vote

yesterday i voted. i have voted before and generally feel pretty good about the whole event. i work in a community where most people don't vote the way i do and are also, evidently, incredibly susceptible to mind control and brainwashing. i have been listening the last few months to some of the most ridiculous claims made by my coworkers about my president. things the daily news wouldn't print. and they print just about anything. i have heard in my school that our new president is the antichrist. now, for those of you who don't remember, my seventh grade year was consumed with the fear that ronald wilson reagan was the antichrist. it was a serious concern. as serious as it gets for a seventh grader. and we had all the proof we needed in the man's name. ronald (6 letters) wilson (6 letters) reagan (6 letters) was a sure sign. my friends and i were pretty deep into the bible then, deep into the revelation of st. john the divine and the absolute wildness it promised. we were ready. but i'm not in seventh grade anymore and i'm not so much looking to see if folks are the antichrist. although a boy in college told me he was the real deal. he wasn't. how do people spend time on this?

so at 5:30 yesterday morning when the alarm went off the dogs and i hit the floor, possible antichrist or no. "it's time to vote!" i yelled toward the sleeping sweetie who was burrowing himself further under the covers. he is no different at christmas, so you shouldn't be too hard on him. we were ready and out the door a few minutes past six. we walked the few blocks down to the middle school where we vote, a new location replacing the elementary school two blocks away. we passed another polling place, a preschool, as it was opening. a woman was yelling instructions and folks were cheering. cheering the instructions. we got to the middle school and the line was long but moved quickly. once inside the line turned sharply right and into a gym. there were two doors leading from this hallway into and out of the gym but only one was being used. let me explain. the line to go in snaked from the hallway where i was standing through a single door and into the floor of the gym where a few folks at a table looked up addresses and sent us to the right booth lines. as voters finished, they squeezed past this initial line, through the same single door, then had to leap through the waiting line to get out the doors onto the sidewalk. poorly planned? sure. but the sweetie and i knew our addresses and then went to our line. there were hundreds of people in the gym. as a mildly claustrophobic person i tend to notice things like this, but i was focused on the task at hand and once i noticed all the possible exits, i set my mind on my task. voting.

i started to think about the conversation in the teachers' room yesterday. if he gets elected, they'll come out of the woodwork! who? they will. all of them. who? who? i didn't get it at all until they started talking about farrakhan being on the supreme court. and oprah. so at first i thought they were joking but the tone was scary. and scared. i am ashamed that people who say these things teach children. the white folks i work with are afraid black folks are going to take over. not all of the white folks, but enough that i have to say it out loud. most of them. but the unstated fear they have is that black folks will make them feel the way they've been making black folks feel for a very long time. they carry that guilt and it makes them awfully afraid. they'll come out of the woodwork... i suppose then that my vote is like some sort of big fat welcome mat. come on out!

there were two booths for our district and only one was open. the other had a big sheet of white paper with something completely illegible written on it. turns out that when you're at the actual booth you can tell it says m-z. but a nice woman yelled at us to get in two lines. a-f and m-z. i don't know where the g-l folks go. nowhere. the sweetie and i get in separate lines. we have separate names. one man has trouble understanding the alphabet and goes completely through both lines. a woman asks my name. it is easy, a color, but still she has trouble with it. i worry she'll never get my first name. she spells it wrong on the card but i just want to stop spelling with her so i let it go.

an older man holds the booth flap open for me and smiles. i realize at this point i have been grinning like an idiot. i check to be sure i don't have tears running down my face and walk in. this is a small booth among many in a crowded gym. there is no empty space on the floor. my entire community is out there and we are all together but i can hear nothing but my breathing. i push the big lever to the right and touch the small lever next to the name of the man i hope will be president. i turn the lever and watch the X appear next to his name. i stare at it for a long time. breathe in. breathe out. i put the rest of the Xs where they should be, read a paragraph on the side about veterans, which i also X where i think i should.

so today i walked into the school with a jubilant heart. i honestly believe that we have, as a country, finally taken a step or two toward being not so ugly. i think there was a time when we were beautiful as a people, all of us, all the different clumps of us, and maybe we can inch back that way a little, live our lives moving toward something rather than away, rather than being motivated by fear. and so with my jubilant heart i pranced into the building and wished the three security guards at the front desk a happy new president day. they laughed and wished me the same. all three guards are black. normally, this wouldn't matter, but today it does. because when i went into the office and offered the same greeting to white coworkers, i was met with, "great. another obama supporter." yeah. jubilant. i went to the teachers' room and ate my breakfast next to a teacher who leaned back and loudly proclaimed to nobody in particular, "yeah, i better get me a copy of the communist manifesto." i ignored him so he attempted an explanation of his joke, "because, you know, obama is a communist. he's gonna turn the whole country communist." if you have to explain a joke that simple, you just shouldn't tell it. most days it's difficult to believe this man is an adult, but today he's beyond. he continues to rant about a variety of ways the new president will turn us all communist. i had no idea there were so many ways. i begin to think we must all already be communists. i listen as long as i can. he'll take all our money and give it to people on welfare. he'll socialize medicine. he'll let dogs and cats live together. finally, i say to him quietly, "you sure do believe some crazy shit, you know that?" "well," he says. well. the day continues with comments on the obama family's choice of republican red clothing. it's disrespectful, they say. only republicans can wear red. the sweetie says i should remind them it's a favorite color with the communists, too.

during the morning announcements the kids find out (some didn't know) that we have a new president. they begin stomping their feet and clapping their hands and attempting "we will rock you" which i think is cute and i tell them so. but there's still a split along race lines. one white boy announces gleefully that the new president will be assassinated soon enough. where does he hear this? a white girl asks the president's middle name. "hussein," i tell her. "my middle name is diane and i didn't choose it just like he didn't choose his." i am surprised that this is enough to make her happy. children parrot what they hear at home. they say the same hate, but with less force. they don't mean it quite as much and it's easier to talk to them logically than it is adults. they can actually recognize when they're saying something that doesn't make sense. the black children in class are quieter than usual, quieter than i expect. overwhelmed. happy in a warm milk sort of way, i think. like they have looked at the face of god and don't know how to tell people what they see. one child brings in the post's 32 page bio on obama and when i allow him to read it during reading time (we are working on biography, autobiography and memoir) he smiles quietly and falls into the pages. at the end of class, he waits until everyone else is gone and offers me the paper to use in my next class. i thank him and he says he'll come by at the end of the day to pick it up. this newspaper is priceless to him. i buy an extra in case his gets messed up.

but this is not what i was expecting. i knew the adults would be miserable and ugly but i was surprised to see it in the children, even a little. they are people i love, so i did the only thing i knew to do. i did the thing we're not supposed to do in a classroom. when the kids asked who i voted for i told them. i voted for the president. they knew this but they wanted to hear it, i think. some words are so strong when you say them out loud. more real. when they asked why i said what i think is true. because i think he is a good man with a good heart who can listen more than he speaks. i think all that time he spent organizing will help him go out into the world and bring us all a little closer together. i want to tell them how it felt to vote for someone i really and truly believe isn't lying to me. i want them to know there are people out there who do what they do simply to make the way smoother for those who come after. some leaders are real leaders, i want to say. but i can feel the stupid tears scratching in my throat and in my eyes and i don't say anything. but the children nod, most of them, so i think maybe they know.

and i will try to tell them what it felt like to be a part of what happened today.