The Pieces of My Self

14 - The Gravesite

LILLIAN

Baton Rouge, 4 June 2174, Saturday

I gave Amara some medicine before I left for Baton Rouge and instructed Fluffy to meet her bus and play games after pre-school. Grady understood he was responsible for Amara when he returned from soccer. The less-than-ideal arrangement gave me guilt pangs, but a working mom has to do what she has to do.

The drive along Route 12 took a little over an hour with traffic delays. It was times like these I dreamed of being rich and flying above the congestion in an AVTOL.

As the Sammy crawled along at 3 miles per hour, I eventually saw the problem—a chain gang working on the road. Some of the guards glared at me, but I avoided eye contact.

After a mile-long traffic jam, the vehicle accelerated to highway speed for another five miles until we encountered a train of slow-moving cars. Judging from the bumper stickers and signs, they were pilgrims arriving for a mass protest.

Traffic slowed again in town. Thousands of people, mostly white and Asian, marched near the university. In the stalled traffic, I could see smoke bombs, gun flashes, and fires flaring in the area. Police diverted vehicles into a maze of smaller streets. There was a lot of shouting and chanting and general chaos.

I finally had a gotta pee moment, parked on a side street, and found a convenience store with a restroom. There was an excruciatingly long line. Some people appeared to be protesters, wearing signs on their backs and fronts: Equal Rights! U R Killing Us! Equal Pay! And so on. Signs of the times.

A fifty-ish woman behind me, hair dyed jet black to look like an ageless, fantasy version of herself, asked, "Are you here for the protest?"

"Actually, I'm here to pee."

"Are you a spy? Are you with Them?

I was shocked by the verbal aggression. "Why do you say that? I don't even know who Them is. Are."

"You're not white."

"Duh!"

"You people are so sanctimonious."

I was sympathetic to the cause of the protestors but pissed at this ignorant woman's tone. I tried to remain civil.

"So, now I'm you people? Why are you so intent on putting me in a box based on the color of my skin? You're asking the wrong questions and drawing the wrong conclusions. Question: Do I like the inequities being imposed on whites? Hell no!"

I hoped that was the end of it, but knew it wasn't. She was just getting started.

"Are you willing to fight?"

"Yes, there are things I'm willing to fight for. Sometimes the injustice is just so blatant, and the need so urgent, you have to do something. Take these lines, for example."

Apparently, I had her attention. We had something in common. She had been squeezing her thighs together, just like me.

"Yeah, I get it," she said. "There's a short line to the Men's Room and a way longer line to the Ladies' Room. That's an inequity."

"Exactly."

We were no longer talking abstractions, but immediately shared pain.

Our exchange drew the interest of the woman in front of me. "Some man probably designed this damn place and thought equality meant an equal number of toilets, but didn't factor in urinals."

"We need a coup," I said.

"Now, that's what I'm talkin' about!" the woman two heads in front of me said.