Another Story, Please
Wallace Farm, Chapter 2
If you missed Chapter One, here it is. We leave Merabelle on the farm and move to the city…
Chapter Two
UofRJane@JaneAnthony Sept 3
Protest today at noon at Admissions. #bringbackfunds #blackoncampus #peoplesmovement
AndrewEdge@PeoplesMovement Sept 2
College funding cut by new administration. Millions of students unable to attend classes. #fundingcuts
Admin@urichmond September 2
Students formerly under Federal Stafford loans payment agreements and those with Commonwealth loans will not be considered registered for fall semester.
Kay swayed with the jostling crowd, her sign held less high now, right at her chest, and she’d lost the chant. She stumbled through the words, disconnected. The students and teachers had marched from Administrations down to the lake. Soldiers stood with their riot gear on the edges of the peopled knot. The Commonwealth’s Minister had promised continued funding for universities. They’d promised that all that tax money going to the federal government for education would be shifted to the seceded states.
They’d lied.
Teachers, buildings, food, all cut. Kay's financial aid, cut. The whole university machine had broken down in cities and towns across the Commonwealth, so they protested and kicked and bit and joined the People’s Movement.
Kay marched at the University of Richmond past sun-dried lawns in early September with the kind of sun-on-blue-sky you'd want to fall asleep under with a book on your face, waiting for your 3:30 class or for someone to invite you out for a drink. Kay's heart wasn't in the protests anymore. She wanted to go back to her apartment on Monument Avenue and crawl into her Papazon and knit that angora sweater she been working on in the summer.
Law school. All that year one work, the way they'd talked themselves up as smarter than most. She and her boyfriend, Curt, hunkered down with coffee and cheese crackers memorizing Constitutional amendments and grand jury decisions until they fell asleep with drool on the couch cushions and paste in their eyes.
Kay had always been lovely Kay, sweet Kay, Kay with golden hair and bright eyes, Kay who lived in the old house in Lynchburg built in 1806. In the first Civil War her house was used as a hospital— the blood stains of Confederate Soldiers still webbed into the grains of the hard wood floors. Her mother was pretty, dad funny. Kay who was good at tennis and soccer and ballet. Kay on the Dean's list. Kay who dated Curt. Who had always dated Curt. Kay and Curt, Curt and Kay.
It was Curt who talked her into going to University of Richmond law school. She’d studied US History at Hollins in undergrad, halfheartedly dated Curt those four years, halfheartedly dated a girl named Lindsay. Kay couldn’t remember if she’d ever said she wanted to go to law school. Everyone talked about it like it was a done deal so she figured she probably had. Curt thought they’d help each other if they were together, so they sat on her screened porch and filled out their Commonwealth loan applications together.
The summer after undergrad, Kay took a trip alone to Georgetown University to visit her friend Ann. Virginia had just annexed DC, and it had been scooped into The Commonwealth along with Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia and North Carolina. Fair game for a Commonwealth loan. That had been the original promise with the secession: smaller governments controlling local money. More for everyone.
“I'll drive you,” her mom had said, “I can shop. I love shopping in Georgetown.”
“Nobody drives into DC,” she'd said, parroting what her friend Ann had said.
“Let me ride in with you,” her mother said, pushing.
All her life, it seems, the people who loved her—the people she loved back—pushed themselves at her, demanding and time-taking. Assuming Kay needed the company, the help.
Kay had said no. No, I want to go alone. Her mother said, “Oh” a little hurt, put off.
Kay’s friend Ann studied at Georgetown. She’d told Kay about the school, the campus. Kay thought she might attend the orientation for new students, maybe she’d transfer, and Ann agreed to meet Kay after the orientation and take her out to lunch at Au Pied de Conchon. Hip.
They'd been joined for lunch by Ann's friends Bill and Sam. Bill majored in political science like Ann. Sam was second year law and an intern at the House of the Commonwealth. They drank whiskey sours and called the restaurant I peed on your conch shell. Smart, funny, DC! A town she could make her own, with friends she wouldn't have to share with Curt. Her own tribe. And DC, right in the thick of it. Not the old brick South of Richmond. Not the thick tongued draw of men in summer sear sucker, women in linen, clear glasses with mint sprigs held aloft with clean white cocktail napkins. She was tired of quaintness and bless her heart. Tired of feeling separated from all the surrounding darker-skinned faces.
Not here in DC.
Not with Sam from Pondy and his rich Indian accent. The way his sentences lifted up at the end, held in the beak of a bird. The way light flickered in the liquid of his eyes. His full lips—so much to say, so much else to know.
At 3pm, she had to find her way back to the subway. To reverse her course. Since Ann had a class, Sam volunteered to walk her to the station. Talked about the government oppression. About big business owning The Commonwealth, owning all the seceded states. About embedded racism, the poor getting poorer. About people not willing to take it much longer.
“The people will rise up,” he told Kay, “The people always do.” He reminded her of his own country under colonialism. He reminded her of the Arab Spring.
“But look what happened,” Kay countered, “So many dead, so many refugees, a hot bed for terrorism.” He said people had been too gullible when they voted to secede. It embarressed her that she hadn’t noticed how difficult the new country had become while she remained cushioned.
“Not to try?” he asked, the birds lifting his words aloft, his palms held out in front of him catching the soft spring air. He walked faster as he talked. Kay pushing in her gold flats to keep up. “Not to try is to die a worse death. A death of cowardice. A death of one whose soul is already dead.”
He walked into the tunnel with her, stood by as she bought her ticket. They held their phones and exchanged numbers.
“We need you here,” Sam said. “We can use another good arm in the fight.”
“I'm not a fighter.” She'd blinked at him, smiled. Let her loose hair fall across her cheeks, let Sam brush one side back.
“Don't miss your train.”
She shook her head. Wanting something else. Wanting to leave again with Sam. To fight whatever needed fighting, what she couldn't see, but she felt it. She felt it now. The air pulled out from the tunnel, caught her breath: the train arriving fast—shooting closer to where they stood. Here on the hard tiles with the whispers of revolution rising on the street above them. Sam held her face in his, smooth warm hands. She licked her lips waiting for his touch. For all that transfer of knowledge welcomed into her mouth. But his lips were on her forehead. Not dry or over-wet. Just what she'd expected they'd be.
The subway doors closed, and she watched him walk away in his slim black jeans and Doc Martins. His arms swinging high, his head held up.
She hadn’t completed the application for transfer to Georgetown. And now here it was: the revolution. The revolution that was the squeeze of funding cuts she hadn’t felt until now. Now that it squeezed her.
Kay let herself be jostled forward toward the lake and along Richmond Way. Her knuckles were scraped by another sign holder whose backpack jammed into her.
“The People, United!” Students and teachers chanted around her.
She could see the parking lot where her red Ford Escort was parked. She could imagine herself with the key in her hand, her hand extended to the door, the rub of the key in the lock, getting in and the noise closed off when she started the engine. How the wheel would feel after all that sun.
“The People, United,” she took up, but her sign was down by her calf now. Her feet shuffling. Her throat stinging with the crying that wanted to start up. She thought of Sam saying we could use another good arm, and how heavy the sign felt now. Impossible to lift. She felt ashamed at her selfishness, for wishing an end to the government cuts and a return to... what? She didn’t want to be a lawyer, even if she’d make a good one. She didn’t know what she wanted to become.
Curt and all his confidence, he was the good arm Sam wanted. Curt went out with his People’s Movement buddies, going to meetings and sit-ins and who knew what else. He let his hair get long and ratty. He only wore jeans and tee shirts. He was a rugged version of his handsomer self. Didn't talk about law school or the future anymore. Just the movement. The revolution. He acted annoyed at Kay’s seeming indifference.
“The People, United!”
If there was a way she could be a part of this thing that made sense, she would. She probably would. But it didn’t seem to include her. It included people who’d been oppressed, who used to be the minority—now the majority, only without any of the privilege. Poorer and shoved aside. It included guys like Sam and Curt ready to use their smarts, their advantages, to get in there and fight.
The crowd took Kay on and on. Further from where her morning classes would have been. Further from what she was sure of.