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The Underpass:
Washington D. C.
by Anne-Marie Oomen
In
that long past January
of 1973, the
month we inaugurate
presidents, I was cold,
having forgotten my
socks. I stood, chilled
and tired, in the
proverbial shadow of the
Washington Monument with
my boyfriend Vern and a
crowd of other
long-haired, bearded and
bedraggled protesters,
mostly college students
but also gray-haired
grandmas, older men in
tattered pea coats. That
year we had participated
in too many protests to
remember, had canvassed
hard for McGovern and
lost, and 18 hours
before had climbed into
an unheated van to drive
from our college in
Michigan to protest a
corrupt man and a
corrupt war and who
knows what other
corruptions. The list
was out there and though
I don’t discount its
sincerity, I know that
other than the war and
the man we perceived
behind it, I could give
you no more concrete
rationale about why I
was there.
I had forgotten
socks. My feet were
cold.
We stared at the
platform where a black
woman railed against
this re-elected
president, and where by
some strange catch in
the wind, we could also
hear tinny fragments,
half muted phrases, a
stately word here and
there, of the
inauguration of the
newly sworn in President
Nixon. Through some
sound system that must
have been enormous and
pervasive but
ineffective, these
un-words, carried to us
in a metallic flutter,
mixed with the rally’s
protest language to
produce a linguistic
American pie of
distortion into the cold
air.
I remember the
words of neither because
neither made sense any
longer.
At that time, I made an
impulsive vow never to
return to that city,
that particular protest
also marking the end of
my overt political
activism. Like many of
us from that time, I hit
a certain emotional wall
and became
apolitical. In the
decades since I have
turned to quieter
efforts, focused on
local sustainable
projects but rarely
stepped forward in those
dramatic ways of those
days some thirty years
ago. I learned to write
and to cherish my
friends and community,
and when possible, to
change small elements of
the ordinary. I have
taught, as best I could
but with an acute
awareness of my
limitations, young
writers.
That day in 1973
began even before the
sound system addled the
English language. The
previous night I had
helped navigate a van
into Washington, DC, had
listened to talk of
revolution in a basement
house in Maryland, opted
for the peaceful march
instead of throwing
rocks at the cops on a
certain corner, had come
out into the light of a
cold damp day to be part
of some ten thousand
people who gathered at
Lincoln Memorial and
marched to the
Washington Monument—all
that happened some three
decades ago and who
thought I’d even be
alive now. But I am, and
in my quiet teacherly
life, one of my dearest
students has won a
national prize. I am
invited to watch Beth
receive the award and be
recognized as her
teacher at the Kennedy
Center in Washington,
DC.
Susceptible as I am
to honors, I decide to
return.
We are there in the
bright city I said I
would not return to.
The ceremony is
scheduled for 1:00 and
if we want to see some
sights, we won’t have
time to return to the
hotel to change, so we
dress for the day. That
first sunny morning in
DC, I slip on a long
tunic style dress with
wildflowers, dressy but
Midwestern. I slip into
heels and pretty up—as
much as a middle-aged
woman can—the way David
likes. We’ll go early
to some monuments, see
what it feels like, and
maybe retrace my
protester’s march.
Wouldn’t that be a
hoot? And while we are
that close, we will take
in the Vietnam Memorial.
That casual.
I can’t remember
their names.
I am distracted,
thinking about Beth and
meeting her family later
in the day, about the
ceremony and where the
other teachers are from
and if I remembered to
bring business cards,
materials about the
school, an extra
notebook. That’s what I
am thinking about when
we climb out of the cab
and start down the
walkway toward the wall.
I am chattering
lightheartedly,
rummaging in my purse
for a notebook to add
something to my list of
things not to forget. I
am unprepared. I am
snapping my purse when I
look up and slow down,
stumble, catch myself,
am undone. I step
toward the wall, silent,
all ordinary thoughts
erased and replaced with
one. Here are their
names. All along that
slick and momentous
length are the names
that, from a ways back
on the edge of the
concrete apron become a
human texture surrounded
by reflection, the
implacably dark and
shining mirror that
represents a border we
have not crossed but
once crossed is crossed
forever. And these names
represent the humanity
that crossed in war.
I had thought the
names would come back,
those two boys I knew
from college, who went
over and did not come
back. I remember their
faces, so I thought the
names would come up,
trip off the tip of my
tongue and I could just
walk over and touch the
names and say some
prayer. But when I come
closer and see, for the
first time, that long
implacable stone written
over with the
hieroglyphs of loss, I
can’t remember them.
Then, in that awful
anonymity, all the
names, every one of them
stand out to me, become
small small stars. I
come close, touch the
dark blade, pull away,
come back, run my
fingers here and there
down a row—was it you?
Or you? I knew their
names when I had been
protesting a President’s
Watergate, the final
throes of Vietnam. I
knew their names when I
graduated from college
and went for my Masters.
I knew their names to
tell students sadly in
my first years of
teaching, and later when
students would ask about
“the sixties” which
weren’t quite the
sixties for me. I knew
their names when I went
to reunions, weddings,
baptisms, even
funerals. Not anymore.
But here are all
the names and I cannot
remember the two I knew
but now those two could
be any of these.
David’s arm slips around
me as we walk the walk,
scanning them, thinking
I will pull it up from
my unconscious, yet
unable to muster even a
letter, though some
things return
cinematically clear.
The one I liked a lot
from my Shakespeare
class at college left at
semester to enlist. He
once complimented me on
my reading of
pentameter, and I must
have flirted because I
remember his smiles; he
sat next to me from
Comedy of Errors to
Hamlet. We never
dated, did we? I think
we both had steadies. I
am ashamed to say now, I
probably despised the
fact that he enlisted,
but I don’t remember my
reaction one way or the
other. The other boy, a
skinny red head, came to
mass and church
activities and sang
those Good News folk
songs with such a boyish
robustness that I teased
him. He was drafted—I
think there may have
been credit issues or
maybe he wasn’t in
school at all but just
came to campus mass to
be near us—he seemed a
little needy—and though
he had been encouraged
to go to Canada, he
decided to take his
chances. So much is
gone. I am ashamed to
say I don’t remember
saying good-bye to
either. But I remember
the news when it came,
sometime in the next
year for both of them.
In 70 or 71? I remember
spring, the campus
rolling with green. How
could I forget their
names? My youth is long
gone, but here it is in
my own face staring back
at me from the shiny
wall mottled with names.
We stay there too
long, me pacing the wall
twice, touching the
small script here and
there, letting the
hollowness of the names
come in through my
fingertips, unable to
leave. David is quiet
and touched as I am,
though steady in his
fine way.
Finally we turn
away and I feel such
emptiness David stops
and makes me drink some
water. After a while we
take a path around and
down a ways to the
Lincoln Memorial, though
I cannot, for all the
deep breathing and brisk
steps, get my face dry.
Is that why, when I
arrive to look up at up
at the famous Lincoln
face, I am filled with
awe and old loss
renewed. Those young
men were already dead
when I came here on
that January day in
’73, already dead when I
stood near the shrubbery
at the side, stamping my
feet to get create some
kind of heat in them,
waiting for the motion
of the crowd to begin
its slow gesture toward
the monument. I remember
my arms closed in front
of me, trying to keep a
brisk wind out of my
light jacket, and being
hungry and having no
money and being angry at
myself for forgetting to
put on socks in the
middle of the night when
we had left Michigan to
drive to Washington DC.
Then we started to
sing, and the crowd
leaders moved out onto
the street, carrying
placards, setting the
pace which I remember as
funereal. The first
marchers moved long
before the last
marchers, but gradually,
from stragglers to
militants, we all joined
and the wind off the
Potomac turned colder.
There was a mist when we
finally walked the slow
walk, singing the songs
we all knew, down the
long street to the
Washington Memorial.
All this comes back
to me as I stare up at
the face of the man who,
nearly a century and
half before, against all
odds, warred the country
back together. When I
was here as that
long-ago girl, I mocked
statuary in general, and
those built to past
leaders particularly.
That too has softened.
Now I see Lincoln’s
stone face as a
complicated
representation. Calm
inevitability, sadness
and a strange
weariness. The history
that has grown in me
since I was twenty is
now the lens through
which I see him. I
stare up at him and my
breathing rights and I
take in his sadness for
the first time, what I
should have seen so long
ago.
David is close,
reminds me of the time.
Of course. We walk out
from the shadow and I
vow to focus on the
wonder of this clear
day, the green lawn, the
cool June air, a dear
student.
I don’t’ remember
why we decide to walk to
the Kennedy Center. I
don’t know why we didn’t
go back to the Wall and
catch a cab. Perhaps I
didn’t want to go back,
so angry at what I had
forgotten. And
remembered. Maybe we
walked because in the
far distance we could
see the flat top of the
Kennedy Center and so in
the clear air it seemed
close.
We had no map,
hadn’t bargained for the
circling walks, the
streets that seem to
head in one direction
and then curve in
another. We hadn’t
bargained for the slow
realization that, in
this most groomed of
American cities, we
would have to hike
across a wide expanse of
only partly civilized
field. As we cross it,
the building disappears
behind a bank of highway
and we figure out that
we will need to follow a
gulch, cross under the
overpass, and then
actually climb the bank
of the overpass to the
highway, then cross the
highway to arrive at the
Center. We realize how
complicated this will
be, and how strange,
here in the nation’s
capitol, much too late
to turn back and find a
cab, too late to change
course because now we
don’t know how to get
there any other way and
still be on time. So
like the way I’ve run my
life I tell David as
we are tromping through
stickers and bristly
grass leftover from
winter, the memorials
now out of sight behind
the traffic.
From a distance it
all looks possible, and
we are country people
who walk a lot. But the
grass is littered with
McDonalds' cups and
plastic bags that catch
in the untrimmed
shrubbery, twisting in
the twigs. We keep
tromping, me lifting the
tunic on my skirt. I am
trying not to notice the
wicked blister forming
on my heel, trying not
to think about the
distant highways with a
clear view of this
field, of people in cars
and cabs and buses who
are looking at us from
their air-conditioned
vehicles, and asking
themselves what the hell
we are doing out here.
We must look like
something from a bad
Indie movie, David in a
tie, me in heels,
crossing the medians,
heading for a highway
that won’t have a
stoplight for miles. As
we near the underpass, I
see how we will have to
walk under it in order
to climb the weed-laden
bank on the other side.
I fall a little behind
in my heels. I don’t
understand when David
stops and waits for me.
And then, as I come
close, I see what he
sees.
To get to the
highway, we must pass
through someone’s home.
Listen, the people
under the overpass lived
there. It was their home
we trespassed on that
day. How had we come so
close? How, in the
middle of Washington,
DC, had we stumbled off
the tidy sidewalks
assigned to proper
pedestrians?
And what am I doing
again in this city that
breaks my heart on so
many levels?
Because it is not a home
the way a home should
be. It is rough shelter
tucked against the
cement pilings because
the overpass keeps off
the rain, keeps the sun
away, at least until
late in the day. And the
ditch, yes we now know
it is a ditch not a path
we are following, leads
directly under this
overpass spackled with
plastic bags and coke
bottles and soggy paper
like dirty snow. David
motions me to come, and
I stare at him, and look
back to see if yet
again, I’ve missed some
quiet street where a cab
will be just waiting for
us. Then I turn to him
again and take the steps
in silence.
We walk past them.
There are two who live
there, and they have
made a place to sleep of
an oven box and some
tarp, maybe a part of a
tent. We pass briskly
and though I try to not
meet their eyes, the
younger man mutters as
we follow the path next
to them and I glance, so
used to responding to
sound. The other, rail
thin, leaning on his
elbow in a ragged
sleeping bag, shakes his
head at our ignorance
and stupidity. He
smokes a cigarette and
after we have passed,
swears. Everywhere the
plastic bags rustle
though I can feel no
breeze. The scent fills
my lungs.
Forgive us our
trespasses…
We climb the bank,
me struggling in my
heels. The noise of
traffic rises like a
thunder. Once, I lose a
shoe and stand in my
hose in the grass.
Struggling with the
strap in the
reverberation of
hundreds of cars, I feel
the blister break. What
is it with my feet and
this city? By the time
we scale the bank,
rising ridiculously at
the guardrail on the
side of a highway
streaming with speeding
traffic, I am drenched
with sweat. Memories
like small angry birds
dive out of the air and
join the buzz of
frustration as I face
the highway. My gut
tightens as I stare
across the street at the
stately Center, its
white columns gleaming
in the sharp sunlight.
David looks for a way to
cross, a place marked
for pedestrians, but
there are only speed
signs, the lots on the
other side marked with
letters of the alphabet
A, B, C. Even the signs,
do not enter,
exit here, speed
bump ahead, and all
the arrows pointing away
do not offer a clue as
to how to cross.
In the midst of the
growl of traffic, I
think about the men
under the bridge. I
think of the Wall and of
Lincoln, of the march
twenty-five years ago
where, after the long
file to the mall, the
march in the drizzle,
the huddling in the
cold, the distorted
speeches, I finally left
the protesters and
walked the city
streets. I looked at
the houses of
Washington, DC, at the
tidy and gracious
fronts, at the iron
gates, and the ornate
doors. I remember
passing an embassy. I
remember being awed that
people lived in homes
that had such history.
When I returned to sing
the final songs, I had
decided I would never
come again.
Now, I look at the
majestic building across
the street, a place
where a good thing will
happen, a young woman
will receive recognition
for writing brave poems
and plays and I will be
there to witness, which
after all these years,
is what I done best. I
look at the signs,
reading something more
in to them than what
they mean. In a lull I
can still hear the
plastic bags snapping
their gray words.
George? Bill?
And what about the
names of the men below
us?
What have I done in
these 25 years?
I lift my skirts
and straddle the guard
rail and step out as
dozens of cars hit their
breaks and horns.
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