She

Chapter One, Part I

I can’t get nooo, satisfaction. ‘Cause I try, and I try, and I try, and I try. I can’t get no.The metro began to slow and pull into Silver Spring train station as one of my favourite songs from the 60’s played. I laughed thinking about the irony of the song. It has been 250 days since at least 62% of women across the country took up a protest so unthinkable that the far-right faction of white men have been reeling and thinking of every way possible to quash it. The sixty-two percenters, as they are now known, made a pact that would make women across time applaud. No one knows for sure if 62% is an accurate count, but registrations to join the protest, before the Transportation Security Administration put the kibosh on it, was at 62%. Every woman I know has that percentage memorized. That number means that more than half of the women in the U.S. (and women making up more than half of the population in the country) came together and decided they were going to use their bodies and the autonomy they had left to push back against the far right. Still, because of how desperate the right-wingers have become, how extreme they have become, I wore a wedding ring on my left ring finger when I left the house. 

My mom slipped it to me at our last family dinner a year ago. It was my grandma Gladys’ ring, and my how that woman would be rolling in her grave right now. My 5’2 spunky grandma had seen women get the right to vote in 1920, and black women’s vote secured with the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. She had seen Roe v. Wade enable women, starting in 1973, to get reproductive care with physicians instead of botched bathroom coat hanger attempts at abortion. She had seen birth control become legalized in the 60’s, although she would remind me it was very difficult to get them back then if you weren’t a married, or soon to be married, woman. My grandmother was no self-proclaimed feminist. She was just a woman who knew what was right and what was wrong. And this, all of this happening now, was wrong.

The last time I saw my mother was on December 5, 2026, the day before my birthday. It had been a little over nine months since the change in administrations which was proceeded by a constant and non-stop flurry of executive orders, arrests, court litigations, hirings and replacements, and bill after bill passed across twenty-one states. The other twenty-nine non-compliant states then saw massive arrests, quick elections to fill seats and new hirings, followed by federal laws that made sure to tie up all loose ends. 

My birthday was solemn and simple. My mother baked me a two-layer yellow cake with vanilla frosting, all homemade of course. She was a miracle worker to have done this. For over a year now, store shelves have been frequently empty with people panic buying everytime a shipment came in. Calls for restraint and even stores placing limits on how many of each item a person could buy barely made a dent. Everyone expected violence as a response to what was happening. Everyone expected a civil war to break out. So far though, people were too afraid about their own lives and those of their families. People tried to pretend to go about their days ignoring militia, sometimes their own neighbors in red shirts and camo, pacing the streets with machine guns. They were afraid of the police. They were afraid a friend, co-worker, or even family member would rat them out. So, they kept their heads low. This was, unfortunately, the desired effect the right-wingers wanted. Compliance. Compliance driven by fear.

We ate the cake mostly in silence with a few stories shared about my birthday parties growing up. What could we say? What could I look forward to now at 27 years old? The borders were closed. I couldn’t even escape to my dad’s parents in Toronto if I wanted to. All flights were grounded. Gasoline was rationed to make sure people didn’t go far under the pretense of tension with Saudi Arabia and taking time to undue the red tape the last administration did to pause drilling off the Pacific Coast. 

Since the arrests of several journalists at the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC, the news has been either filled with right-winger talking points or “happy news,” the kind of thing we all wished for when we thought the world was burning down. Now that it’s burning down, all we wish for is news about what was happening. What was happening with the sixty-two percenters across the country? Was anyone else converting? What happened to those who were caught?

Every now and then, a journalist would post a real story through their website, podcast, social media site or say something live, but that would be taken down in almost minutes before they were “fired” which many of us believe was code for “arrested.” Free speech codified in the first amendment was now read as free speech for white landholding men (per the “constitution’s original intent”) and even then, if you said something out of line, you were arrested for treason. 

My birthday present was a book my mother had kept hidden, a book of poems by Emily Dickinson. All books by Emily Dickinson were now banned. The right-wingers considered her work blasphemy since she was an unmarried feminist. And in the book, taped to the inner left front cover, was my grandmother’s wedding ring. I didn’t even need to ask. My mother passed me across the oak dining room table a book jacket for Jacobson’s newest book, The Politics of Uplifting Families. It was only then that I noticed the roman shades were drawn and the blue and white floral curtains around them were pulled in a bit more. She was being thorough. 

My mother wasn’t a mover and a shaker. She was quiet, kind, and often nodded in agreement and made mmm noises when someone was talking (even if she disagreed with them). Now though, out of nowhere, she shook her head and said “Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit,” each iteration a little louder. My father shushed her.

“You don’t want anyone to hear and come listen to our business in here,” he said.

“Listen? Who’s going to listen? What do they think they’re gonna hear? We have to be the most boring couple on this block. Shit,” she replied. 

I had never seen my mother like this before. She even yelled at me as a child in whispers. “Listen, Gladys. The world has gone to hell in a handbasket. Baby, there is nothing more I can do for you right now. You need to go to work. Come straight home. Keep to yourself. Don’t post anything on social media other than videos of cute baby elephants and orangutans. Don’t question anyone. Wear this ring. And if anyone asks if you are married, say yes. And if they ask when it happened, say it happened tonight, here at home. You decided to get married on your birthday so you could always remember the day.”

I sat in silence for a moment. My hands were piled on top of each other and I noticed how much my skin was cracked from biting my cuticles and skin out of panic. My nails were non-existent. I pulled and straightened my green floral dress over my knees, took a deep breath, and sighed. 

“Mamma, I am scared,” I said. 

“I know sweety. I know.”

“What kind of life is this? What kind of life is not having one? To be a prisoner to my home and work? What kind of life is that,” I asked sobbing. 

“Baby, it won’t always be like this,” my dad said.

At that, my tears stopped as my mother and I, in perfect synchronicity, whipped our heads to face him and shook our heads. As much as my dad was supportive of my mother and I, he really had no idea. He was a man. He was white. He was born in the U.S. 

My mother was a black woman. Me, I was mixed race, and my skin confused people.

My mother turned to me and said, “I remember after your father and I were married for ten years, I decided I wanted my maiden name back. I was about to publish my first book and I wanted it to be me, all of me. I went to the Prothonary’s office and do you believe they wouldn’t let me! My own name! They told me I had to bring your father. 

So the next day, he came with me, absolutely confused, not believing this was the case. And sure enough, when they reminded me I needed my husband, I called him up and they asked him ‘Do you give your wife permission to change her last name?’ I don’t know how a white man could get any whiter, but your father did. I had to tell him to sit down, get him a cup of water, and ask if they had a trash can handy in case he threw up. Your father didn’t realize that when I was born, women had only just earned the right to have a bank account without their husband’s co-signing for them.

Anyway, crazy shit that’s what it was.”