A HARD RAIN'S A-FALLING

For You Who Is Listening

January 22, 2023

Tallahassee. The 50th anniversary of Roe v Wade. VP Kamala Harris flies in from LA with second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, to speak  on Gov. DeSantis’s doorstep.

10:30 am. I park illegally.  I’m with my friend Marty, who thirty years ago taught me the pro-choice protest chant of the early 1970s when he was still a young man: U.S. OUT OF MY UTERUS!

The sky is set to drizzle, people in pairs, in groups, are wound long and around like a Chinese dragon at New Year. It doesn’t bother me that we’re part of the tail. I’m confident we’ll get in.

I see Joe Williams, Coordinator of the IB Program, at the school I left in 2019. I walk up from the dragon tail, and we hug. A photographer from the local newspaper takes our picture. He has no hard feelings that I left. I couldn’t do it any longer, I told him. It was a rough high school and maybe my expectations were too high.

Marty has a new camera with all the gadgets. He has an eye for the offbeat. He’s taking a shot of the cop cars that block Lafayette Street. Their blue lights flash like disco balls.

I take stock of the demographics. I wish, I say, that there were more young people here. Plenty of men and women 65 upward. Wasn’t Roe v Wade supposed to be forever? It’s at the root of our freedom. Either everyone is free, or no one is free. It begins with the body.

I like Kamala Harris, I say last night to my father who is 1,333.93 miles from Tallahassee.  I think her skillset and talents are wasted as Vice President. She was remarkable when she was in the Senate. My father’s girlfriend was listening; it couldn’t be helped; he was on speaker phone.

But she has no chance of becoming president. There’s no way.

I paused. My stomach tightened.

Because she’s black.

Absolutely.

Obama won.

Well, Obama knew how to give a speech.

So does Harris.

You’re right.

[Neither of had wanted to say it:]

She has no chance of being president because she’s a woman. Not because she’s black. 

11:15 am The gates to the Moon swing shut. There is no way I can talk my way in. An Indian man with his two small daughters tells the gatekeeper that his wife is in the building. Can’t he join her? Can’t his children stay with her? His broken English makes me think he doesn’t understand. Maybe he, like me, admires our Vice President. He wants to be a part of history; he wants hope for his daughters. I would gladly give my ticket to them. But I have no ticket. No one has a ticket.

A woman who appears to be in her early 70s walks with her eyes  fixed ahead. They’ve turned us away, I say. My words are vapor, but she hears me. Her lips quiver. I know she says without shifting her eyes. Rain explodes from the sky as from a fire hose. The remaining tail of the dragon, a couple hundred people, disperses. Soon there will be nothing left in the street but the ambulances, and food trucks.

Everything else will be erased by the hard rain.