CREATIVE NONFICTION

by Rachel Katz

In bed with my laptop on Sat­ur­day morning, January 21st, 2017, I searched for the livestream of the Women’s March on Wash­ing­ton and clicked open a video window, mind­less­ly, the way I would flick on a light. My boyfriend sat next to me, thigh touch­ing mine under the white and orange flower-covered com­forter that I had lugged from college far into adult­hood, and which I had intend­ed to replace for years. I wanted to get some­thing sophis­ti­cat­ed and gender-neutral, perhaps a plain gray duvet cover, or one in rich royal blue, and a chair by the window to match. Maybe the com­forter could be gray and the shams gray with a blue trim to match the chair. I enter­tained such banal com­forter-related thoughts as a Black woman with shorn white hair and two long, silver ear­rings took the podium at the Women’s March rally and began to speak. 

“My name is Donna Hilton. I’m for­mer­ly known as inmate 86G0206.”

Her voice was full and deep and called my mind back from the ques­tion of sham color. 

“This march is about us,” she said, “the people, the women in this country who refused to be mar­gin­al­ized, sex­u­al­ized, and abused, and silenced.” 

“March!” she said, or rather yelled, or not quite yelled but demand­ed, but not in a neg­a­tive way. Sang. Shouted. What is the word for a strong woman’s speech? A call. A sermon. A heart on the table. A roar.

Donna Hilton fin­ished, “Let’s walk in our great­ness because we are beau­ti­ful. We are amazing. And we are not silent anymore.”

Recent­ly I’ve had an urge to return to the memory of that day, because five years on, it is begin­ning to feel distant; so much else has happened—Trump is out of office, there is a pan­dem­ic, there is a war—and there’s a risk I might begin to think it didn’t matter.

Next up at the podium was a blonde woman wearing a shirt that said in big orange letters, RUN LIKE A GIRL. Around her stood a stage packed with women waving. She motioned around the stage and boomed in a low, raspy voice, “These are the brave women who fight for us every day in Wash­ing­ton.” She pointed to the audi­ence and said, “Here’s the thing. YOU should be the ones writing the laws. YOU should be the ones writing the poli­cies.” In between her sen­tences she seemed to whisper to me, You are pow­er­ful. My room and my com­forter dropped away, and I existed fixated on her lips, des­per­ate for the words like a dehy­drat­ed person at a drip­ping faucet. She intro­duced the next speaker, “Our brand-new, FABULOUS senator from Cal­i­for­nia, Kamala Harris,” who climbed up and sang out: 

“All right! All right, all right, all right! What a beau­ti­ful sight I see.” 

A pres­sure rose quickly from my belly into my chest and up through my throat and head, and I was caught bewil­dered with tears drip­ping down my cheeks. I tugged the orange embroi­dered hem of my girly com­forter up around my mouth and released three breath­less sobs. My boyfriend sat next to me in a patient silence. I worked for a number of minutes to put the feeling into a coher­ent sen­tence, and then I said: “I can’t remem­ber the last time I saw three women in a row speak on stage in strong voices.” 

When I heard myself say it out loud, I felt a fresh rush of hot tears. I stared at a blurry Kamala Harris through a layer of water and won­dered how it was pos­si­ble that I was twenty-nine years old and seeing three women speak pow­er­ful­ly on stage could shock me to tears. 

In the weeks leading up to the Women’s March on Wash­ing­ton, I had strug­gled with ques­tions of the march’s legit­i­ma­cy, fueled by an entic­ing logic-and-reason skep­ti­cism preva­lent in my group of friends. Around a long table at a restau­rant called Flour and Water, leaning over our appe­tiz­er of Little Gem and butter lettuce, we debated how effec­tive it really was to march in protest—and in protest of what? We pointed out to each other, picking del­i­cate­ly at our hand­made pumpkin tortelli­ni, that the women’s march—no clear agenda, no clear asks—represented a dis­or­ga­nized mish­mash of causes, and there­fore it may be wasted effort. One of my friends raised the hypo­thet­i­cal: what if we all spent our energy going to this march, and then a month later there was a cause that really needed us, but the crowd’s will and effort had already been spent. The outcome of this march could actu­al­ly be negative. 

Now, here’s a skill that I’ve always valued: the ability to objec­tive­ly assess an issue and draw a com­pelling logical con­clu­sion. Logic was the lan­guage of my schools and work­places, of the man­age­ment con­sult­ing firm where I worked, com­prised of 80 percent men. Looking back now, this argu­ment sounds bizarre to me, but show me a well-argued point, and my gut feel­ings or intu­itions are bound to wither in its pres­ence. Logic is reli­able, unlike emo­tions; it’s straight­for­ward and clean. 

And yet, I knew I would go to the march. In the week leading up to it, I found myself peri­od­i­cal­ly return­ing to the march’s website. One night as I scrolled through the Face­book page for the San Fran­cis­co event, staring at my bright screen in the dark living room, I sud­den­ly recalled a cor­po­rate even I had attend­ed five years before, a Women’s Summit. It was held in a ball­room in the Fair­mont Hotel at the top of Pacific Heights where all the windows look down on the sprawl­ing city. Packed shoul­der to shoul­der on pink-cush­ioned chairs, a hundred women in pencil skirts watched five female exec­u­tives on stage talk about how they had made it. Speak­ing in a high, nasal voice, one pan­elist told a story about when her son threw her Black­Ber­ry in the toilet. Another men­tioned that her daugh­ter had asked if they could please stop moving around so that she could stay at the same school for more than a year. Another woman on the stage said in a remark­ably matter-of-fact tone that she had given up many close friend­ships to climb the cor­po­rate ladder. These were the women I was striv­ing to be. Even then it struck me how mis­guid­ed it was to desire what these women had, and yet the fact remained that they were the ones on stage and I was in the audi­ence to learn from them. At one point, the discussion—like at many women’s events I have attended—veered toward tactics for how to say “no” in a “yes voice” to people who ask you to take on too much. As I sat on my own pink-cush­ioned chair in my own pencil skirt, I noted that one of the five pan­elists wore rubber-soled boots instead of pointy-toed high heels, and I remem­ber feeling that those boots rep­re­sent­ed a single ray of hope. 

Watch­ing Kamala Harris five years later take the stage and say, “There is nothing more pow­er­ful than a group of deter­mined sisters,” I felt my mind lunge toward an unfa­mil­iar and over­whelm­ing sense of inspi­ra­tion like a wan­der­er in the desert who sees a water­ing hole. Only then did I realize that the women’s event in the Fair­mont was the last time I could remem­ber hearing three women in a row speak on stage. And only then, by way of com­par­i­son, did I realize that the Fair­mont women hadn’t been shout­ing, or preach­ing, or singing, or demand­ing-but-not-in-a-neg­a­tive-way. Or putting a heart on the table. Or roaring. Or what­ev­er we want to call it. 

In the after­noon on the Sat­ur­day of the women’s march, a group of friends came over to make signs that said things like: “Who Run the World,” “Fem­i­nist as Fuck,” and “Dignity, not pussy-grab­bing.” We piled out the door and snapped a couple of photos on the stair­way, holding our col­or­ful signs and smiling for the camera as clouds gath­ered over­head. As we headed toward the subway, I felt wholly an imposter. I had rarely marched for any­thing before, and I told myself that it was so lame that this was one of my first expe­ri­ences march­ing. A woman who con­cerns herself with sham color cannot rea­son­ably take to the streets. I don’t deserve to march for myself; look at all my priv­i­lege. We don’t even know what specif­i­cal­ly we’re march­ing for. Our signs don’t really make sense. They have no clear message. What is this really going to get us, after all. So went a famil­iar inter­nal mono­logue of self-crit­i­cism, a kind of shelter built with reason. No one could judge me if I was already so clear-eyed about my own behavior. 

Down­town, we lin­gered in the back of the crowd through the rally, catch­ing here and there a word or a note as it floated across the chilly breeze. A live pianist slammed out dra­mat­ic crescen­dos on an upright he had dragged out to the street. Cars honked as they drove by. Misty rain began while we stood in the crowd, becom­ing chilled in our rain jackets. I was mildly uncom­fort­able, a little dis­ori­ent­ed, slight­ly ener­gized, mostly just stand­ing in the rain. Then the welcome words came from the stage that the march would start. We turned 180 degrees from the rally stage toward the San Fran­cis­co capitol build­ing, an ornate dome. Her nooks and cran­nies had been lit up pink, and the dome glowed warm against the wet gray dusk. I said to no one in par­tic­u­lar, “Do you think that’s for us?” My friend Ben heard me and replied, “Of course it’s for us.” It felt unbe­liev­able to me that an object so offi­cial could express what seemed like love. I stared at the pink dome through the rain. It towered over a sign that said “Make Misog­y­ny Wrong Again,” and for a moment I imag­ined it not as the dome of the capitol, but as a giant, beau­ti­ful, life-giving breast. Then I felt embar­rassed about that image, then I felt proud, then embar­rassed again. As I stared at the dome, the sky opened, and rain gushed onto my hood and into my clogs and soaked my socks, and the crowd began to move forward.

As we poured down the streets of San Fran­cis­co, even the broad­est of which looked narrow now, packed wall to wall with people, my own world became small and imme­di­ate. I could only see the wet rain-coated backs of the marchers in front of me, the low gray sky above, the droplets of water rolling down my smooth black shoes onto a small, moving patch of asphalt below. I didn’t set my pace or direc­tion. I just suc­cumbed to the flow. 

Behind me to the left, a woman yelled out shrilly: My body, my choice. 

A man next to her shouted a deep response, Her body, her choice. 

The woman yelled again, this time joined by a handful of more women, My body, my choice.

And then a half-dozen men replied, Her body, her choice.

Then tens of women yelled: My body, my choice.

And fifty men cheered: Her body, her choice.

And I tried it softly: My body, my choice.

And a hundred men bel­lowed: Her body, her choice.

I said it louder: My body, my choice, and I felt awkward saying the word “body” so loud. 

But then came the bass strength of the response: Her body, her choice. 

I con­sid­ered whether I deserved to yell this, whether I deserved to hear such an over­whelm­ing sup­port­ive response. I tried it louder, sur­round­ed by a new wave of high-pitched yells, My body, my choice. 

And they came back even louder, Her body, her choice. 

And then we roared, My body, my choice, and they hollered, Her body, her choice, and it ric­o­cheted off the sky­scrap­ers on our flanks, and it filled Market Street, that broad boule­vard that cuts diag­o­nal­ly across the San Fran­cis­co grid, my body, my choice, and the sky sobbed out a choral ballad of gor­geous rain, her body, her choice, and the police stood on the side­lines in bright green jackets and looked on, my body, my choice, and those police would later report that every­one at the march was “so kind and happy,” her body, her choice, and I thought: yes, I deserve this, and yes, we deserve this, we all deserve this, my body, my choice, and I could hear Will’s voice in the crowd, her body, her choice, and his warm support was every­where around me, my body, my choice, and I pulled back the hood of my rain­coat and looked up, her body, her choice, and let the rain fall on my face. 

I couldn’t remem­ber the last time I had walked outside in a down­pour without rushing to the pro­tec­tion of the indoors. At age twenty-nine, I couldn’t remem­ber ever letting a surge of emotion pour out of my mouth the way it did in that moment. 

I yelled full-throat­ed now, My body, my choice, not so much yelling, but singing, preach­ing, shout­ing, demand­ing-but-not-in-a-neg­a­tive-way, putting my heart on the table. Roaring.

Every­one deserves the dignity of hearing their kind roar.

Around me, a reli­able, vibrat­ing bass section boomed into the dark­en­ing night, Her body, her choice. Every­one deserves the dignity of hearing someone else roar in her name.

This story orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 17.

Photo by Vlad Tchompalov.