, showing all the faces underneath the green banners. Usually I couldn’t care less about crowd shots, but this time was different, because I felt a connection to each and every face they showed.
Then the camera showed an attractive woman with night-black hair, inch-long eyelashes, and near-perfect cheekbones.
“That’s my father!” Sue cried out. “That’s the woman who’s my daddy!”
twenty-four
Like a shot, Sue was picking up his things and heading off to find his father. We tried to figure out which part of the park she was standing in, but there weren’t very many clues, and the camera cut away from her after a few more seconds.
“She must be near the front,” Keisha said.
“Probably near the stage, since most of the cameras are up there,” Mira agreed.
Some of us volunteered to go with him. But Sue said no, he wanted to do this alone. He took our numbers so he could call if he got lost. We showered him with encouraging words as he left.
“Kin always gravitates toward kin,” Mrs. Everett observed.
“Do you have any kin here?” Flora asked sweetly.
“Why, no,” Mrs. Everett replied, just as sweetly. “I consider y’all my kin.”
Virgil just sighed and started humming the “U R 4 Me” song.
* * *
—
It wasn’t long after Holy Ghostwriter exited the stage that Sara reappeared. As soon as she did, Keisha and Mira went careening in different directions.
“Wait,” Sara said. “No. I have something to say to you both.”
She looked like her thoughts hadn’t slept at all since she’d left. Her hair, which had always been immaculately settled, was now haphazard and free. Her eyes had shadow both below and within. She closed them for a moment before speaking again.
Keisha and Mira hovered, waiting. We all waited to see what Sara would say next.
“You don’t have to—” Flora started. But Sara waved her off.
“No, I want to do this. Since I seem to have dragged everyone into it, everyone might as well hear what I have to say. I want to apologize to you, Mira. And I want to apologize to you, Keisha. I should’ve known better than to do what I did. I should’ve been an adult. But I wasn’t. And one of the things that’s burning me the most is the thought that I’ve broken up the two of you. I know that doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make much sense to me, either. Except that it’s true. I know this will sound strange, but I never meant to come between the two of you. I got caught up in everything—the campaign, the way we all are together, the sight of the two of you being so happy. I wanted a piece of that.”
“What are you saying?” Mira challenged. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“I’m saying it was my fault. And if I could take it back, I would.”
She didn’t mean it. It was so obvious to me—she didn’t mean it. She was doing this for Keisha.
How could I tell? Maybe it was the way she wasn’t really looking at them. Maybe it was the way she seemed so much smaller than life. Maybe it was because I recognized the sound of someone still in love, since that was the way I talked, too.
She wasn’t coming right out and saying she’d never loved Keisha. She couldn’t betray everything. But at the same time, she was giving both of them an out—a way out of this mess and into a new beginning.
Finally, she looked at Mira. “I started it,” Sara said. “I said all the right things because I knew they were the right things. She never intended to leave you. She was confused. She always loved you. The whole time, she loved you.”
This was where Keisha could have denied it. This was where she could’ve told us all about being in love with two people at the same time.
But instead she stayed quiet. Said nothing. Let the story stand. Because she had always loved Mira. And now Sara was stepping aside.
Sara turned to Clive and said, “I need the keys. I need to get my stuff. I’ll get another ride back.”
“I’ll go with you,” he said.
Sara shook her head. “No, I can do it alone. I’ll call you when I’m back and I’ll meet you to hand over the keys. I won’t come back here.”
When someone is hurting enough inside, you can see it on the outside—they hunch like a heart attack or grimace like a knife has just gone into their side. With Sara, it was as if her legs had become sticks—each step was its own effort, a teeter rather than a flow. But still she walked on, without looking back.
Keisha watched her go, then turned to Mira and said, “I guess we have to talk.”
“Well, guess again,” Mira said. Then they, too, walked away. Not so far, but far enough for the distance to be known.
“What do I do now?” Keisha asked us all.
No one had an answer.
* * *
—
Onstage, Alice Martinez quoted from Martin Luther King, Jr.:
* * *
—
“ ‘Cowardice asks the question: Is it safe? Expediency asks the question: Is it politic? Vanity asks the question: Is it popular? But conscience asks the question: Is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular’—but you must take it because conscience tells you it is right.”
* * *
—
It was colder today than it was yesterday. We began to feel it. And we began to feel hungry, and unwashed, and tired.
“I didn’t think this would be easy,” Gus said, “but I didn’t think it would be so uncomfortable.”
* * *
—
Jimmy’s parents called, wishing him a happy birthday and telling him they were “holding down the fort” in Trenton, by the capitol building. They were there with dozens of their friends, and they were rotating their shifts so that some people got to drive home and sleep.
“I’m jealous,” Jimmy admitted once he’d hung up.
I tried to comfort him with a back rub, but it only made him tense to have my cold hands against his back. Tense, until he got used to it.
* * *
—
We were listening to the news, waiting for some change. But it was the same news over and over, just as it was the same speech over and over from the stage.
“It’s cool to be here,” I reminded him.
“No, it’s cold to be here,” he corrected. “Damn Kansas.”
I knew the trap we were about to fall into—Jimmy was becoming testy, which would make me anxious, which would make him even more testy, which would make me even more anxious…until our exasperation would boil over into outright mutual annoyance. I didn’t want that to happen.
I tried to keep it light. “The weather isn’t really Kansas’s fault.”
“Yeah, but the fact that we’re here is.”
I should have let it go, but I found myself saying, “The majority of Kansans voted for Stein. So it’s not really their fault, either.”
“Duncan, why are you defending Kansas?”
“I’m sorry. I know you weren’t planning to spend your birthday in Kansas. I understand that’s weird.”
“I don’t care about my birthday. You’re the one who cares about my birthday.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. Never mind. This is stupid.”
“Do you not want us to celebrate your birthday?”
“It just seems we should be focusing on the bigger picture right now.”
“Jimmy, we’re just standing here. That’s all we’re being asked to do. I think we can do that and celebrate your birthday at the same time.”
“You don’t have to. That’s what I’m trying to tell you—you think you have to, but you don’t.”
But I want to! I wanted to say. I realized this would only prove whatever point he was making.
It was true: I cared about birthdays more than he did. I had always been like that, but it became even more intense during the pandemic. We tried all the workarounds—Zoom parties, or even parties where people would drive to our front yards and sing “Happy Birthday” from over six feet away. But it wasn’t the same. Birthdays are meant to be the one day more than any other that you feel loved and appreciated. That was hard to convey under lockdown. So when lockdown lifted…I guess I wanted to compensate for the lost birthdays.
“Look,” I said, “this isn’t how I wanted it to be, either. But plans fall through. And if we’ve learned anything it’s that you can’t mourn lost plans. You just have to make new plans.”
“Duncan, we’re not on vacation.”
“I am aware of that. Very aware of that.”
I didn’t like my own tone, the way my words were deployed for their bluntness. Jimmy hadn’t made me anxious after all. We’d gone straight to annoyed.
I told him I was going to walk around with Elwood for a little bit.
He didn’t invite himself along.
twenty-five
“Tell me about Passover,” Elwood asked. We were just walking—no real destination in sight. I had one eye out for Sue; I was hoping he’d found his father but was sure that if he hadn’t he’d still be around, searching.
“Passover? That’s not until April.”
“I know,” Elwood said. “But I’ve never celebrated it. I can’t wait to.”
It’s not that I hadn’t given Passover much thought; the whole point of Passover was to give it thought. But I’d never tried to explain it before, especially to an aspiring Jew.
“Well, my whole family gathers for a seder. It’s basically a big family meal, only you have a Haggadah to read from—it’s basically the story of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, and you retell it every year to remember what happened, like the fact that God parted the Red Sea and we escaped from the pharaoh.”
“I know that part,” Elwood said solemnly.
“Yup. But it’s more than that. On Passover, we remember that no matter where we are in our lives and in the world, we were once slaves and we were once strangers. And because of that—because we were the victims of injustice—we must dedicate ourselves to fighting injustice, to fighting slavery, and to being kind to all strangers, for we ourselves were once strangers in a strange land. We end by saying, ‘Next year in Jerusalem; next year may all be free!’ And that means everyone, Jews and non-Jews. It’s supposed to remind us that our goal is to make the world an ideal place, with peace and freedom for all.”
“And you eat matzoh.”
“Yes, we eat matzoh. Unleavened bread. Because the bread in the desert didn’t have enough time to rise.”
“I love matzoh.”
I looked at Elwood. “When have you had matzoh?”
He blushed. “I snuck some. Is that okay?”
I smiled and told him I was sure it was okay.
I felt bad for Elwood, because I knew that when this was all over, he’d have to go back home and deal with whatever limitations lived there. But I also felt that clearly there was no way to keep the outside world away from him. Soon enough, when he was able to leave, he would get to live in that outside world and be whoever he wanted to be. It was no doubt frustrating to wait. But the wait would be worth it. We in the outside world would welcome him.
Still, I felt like I had to warn him. “You know it’s not all holidays and celebrations, right? There are a lot of people out there who hate us, for no real reason other than they need someone to hate in order to feel things have been rigged against them. When I was a little kid, I didn’t really understand that, because there were plenty of other Jewish kids around. I didn’t feel different, except maybe when the world shifted over to Christmas. But in recent years, the threats have been so frequent, with neo-Nazis openly supported by the opposition party. Not the entire opposition party, but more of it than I ever would have imagined. So you have to be careful. Even the people who say they have love in their hearts can somehow make an exception when it comes to us.”
“Hasn’t it always been that way?”
“Yes, but I guess as the decades went by after the Holocaust, we started to believe again that we were safer. Not safe, but safer. The hate against us seemed more and more on the fringes, not as institutional. But then the deniers came along.”
“The deniers?”
“It’s the root of so many of our problems now, with the undermining of truth. The white supremacists started to deny that the Holocaust ever happened. They said it was a hoax. And then when the internet came along, suddenly they had this platform that they never would have had with leaflets or street corners. We’re talking the death of twelve million people here, six million of them Jews. We’re talking an event that was methodically recorded, with millions of eyewitnesses. And yet, there were people who felt they could erase it, simply by saying it wasn’t true. And if you can erase the Holocaust through denial, what can’t you erase? If the fact of so many people dying can be called into question, then what can’t be called into question? At their heart, the Decents should really be called the Deniers. Because ultimately that’s the power they want to wield. They want their fiction to become our fact. And even if most of them would say the Holocaust did in fact happen, they are also willing to rub elbows with the people who don’t. They legitimize erasures that should never, ever be legitimized. And every time they do, we Jews are less safe. Because in the story the Decents are writing, we are not main characters. And they have no problem sacrificing minor characters if it means they get to stay in control. We can be thrown into the fire to fuel the hate machine at any time. I know that’s dark. Believe me, it’s not anything I want to be saying. But that’s where we are. We have to be vigilant for ourselves and we have to be vigilant for everyone else the white supremacists want to erase.”
“But you can’t give up, because it’s who you are.”
“Yeah. That’s right.”
“History doesn’t have to repeat.”
“The only way to stop it from repeating is to change the way people see each other and treat each other. To be on guard in a way that our predecessors weren’t able to be. And we also have to live up to our own standards, which is something that doesn’t always happen. We’re no better than anyone else, but we’re also no worse than anyone else. Does that lineage still interest you?”
“It does.”
“Then maybe next year you’ll go to Jerusalem.”
“Yeah, maybe next year I’ll go to Jerusalem,” Elwood said.
“Stranger things have happened,” I told him, knowing that when we say Anything is possible, what we really mean is: I hope that good is possible.
twenty-six
I wondered how long it would take the governor of Kansas to recount the votes. I wondered if he could really swing the election the other way. I wondered if the country could survive that, or if we’d go back to being brainwashed by products and the division into us vs. them and the daily microconflicts that the internet fed on.
I was impatient. If it was all going to go wrong, I wanted it to go wrong now. I wanted to know whether staying here would be worth it.
* * *
—
When Elwood and I got back, Jimmy had gone off with Virgil and Janna to wait on a long line at a local pizza place to get us something to eat. The news was changing from Taking a Stand in Kansas to How Long Will They Last? Even though trucks were arriving with food and supplies from around the country, it wasn’t easy for them to get near the protests. Above us, clouds formed, and even though it didn’t rain, it did get colder, and a lot of us weren’t dressed for that. Even though we were surrounded by people and civilization, our bodies felt like we’d been out camping for a day too long, in need of a shower, a good mattress, and some central heat.
My mother called and asked when we’d be coming home. I don’t know was not an acceptable answer, even though it was the only one I had. Elwood’s parents had clued in and wanted him home, too. Mandy’s mom was threatening to drive to Kansas herself to bring Mandy back.
“You need to go to school,” my mom said, and when my dad got on the line, he echoed this. He said the principal had sent an email to parents saying that any election-related absences would still count as absences. And I had a feeling my parents would only be allowed to write so many sick notes…if they were willing to do that. I had the awful thought of Mr. Davis assigning quiz after quiz, just so he could fail us.
Then I imagined what Jimmy would say about where my thoughts were going: Democracy is at stake and you’re worried about your grades? C’mon, Duncan.
I didn’t even tell him about my parents’ call when he got back with the pizza, about two hours after he’d left. He said the lines were epic, and that people were getting grumpy. Even though we were all on the same side, the resentments were growing. And the other side hadn’t gone anywhere, either. If anything, they were shouting louder. Jimmy said there were police and National Guard everywhere, trying to keep everyone on their best behavior. Having the police and the National Guard walking around with their guns clear in sight only made people more tense.
Our group gathered around the pizza boxes as if they were a campfire. Janna made a pizza toast to Jimmy’s birthday, and we raised our slices in salute. He smiled, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. I wanted to ask him if he wanted to go home, but was afraid that even asking the question would seem disloyal. If he wanted to leave, he’d tell me. I was the one who kept things in.
