I miss the city that never sleeps. We’ve slowly morphed into the city of restless insomniacs, so when I wake up a little dazed at 3 a.m., it’s not all that surprising anymore. If it’s not the sticky heat or two of my sisters spread out on the bed like ClingWrap or the jubilee of firework explosions, then it’s a nagging and incessant doubt that things may not ever go back to normal.
That’s a thought I try to tuck back into the dark behind my eyelids until I’m rudely awakened a few ungodly hours later.
It’s Election Day, and if I don’t go now, I will never muster up enough determination to do my democratic duty. At this point, it’s a matter of principle. I’d been arguing with jaded 14-year-olds about why voting matters all week so hotly, that if I let myself fall back asleep, I’d be losing my own argument.
The sister with all the fashion sense and hair clips said she watched a bunch of YouTube videos on how nobody votes and the whole system is corrupt anyways, so what’s the point. She says they never learned the branches of government because they kept moving from place to place, so she gave up.
The sister with all the athleticism wants to know what the hell the electoral college is and how they’re going to count all the mail-in stuff since the world’s broken with COVID.
Opinions about voting and being Black ping-pong between them, to which my only real answer is I’m getting up to vote because I care too much not to. Somebody before me cared enough, even though the system was corrupt.
I hate mornings with all the white-hot passion of a thousand suns, but I roll out of bed with an ID, a mask, and a phone to shuffle the two blocks to the polling place at P.S 135, the twins’ old middle school. It’s cooler out than I thought it’d be, but I’m not turning back for more layers or anything but my slips to walk-in.
The green scaffolding welcomes people one at a time, in keeping with social distancing, into the main entrance of the school. The lighting inside is just as off-white and bizarrely tinted as I remember my middle school being.
It’s quiet, even in the soft bustle of workers and security guards and voter registration volunteers.
I haven’t brushed my teeth, I know I look grizzly, and somewhere deep in the back of my mind, I don’t really care about the politicians I’m voting for. This is not about them, though.
I dragged my sorry unpatriotic ass out of bed because in arguing about our right to vote with my siblings I realized that holding the system accountable to its original ideas is probably the most American thing I will ever do. I am Black, a woman, and of no real standing, which means no part of me was represented in the Constitution when it was penned. I’m standing here, falling asleep on an ugly blue painted door that’s more suited for the entrance of a prison cell block than a school for small children, because that old piece of paper that men fought and died over is just as much mines as anybody else’s.
That if it weren’t for my ancestors, no part of that document that claims so many truths and freedoms for the whole of men in this land would be evident at all in our country.
My neighbor, who works for the education department and volunteered for the Board of Elections, perks up when she sees me. “Uh oh! I know that address. Is that Pop’s daughter?” she said. Her enthusiasm for this process is so infectious that momentarily I forget to be annoyed at being awake at 7 a.m. on a Tuesday.
She smiles wide and makes me laugh heartily. She cracks jokes while she looks up my district and sends me inside.
I’m surrounded by other brown faces, men and women, that maybe hate mornings and haven’t slept right, but they’re here. It’s a small step towards uncorrupting a system, but it’s a step nonetheless.
