Hope Nation Read online

  “I’d love to,” CK says, taking her sign back from me. “Shall we?”

  “Into the rain!” I say.

  “Into the rain!” Courtney and CK echo.

  The rain is falling too fast to sink into the ground, so the sidewalk is a mess of puddles as we join the throng heading to the plaza. And it is a throng now, a convergence. It feels like people are coming from all corners of the state to be a part of this. All ages, all races, big groups and individuals walking on their own. And the weird part is, none of them seem like strangers. We all have the fact that we’re here in common, and that’s enough to feel a deep and inspiring kinship. It’s been a rough two months since Election Day; we’ve had to question a lot of things we never thought we’d have to question, and the whole time we’ve had to worry that we’re more alone in our anger and sadness than we thought we’d be. It was a national election, but it felt so personal too—profoundly personal. When the breakage of the country occurred, it felt like we’d been broken as well. Now it feels like the pieces are coming back together. On the outside and on the inside. Just from gathering together and carrying signs and walking as one.

  Plus, there are the hats. I taught myself how to knit in order to create my hat and Courtney’s. They didn’t come out quite as well as the YouTube tutorial promised they would. They are pink yarn creations with two cat ears each—but these particular cats are strays that have been in a few territorial fights, leading to a certain patchiness of fur and waywardness of ear.

  CK’s hat, though, is up to my grandmother’s standards for knitwear. It’s stitch-perfect, its ears poised and alert. As she and Courtney get a few steps ahead of me, I see she’s even knit herself a tail, which mischievously pokes out of her yellow slicker.

  I wonder if Courtney’s noticed it yet. She seems more intent on focusing on every word CK says.

  The crowd is starting to coalesce around us, so that by the time we round the corner to get to the plaza, it’s a solid sea of people, and the only way to go any farther would be to bob and weave, leaving a trail of “excuse me”s in our wake.

  I’ve made it back to Courtney and CK’s side, but it’s as if my umbrella is really an invisibility cloak for all I’m registered by their rapport.

  “. . . my father actually used the phrase Communist hordes, while my mother cloaked her disapproval in terms of my own safety,” Courtney is saying. “‘What if there’s a bomb?’ she actually asked. And I couldn’t help it—I said, ‘Well, why don’t you tell your side not to bomb us, okay?’ That really pissed my dad off—he said we were just playing into the enemy’s hands—and I had to ask, ‘Who exactly are the enemies, Dad? You did get the memo that Republicans love Russians now, right? So is it ISIS? Do you think ISIS is going to target the Women’s March in Atlanta?’”

  “What did he say to that?” CK asks.

  “My mother interrupted at that point, to say she only wanted me to be safe. And I said if my safety was really her number one concern, then maybe she should have voted to make sure I’d have health care after I graduated . . . and luckily that’s when Otis honked and I was out of there. To give her credit, there’s been some follow-through—she texts every ten minutes to make sure I’m fine.”

  “My mom’s marching in Washington,” CK says. “She lives up there. And I keep texting her every ten minutes, to make sure she’s fine.”

  “I think our biggest threat right now is pneumonia,” I say. The wind has joined the rain, rendering my umbrella’s future precarious.

  “I’m sorry I don’t have any more emergency ponchos,” CK tells me.

  “How about a comforter?” I ask. “Do you happen to have a waterproof comforter in there?”

  It’s nearly one o’clock, which is the time the rally is supposed to start. But now some people are saying it’s been delayed because of the rain. I try to check the website, but my phone can’t get any Internet—there are too many people using the signal at once.

  “It doesn’t make any sense to delay,” Courtney says. “We’re all here.”

  We hear a cheer—but it’s coming from behind us, not from the plaza. We turn and see a parade of six or seven people zigzagging through the crowd. They’re all holding the same sign—a photo of Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia, staring down the enemy with her hands calmly behind her neck.

  “We are the resistance,” the caption on the posters reads in bold Barbara Kruger letters.

  All the other posters—“Fight Like a Girl,” “F-ck This Sh-t,” “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights,” “Our Lives Begin to End the Day We Become Silent About Things That Matter”—part to let the Princesses pass.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” CK says, saluting.

  “Can you feel it?” Courtney asks.

  “What?”

  “The Force. It’s here.”

  It takes CK a second to realize that Courtney is making a joke and completely serious. Because even though it’s not the return of any Jedi, there’s definitely a Force unleashed here, the same Force that rises any time you strike back against an empire. I think we all like to believe that Carrie Fisher would approve.

  I notice that CK isn’t making any attempt to find her friends in the crowd. Possibly because it would be futile—there are just too many of us. But possibly because she’s finding Courtney’s company enough.

  Since I know Courtney so well, I can see what CK’s attention is doing to her. She hasn’t expected it—she never expects it—and as a result she’s not quite sure what to do with it. The two pieces are clearly clicking together, but it has yet to be determined what the full shape of the puzzle is. All that can be known for sure is the click. Courtney’s been brokenhearted before, so she can’t help but feel the pain of the unclicking buried inside that initial click. But she can choose to ignore it, if she’s convinced enough.

  All of this can be read in her face, in her posture. All of this can be read, if you know how to read her.

  We’re close to the “Make America Gay Again” banner again, and I can’t help but check out who’s carrying it. One is a muscled guy in a muscle T-shirt that reads, “I blocked Mike Pence on Grindr and this is his revenge.” Another is a woman who looks like she could be a teacher in any elementary school classroom in America, wearing a dress that would make Ms. Frizzle proud, covered in stars and planets.

  As the rain continues and the wait goes on, there’s some shifting from foot to foot and more checking of phones. Every now and then, there’s a chant—“Rise up! Rise up!” and “This is what democracy looks like!”—but by and large, the feeling that pervades is . . . patience. In the context of a crowd, I find this somewhat remarkable. We, who are always in a rush, who always have more than a dozen things we need to do by the end of the day—we are okay with standing still. We are fine with talking to each other until it’s time to go. It’s as if the strength of the congregation has briefly turned down the volume of our obsession with time. This gives me hope; we have not only the power of our voices, but the power of patience on our side.

  Courtney, CK, and I are lucky we’re on the sidewalk; the people on the grass are beginning to sink into it, although they don’t seem to mind too much.

  When Courtney’s poster folds a little under her poncho, CK reaches over to smooth it out.

  “Thank you,” Courtney says. And I notice that CK doesn’t step back—she remains close. Courtney stays there too. Even in the rain, even in the crowd, Courtney looks happy. And I think this is the first time in a while that I’ve seen that. We’ve had our guard so far up about what’s happening to our country that I think it’s made it harder for us to let our guard down in our daily lives. Especially Courtney. I can believe in dancing my despair away, in singing loud even when your heart is dying. But not her. She won’t risk coming out of her shell, because she feels she needs to be in her shell to survive.

  She stayed over with me on
Election Night, because as the dumbfounding results unfolded, we both knew there was no way she’d be going back home to face her parents. This isn’t happening, we kept saying to each other, and although I found it funny that the newscasters seemed as gobsmacked as we were, Courtney couldn’t find anything funny about it. Funny had moved off to another planet. Exiled.

  The morning after the election was like emerging from a dark, dark room into the glare of a spotlight. It was a shock so strong that I couldn’t walk steady, couldn’t make out shapes or colors. My thoughts were a startled cacophony of causes and effects, and no matter how quickly I blinked, I couldn’t sort them out, couldn’t get my eyes to adjust. In my sadness, I reached out. In my fury and my incomprehension, I reached out. And Courtney was there, just as I’d hoped she would be.

  But even as I reached out, I could feel she wasn’t reaching back—not as much. She was retreating.

  She might have disappeared altogether, into sleepless worry and unyielding despair. But I wouldn’t let her. I forced her out to movies. I went over every Saturday night to watch SNL. I rallied her around this march. I certainly understood the desire to pull back into a shell, to protect yourself from all the venom that suddenly filled the air. But I also felt that as safe as a shell may be, it also prevents you from moving, from uniting, from resisting in an active way. Trump and Bannon and all the other assholes wanted us inside our shells so our voices would never reach them, would be heard only by our own ears. I just wasn’t going to let them win like that. And Courtney—well, Courtney took some coaxing. But this march gave her a reason to step out of the shell.

  There’s a roar from the plaza—the speeches are beginning. Unfortunately, the loudspeakers sound like they’re underwater—we can discern voices, but not words. We can sense we’re being welcomed by speaker after speaker—that’s the tone. But as ten, then fifteen minutes pass, there’s a certain amount of restlessness brewing. It’s still raining, but not as much. Side conversations continue.

  Then, all of a sudden, there’s a cheer much louder than any of the ones before. JohnLewisJohnLewisJohnLewis, the crowd around us buzzes. “We love you, John!” people call out. We can feel him stepping to the podium, even though we can’t see it.

  The loudspeakers find a divine burst of energy and lift to loudness. Or maybe it’s just that all of us fall into an absolute, reverent silence. Whereas the other speakers were clouds of voice, intimations of tone, John Lewis’s words round the corners and travel the lengths of the avenues. They are faint, but they are present. They persist.

  “Sometimes you have to turn things upside down instead of right side up,” he tells us. His voice bears the weight of the trouble he’s seen, and his words soar on the strength of the victories he’s shared. “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation, a mission, and a mandate to say something, to do something. We cannot afford to be silent now. I just want to say thank you. You look so good! This is unbelievable. There’s hundreds and thousands of people, I tell you! I want to thank you for standing up, for speaking up, for getting in the way, for getting in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble.”

  The crowd erupts into a chant of “Thank you, John! Thank you, John! Thank you, John!” Courtney, CK, and I all chant along.

  Congressman Lewis says, “Thank you. Thank you. You’re wonderful.” Someone must cry out “I love you,” because he comes back with “I love you too. I love you so much. You’ll never know how much I love you.”

  It’s almost childish how purely this affects me. Here we are, in 2017, and it’s still stunning and moving to me to hear a grown man talk about love so openly, so unashamedly.

  I notice a guy about my age who’s leaning into an older group of protesters. They can’t hear what’s coming over the loudspeakers, so as Lewis’s words take shape, the young man repeats them to the group.

  “You don’t need to use social media,” he tells them. “Use your feet. Use your hands.” A few seconds after the rest of us, they cheer.

  Courtney reaches out and takes my hand. Then she takes CK’s hand and holds it, too.

  “I know something about marching,” Congressman Lewis tells us. “I know something about marching. When I was much younger, had all of my hair, and was a few pounds lighter, I marched in Nashville . . . I marched in Washington . . . I marched from Selma to Montgomery. I’m ready to march again! I come here to tell you—don’t let anybody, anybody turn you around. And never, ever, ever give up hope. Never lose hope.”

  We cheer some more. For him. For hope.

  We barely feel the rain. I only feel Courtney’s hand in mine, and sense CK’s hand in hers.

  “We’re fighting for our sisters, for our mothers, for our daughters. We’re also fighting for our brothers, for our sons, for those who are not able to stand up and fight for themselves.”

  As I look at the multitudes around us, we are told that there are gatherings in cities across the nation just like ours, that there are more than half a million people right now in Washington, DC, alone. And it’s as if I can feel the alchemy of hope working, that transmutation of despair into determination.

  Lewis concludes with a rousing proclamation. “I’m fired up and ready to march! I have on my marching shoes! So let’s do it!”

  What does it feel like to hear your voice join tens of thousands of other voices in a wordless cry of pride and defiance? It feels like somehow you have attained a state of nature. It feels like your strength, which you have long limited to your body’s capacity for strength, now transcends that body and takes on the shape of a storm. You do not lose yourself—even in the enormity, you still hear your own voice the loudest, and those that are close to you are still distinct. But you are yourself and something much larger than yourself, all at once.

  CK reaches her free hand back to me, and I take it. The circuit is completed.

  “This is amazing,” she says. “This is everything we need.”

  Courtney and I agree. I am the first to let go, but the two of them remain connected. I lean over to see if the marching has begun. It’s going to take a while for the movement to get to us—there are some people already hankering to go, but I figure it’ll happen when it happens. There are more cheers from the front of the crowd—Congressman Lewis and the others must be on their way forward.

  I look at more of the signs: “We Shall Overcomb.” “John Lewis Represents Me, Trump Doesn’t.” “Build Bridges, Not Walls.” I look at more of the people carrying the signs: Teenagers with their parents. A group of older ladies who look like they just got off the tour bus on their way to see the Eiffel Tower, fanny packs prominent. Two men who can’t stop kissing each other. The rain has definitively ended, so the umbrellas have been folded and the pink hats are again the most prominent marker of our spirit. “I’m Really Not Happy About This.” “Keep Your Tiny Hands Off Our Press.” “WE the People. Stronger.”

  The sun comes out, and almost immediately it feels warmer. CK takes off her raincoat and folds it around her tail, then looks at Courtney and says, “Here, let me help you out of that.” She reaches under the poncho and lifts both sides so it clears Courtney’s poster, then floats above her arms. Courtney gives in to the movement, holds her head straight so CK can lift the poncho free. For a moment they stand there, CK’s arms above them both, Courtney’s arms at her side, their faces inches apart.

  “Thank you,” Courtney murmurs.

  “Glad to be of some use,” CK replies, crumpling the poncho down so it becomes no bigger than a small plastic bag.

  They couldn’t be like this in any crowd. But in this crowd, the intensity between them can emanate. Nobody else will question it or interfere with it. The moment gets to be itself.

  Slowly, we begin to move. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more polite crowd. There’s a lot of “You first—no, you first,” and eventually we are moving around the Georgia Aqu
arium and making our way to the plaza.

  CK reaches into her pocket and takes out her phone. I’m hoping it’s because she wants to use the camera, but no—instead she’s checking a text. Then another.

  As much as Courtney may think she’s hiding it well, I can see the concern on her face. The needle of bad luck is pressing hard against the balloon of her happiness. She was starting to think of CK’s time as hers, but now she’s feeling like she was only borrowing it from CK’s real friends, out in the crowd.

  True friend that I am, all I can think is Please may she not already have a girlfriend. Please may she not already have a girlfriend.

  “What’s up?” I ask casually as she texts a response.

  “Nothing.” CK puts the phone back in her pocket. “Some of my friends are over there.” She points to a building that has yellow construction-material walls. There have to be tens of thousands of people between here and there. “They want me to find them. But I was like, That’s just not gonna happen.”

  “It’s okay if you need to go,” Courtney says. Because that’s what Courtney does—always provides the escape route from her own heart. I try to signal her to stop, to not give the out unless she wants it taken.

  “I’m really good here,” CK says. “Assuming you guys don’t mind.”

  “It wouldn’t be the same without you,” Courtney quickly replies. And I think, Good for you. Don’t worry about where it ends up; just keep it going.

  We’re coming onto the plaza outside the Center for Human and Civil Rights now, and nearing the new sculpture that lies at its heart. The crowd could easily go around it, but most of us are going through. The sky is lighter now, the weather beginning to feel like early summer, and volunteers are handing out free bottles of water for anyone who needs them. As we walk under the monument, Margaret Mead’s quote plays against the glass, backed by white clouds and more than a hint of light blue sky.