Geraldine's Moment

There was nothing extraordinary about the old woman at first glance. She had short, frosted hair that swept across her forehead like a wave over bright, intelligent eyes. She was not particularly interesting and did not particularly stand apart from anyone else who was waiting to enter one of the polling booths. Had someone been unusually struck by her appearance; however, and observed her more closely, they would have detected an air of great patience about her, as though there were nowhere else she would rather be than in that precise place at that precise moment, and from this patience, a venerable sense of command issued forth. She stood solidly, like an oak; it was the look of someone who had had the weight of the world dropped on their shoulders, but, instead of crumpling, had risen to meet the demand and then continued rising, unprompted. Here was a leader, unknown to the people who moved around her, the man who elbowed her in the back on accident, or the young woman who waved her forward to get her identification.

“ID please,” the young woman said without looking up.

The old woman placed her driver’s license in the young woman’s hand.

“Please fill out this form with your name, address and signature at the bottom.”

In elegant cursive the old woman filled in her information and signed her name ‘Ferraro, Geraldine.’

A loud noise of complaint drew glances, including Geraldine’s. A woman who looked to be about 25 with a sour expression and the weight of her body thrown into one hip, was saying to a man beside her that that they should have shown up later in the day when there would be less old people slowing things down. Her boyfriend looked like he was in pain, every time she spoke he cringed and his head shrank down a little further into his shoulders. The words were obviously directed towards Geraldine and Geradine embraced them like an old friend, letting them pass through her softly. Nothing could bother her today. She was close to the front of the line now. The polling booths were an ugly tan but to Geraldine they seemed to sparkle. She smiled to herself as she made her way over to a vacant one. She took her time getting situated in her new private space. She read the instructions on the ballot carefully, once, twice, and then, after a moment’s pause, she picked up her pen and began bubbling. She worked backwards, saving the column titled “US President and Vice President” for last. A little ribbon of muscle jumped out between her eyebrows as she worked. The temptation to recognize the magnitude of the occasion hung over her like an electric haze, but she decidedly ignored it, keeping her eyes turned away from the President’s column. She checked her bubbles two times and then closed her eyes, indulging in a whisper of the adrenaline she was keeping at bay. When she opened them she looked directly at the President’s column.

In loud print the words “Electors of President and Vice President,” and underneath them “Johnson and Weld,” “Stein and Baraka,” “Trump and Pence,” and finally, preciously, “Clinton and Kaine.”

Clinton and Kaine

Hillary Clinton

Hillary

And suddenly it was 1984. A crowd of clapping, cheering, smiling people looked up at Geraldine who was also smiling. Everything was loud and bright and Geraldine felt as though she couldn’t focus her attention on anything because it was all too beautiful. Someone shouted congratulations and gripped her shoulder supportively. Geraldine did not register the touch. She felt she was floating somewhere high above, watching herself from the sky where all the applause and emotion were just a tiny blimp on a timeline that stretched back centuries before her into the horizon. She could see other blimps along the timeline, more than she could count. They were like little worlds. Each one its own unique moment in time and space. Separate but together, individual pieces of a collective united by the same language of hardship and resolve. They were reaching for Geraldine, who understood with abrupt clarity, the decision before her. She gripped the line and pulled.

She was back on the stage.

Sounds that had before seemed low and echoing as if heard from the bottom of a well, were now sharply focused and exact. Individual voices appeared to her as ribbons. She followed one to its source and found she recognized the face at its end. It was Sojourner Truth. And there beside her she saw Susan B. Anthony. She couldn’t stop seeing the faces now. Mary Wollstonecraft, Audra Lorde, Simome de Beauvir and bell hooks. They all came swimming to her awareness. Beyond them she could see more women, some she recognized and others she didn’t. Legions of warriors with fire and purpose. Testaments to a bone-crushing struggle that had tested them each and failed.

There was a great shifting of energy in the air and Geraldine felt as though she were standing at the epicenter, realizing a moment in which she held the torch. There would be a time to reckon with the work ahead, but in this moment she felt transcendent.

She would revisit that feeling later during the campaign when interviewers with tight suits and sympathetic eyes asked her questions in soft tones, airing out their prejudice on live TV.

Do you think the Russians will take advantage of you because you’re a woman?

Vice president, sure. But could you really handle being president?

The exhaustion would settle in her bones and she’d regard the world as a dead thing would, in meaningless greys and passing flickers of light. These moments never lasted long. The memory of power would stir inside her like a breeze over a deeper ocean of strength. She’d remember the timeline and the women and the torch and she’d break violently from the despair, using her shame as motivation to propel herself further than ever before.

The H in Hillary’s name bled ink. Geraldine quickly wiped the tear away. She carefully filled the bubble beside her friend’s name and when she was done, she stared at it, the next blimp on the timeline.