Wide Awake Page 10

  “This is not an easy journey for me to make. If I didn’t think I was doing the Lord’s work, I don’t know that it would be enough to get me out of bed.

  “Now, I’m not saying the Lord Almighty has talked to me. I’m not saying He came down from the heavens and said, Ida Mae, I want you to get yourself to Kansas to help that Stein. The Lord’s got more important things to do, I tell you, than planning my schedule for the week. No, He ain’t gonna tell you what to do. You just have to read the Lord inside of you. You gotta know what you know, and then you have to act on it. I voted for Stein because I believe in the things he believes. And I know from the Lord that believing isn’t always enough. Sometimes you’ve gotta take your body and put it on the line as well. Jesus could’ve just stayed at home, you know. He didn’t have to do a blessed thing. But he headed out into the people. He wanted to inspire other lives besides his own. He knew to work for something greater, and that’s the greatest thing of all.

  “So I came here with my church. And, lo and behold, who do I find at a rest stop but the man who taught me how to dance? I know you won’t necessarily believe this, but it wasn’t too long ago that Virgil and I were kids like yourselves. Hard to picture, I’m sure. I wish I could say we were as smart as we are now, but back then we still had many miles to go. We thought the best thing in life was enjoying ourselves, and, Lord, we enjoyed ourselves! If you needed a dance floor cleaned, you didn’t need to pick up no mop. All you had to do was invite Virgil to the party and he would sweep it all with his body, breakin’ and groovin’ and getting all the rest of us to sweat it out. He’d make me dance ’til I wilted, I tell you, and even then I’d keep going ’til the Lord called me to church the next morning. It was fun—and I’m not one to ever be knockin’ fun. But there was one thing missing, and that was the everything else. The greater. We were so into ourselves that we didn’t realize the changes that were happening around us. We were—if you pardon the phrase—screwed over and screwed over and screwed over. And all we could do was dance and rap and do our thing. Finally, though, we saw the light, and we realized that fun was fun, but you also needed to pay your dues. And I don’t mean to the guy at the door.

  “I’m an old woman, but I’m still paying those dues. Still trying to have fun, too, which is why I ditched out on my lady friends to be here with you. Not just because of Virgil, although he’s as foxy as ever. It’s easy to think that everything’s gone to hell when you get to be as old as I am. But let me tell you—the good old days needed a lot of improvement. People aren’t the only things that get better with age.”

  She turned to look at Elwood, who was clearly the youngest on the bus.

  “You,” she said. “How old are you?”

  “Almost thirteen,” he answered, trying to sound tough, like a puppy barking loud.

  “And what’s your story?”

  Elwood stepped into the aisle, facing Mrs. Everett. The silver studs in his black jacket shone in the daylight coming in from the window, crowned by his silver belt buckle, which he definitely needed in order to keep his pants on his line-straight body.

  “I’m from Tonganoxie,” he began. “I doubt any of you have ever heard of it or been there. No reason to, really.

  “I’m here because my parents suck. I mean, they massively suck. When the history of suckdom is written, their faces are going to be on the cover. If you log on to their lives, you’ll find that suck is their home page.”

  “And why do they suck?” Mrs. Everett asked, looking amused.

  “They suck because they won’t let me be Jewish!”

  “What, child?”

  That’s all Mrs. Everett needed to ask. Suddenly the words came pouring out of Elwood.

  “They won’t let me be Jewish! They say it’s just a phase, but it’s not a phase—it’s something I’ve always wanted. And even though they’re not religious they say that I can’t be Jewish because they’re not Jewish and they think Stein is the only reason I want to be Jewish, but I wanted to be Jewish ever since I was seven and I was watching the Saturday services on my screen and it just seemed so holy, and I thought if Jesus was a Jew why couldn’t I be a Jew because I love the prayers and the Hebrew and the way they’ve triumphed over all this massive hate over all these centuries, and I don’t know if I can be like that, but if the oil in the lamp in the temple—you know, during Hanukkah—if that lasted for eight days—just one drop—then clearly miracles happen and me being Jewish isn’t anything close to being a miracle, it’s just something I want to do, and I was perfectly happy keeping it a secret and learning the Hebrew online and seeing the services and giving myself a Hebrew name, but the thing is that I’m going to be thirteen soon and I really want to become a bar mitzvah, even though there’s no synagogue anywhere near me. So I figured the time had come to tell my parents, and even though I knew they sucked, I had no idea that they ultra, ultra sucked, because they wouldn’t even hear what I was saying when I told them I would take the bus to Kansas City to go to the synagogue and take lessons, and I would pay for it with my own money. I told them I’d met other Jews online and, no, they didn’t convert me, this was something I wanted to do all on my own. Plus, Jews don’t do the whole missionary thing. But my parents—well, they went through the roof in about sixteen different places and basically said that while they put up with the way I dressed and the music I listened to, they could not put up with me being Jewish and having a bar mitzvah, and I told them it’s becoming a bar mitzvah, not having a bar mitzvah, and that was the last thing they wanted, me correcting them on how to say things, so they got ultra mad and I realized part of what Stein had to put up with every day, and I realized if no one was going to support me, the least I could do was go and support someone else—a fellow Jew, and someone I thought might make all the people who suck go away. So I left. I mean, even though it was Sunday I pretended I was going to school, and my parents suck so much they didn’t even notice. So I hiked my way to the rest area and that’s where I met Jimmy, and he says it’s cool for me to be Jewish and I think that’s just the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. I hope he’s right because I’m going to do it one way or the other because that’s who I am and that’s what I want and I don’t see what the big deal is, either. Which is, I guess, why I’m here.”

  Quickly, he sat back down in his seat, with Jimmy giving him a big thumbs-up sign. Mandy and I started to applaud, and soon everyone was doing it, Mrs. Everett loudest of all. Elwood blushed a traffic-light red and wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes for the next few minutes.

  When the applause had died down, Mrs. Everett looked at the triplets and asked, “How about you?”

  Ross stood first.

  “I’m here for my brothers.”

  He sat down and Gary stood up.

  “I want to be where the action is.”

  Then Gary sat down and Glen stood up, sending a sweetness look at Gus.

  “I’m going to Topeka because I want to make sure nobody steals this election from under my nose,” he said. “And I’m here on this bus because I was totally hitting on Gus at the rest area, and he was totally hitting on me. I knew right away that he was rainbow sprinkles, and he hasn’t proven me wrong yet.”

  Gus beamed like a thousand stars piled in a bus seat. The rest of us tried not to be skeptical.

  Finally, Mrs. Everett looked at the boy named Sue and asked him what his story was. He was our age, but his quietness made him look younger. His hair fell in his eyes as he talked.

  “Well, my daddy left my ma right after I was born,” he began. “But before he did, he named me Sue. My ma loved him, so she said, ‘All right.’ It sure was hard on me at first. The other kids would make fun, and the guys Ma brought home would laugh and laugh and say I needed to get a new name. Oh, I hated it for sure. But I had a secret, too: Deep down, it felt right. Deep down, I felt like a Sue. I don’t know how to describe it. There are some things you just know, and one of them is whether your name is right or not. Everybody else thought
I had the wrong name. They said my daddy was a drunk and this was his last big joke. But I started to think maybe he had an ounce of the sight to him, even if he had a strange way of showing it. I just needed to find out—did he know something or was he kidding? I vowed I’d track him down and ask him.

  “As soon as I got my license, I started to drive around. Then one night I drove into Gatlinburg and headed for the nearest bar. Something was calling me there—I can’t really explain it. Sure enough, I spotted a man at the bar who just looked like the picture of my daddy that my ma kept hidden in her bottom drawer. Only now my daddy was dressed like my ma and had tits to spare.

  “I walked right on up to him and said, ‘My name is Sue. How do you do? You may be a woman, but I know you’re my daddy.’

  “Now, that remark hit him hard. But he recovered quick, pushed me straight out of the bar and outside into the street. I couldn’t tell whether he was crying or whether it was just drinkin’ tears I was seeing. I started yelling at him then, going, ‘Why did you name me Sue? Why? WHY?’ And he was laughing and crying and cursing and then smiling. ‘I’m Sue!’ I screamed. ‘I’m Sue!’ And finally he just looked at me and said, ‘I know you are, honey. I know.’”

  Sue took a deep breath, then continued. “He said he knew this wasn’t an easy world, and he’d known all along that having him around would make it harder. He said he named me Sue because he wanted me to know all the things I could be inside. That when I was born he looked in my eyes and saw the deepest kind of reflection, which made him feel that everything he’d done wrong could be done right by me. He said, ‘I gave you that name to leave you open to anything. Plus, I figured if you didn’t like it, you could always change it. I’m guessing you must’ve kept it for a reason.’

  “I’d never told anyone why I’d kept it, but now with this woman who was my daddy standing in front of me, I could finally admit that the name felt right. That even though I was a boy—still am—there were parts of me that liked being a girl. I didn’t want to become a full girl or anything, like some of my friends. But I wanted to be a boy named Sue. There are lots of us out there—we know the names we’re called don’t really matter unless we feel that they’re right. And I guess that’s why I knew I had to help Stein and Martinez. Because they’re boys called Sue, too. And I know my daddy would be proud of me for standing up for them.”

  “We’re proud of you, too, son,” Virgil said. “And that’s the truth.”

  At this point, I couldn’t believe that I’d even hesitated in considering whether or not to come. I realized how easy I’d had it, and how lucky I was. And what good was luck if you couldn’t pay it forward in some way? What good was good if you couldn’t make it last longer and spread it wide?

  I needed words to fuel me. I didn’t need to be told what to do; I just needed to know that what I was doing had some worth. The words could be as simple as thank you or you’re welcome, or as complicated as a story or a speech. The words could come from Jimmy, or Janna, or Stein, or these random people who’d arrived on our bus.

  It was enough to let me know that the words in my head weren’t alone.

  They had a world in which to fit.

  They would be understood.

  sixteen

  On the news channels, Stein addressed us.

  “We will demonstrate peacefully and positively. We will show our opponents the power of peace, and send the world a message that we are a country that loves peace above all else. Our presence—millions upon millions of us—will be enough. We will raise our voices, but not our fists. We will show strength through solidarity, not aggression. Like the saints, we will go marching in…and we will march, and we will march, and we will march until justice prevails.”

  “I don’t know if I can ever trust her again,” Mira told Jimmy. I sat behind them, with Elwood napping on my shoulder. “What she did takes everything away.”

  “You can’t just erase everything,” Jimmy replied.

  “That’s easy for you to say. You have Duncan. You’re lucky.”

  “I know,” Jimmy said. “I know.”

  From the front of the bus, Mrs. Everett and Virgil started singing a song about how everything is everything, how what is meant to be will be.

  “Change,” they sang, “it comes eventually.”

  Clive drove the bus as far as he could take it—but eventually all the traffic became a standstill, and we knew we’d have to walk the rest of the way. We’d crossed through the ring of chainmarts that surrounded Topeka, all the familiar names from Anywhere USA greeting us with their usual indifference. Cars and buses filled all the parking lots, but nobody was shopping. They were all heading to the center of town.

  The bus was parked in front of a sports store. We gathered the bare-minimum supplies, planning on a few hours’ stay. Virgil took the lead, with Flora and Mrs. Everett beside him. Sara said she’d take up the rear. It was strange to see her and Virgil split like that—we were so used to them working in tandem. I couldn’t tell whether the Keisha thing had thrown off that tandem or whether they were simply applying the basic kindergarten-field-trip rule of having someone in front and someone in back to keep the kids from getting lost.

  There was a good chance of getting lost, because hundreds if not thousands of people were streaming past us now, each street a tributary uniting at the center of Topeka. There were individuals and couples walking, for sure. But mostly there were groups. Church groups and youth groups and work groups. Groups of friends, groups of family, groups of volunteers. Although it was clear (from signs carried, from comments overheard) that some of the people had come to protest our protest, most were Stein/Martinez supporters experiencing the power of arrival. No matter how far they’d traveled or what they’d had to leave behind, they were—like us—galvanized by the enormity and the intensity of our mission. It was as if the rally was a large and powerful magnet; the closer we got, the stronger the pull.

  Sara’s friend Joe and some of the other college-age volunteers split off into their own camp. Although nothing had been said, I felt that Jimmy and I had inherited Elwood as our charge; because he was so young, we’d have to watch over him. We’d already made him call his parents to tell them where he was, and Virgil had assured them that Elwood would be okay. My own parents were less angry but similarly nervous when I called with my own updates. The first time, I’d expected my father to be miffed at me for defying the law that he and my mother had laid down. But she must have gotten to him somehow, because all I received was an order to stay safe and to come back home as soon as it was over.

  None of us needed a map of Topeka to know where we were headed. We just followed the flow, merging in with the other groups. We didn’t mingle—most groups kept to themselves at this point, concentrating on sticking together rather than making new friends. Gus and Glen were a major exception to this rule. In just a few hours, they’d become unquestionably inseparable. If Gus’s hand wasn’t on Glen’s shoulder, Glen’s hand was on Gus’s waist. Or their sides were so close together that it looked like a three-legged race. Gary and Ross, walking four steps behind, seemed amused. I still couldn’t tell them apart.

  “Did they really just meet?” Elwood asked Jimmy and me.

  “Yup,” Jimmy said.

  “Wow,” Elwood replied, admiring. But his eyes didn’t grow wide until a few minutes later, when Jimmy told him that I was Jewish.

  “That’s ultra cool,” Elwood said, with the awed gasp that boys his age usually reserved for cars and tech games.

  Soon he was barraging me with questions about Torah reading and Yom Kippur and becoming a bar mitzvah and the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel. I answered him as best as I could—about reading without vowels and repenting by throwing bread into a river and chanting something you don’t completely understand and still not knowing what Jacob’s ladder really means. None of these things had ever struck me as out of the ordinary, but explaining them to someone who found them extraordinary made me suddenly
see a little more of their meaning. While Elwood had struggled against being prevented from being a Jew, I’d been conscious of the things that I thought being a Jew would prevent me from becoming. Really, there weren’t that many—there had already been plenty of Jewish movie stars and senators and sports heroes and world leaders. The only office we didn’t seem able to come near was the Presidency…until Stein.

  I wasn’t completely naive—I knew there were still some people out there who’d like to keep us out of their private clubs. But still—once you knew there were enough people out there to vote for a Jew for President, you couldn’t help but feel that anything else was possible. It had been the same with the first Catholic President and the first woman President. It would be the same with the first black or Latina or multi President. (Martinez, perhaps.) And it was definitely the same with the first gay President, who happened to also be the first Jewish President…as long as we could make his election in Kansas stick.

  The closer we got to the center of the city, the closer the people were packed together. Some groups started cheers and chants—

  “One-two-three-four / We won’t take this anymore / Five-six-seven-eight / Good will triumph over hate.”

  “People say all over town / No way to keep a Stein vote down!”

  “What do we want? / FAIRNESS! / Where we gonna get it? / KANSAS!”

  —while other groups sang hymns and protest songs. As we all pressed together and heard the skycopters overhead, I could also hear Janna and Mandy whisper-singing behind me, a private golden thread of “Amazing Grace” sung not out of protest but out of faith. They had said their Sunday morning prayers earlier, and now their voices harmonized effortlessly, since it was a song they’d summoned so many times before to underscore their beliefs. It was amazing, and it was graceful, and it was that most rare of things—a sound that makes us see.