Disclaimer: This is the rough start to what I hope will eventually be my novel, book, or whatever this turns into; a work of facts woven through fiction. A work in progress. So I reserve the right to come back to this post to edit, as writers are often wont to do.
It’s heartbreaking when someone tells you there are two Americas.
But it’s worse to find it out for yourself.
I canvassed neighborhoods of single family homes while we were in New Hampshire. Long driveways that lead to beautiful homes behind large trees. In the winter it seemed so idyllic, so peaceful. Everything was covered in a blanket of pristine white snow two feet deep.
Then I was sent to canvass in neighborhoods in South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina where I swore the houses on my list were vacant. No one would live in a house like that. Or even could.
My first shock of brutal realism came by way of a house with decaying, rotted front steps in a quiet town full of winding streets and short, one-story single family homes. The front window of this house was broken, it’s lower pane replaced with a piece of cardboard. I had to climb up onto the porch to avoid the rotting steps, knocking on the front door, which was open except for a warped wooden framed door with a ripped screen that never quite closed.
A man got up from a thin, lumpy looking mattress and came to the door. He was skinny, missing teeth in the front, but seemed friendly enough. Before I could introduce myself he saw my “Obama ’08” tee shirt and stopped me cold.
“You gonna get that man shot. I’m not votin’ for him, you’re gonna git him kill’d.”
I immediately burst into tears. I tried to explain that this candidate wasn’t just a black man running for President. He was a transformational leader; an agent for change. He inspired people like me to get up off our couches and try to empower those who had been disenfranched from their own government, that I was working to give people a voice.
He shook his head, shut the warped door frame as best he could, though it never quite closed, and moved back into the darkness of the living room. I could barely see the dingy white tank top he had on move back to the safety of the lumpy mattress on the floor.
He wasn’t even the person on my list for that house. I was looking for a 64 year old woman. I climbed back down off the porch and moved on to the house next door.
I cut across the lawn, something I normally avoided doing because it seemed rude. In this neighborhood, it wasn’t so much a “lawn” though, as a patch of brownish, prickly hard grass and dirt. I came to the front of another house I assumed would have to be abandoned.
Half the roof had been burned out, as if it had survived a fire. It was sunken in, blackened around the edges and gaping. This time I was looking for a young man in his early twenties. I thought about marking the house as “Wrong address” and adding a note of “Vacant”, but I suddenly heard noise coming from inside. It sounded like the laugh track from a television show.
I could hear right through the closed front door- it sounded like an old sitcom from when I was a kid, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on which one. I knocked loudly on the door; none of the doorbells in the neighborhood seemed to ever work.
An older woman in an old fashioned housedress answered the door, her graying hair in rollers. She smiled at me as a young man came up behind her. Her living room was sparsely furnished and I could tell by looking over her shoulder that despite the burned out hole in the roof, they were living in that house. I was wondering what they did when it rained when the woman opened the screen door wide for me to come in.
It was against the rules but somehow in the southern states I canvassed, it seemed more offensive to stand outside rather than come in. Lacking any sense of self-preservation, I took the woman up on her hospitality and introduced myself to her and the man behind her.
When I talked to them about enfranchisement, having a voice in their government, I got emotional. But the woman smiled and put her hand on my arm, “We gonna have the first black President, aren’t we?”
I nodded and tried to hold back the tears as her and the young man on my list both smiled and nodded. I was trying to not make this about race, but refocus on the idea of bringing people back to the political process. Clearly I was ignoring the enormity of this election to so many people who hadn’t ever seen the possibility of an African-American president truly at-hand.
I couldn’t tell from the living room what the hole in the roof looked like, but it didn’t matter. Most of the rest of the house looked in disarray, too, with floorboards bowing and warped, unfinished. The room was completely dark aside from a small-ish television. The kind of TV I had in my bedroom when I was in elementary school. It still had the two different knobs you had to turn to find the channel, back in the days before we had real cable T.V., when I could count off the television stations we had using only fingers.
That didn’t seem to matter though. They were unashamed and friendly, and the woman shooed her son or grandson or whoever he was into the kitchen with a quick, “Go get the lady some water! Been walkin’ around out there all day!”
The young man dutifully returned and offered me a glass of water.
“Do you need to use the facilities? Sit down for a while, you guys been walkin’ around out there all day.” She moved aside a blanket from the couch near me, and offered me a seat.
I was in disbelief. This woman was graciously offering me something to drink, a place to rest and use the bathroom. It struck me then how presumptuous I must seem, coming out here to give them the opportunity to vote for the first black President. They were ready- I wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t already know. Only I was afraid to acknowledge the importance of this electon because I was white, and didn’t feel as if I could ever speak to the opportunities in life that they had been denied or passed over for. How much this would mean to them, and to all the children who looked like them. How many doors this could open, giving their next generation renewed hope that in America anyone could be President of the United States. Even a black man with a funny-sounding name and an African father.
I had been on the campaign as a volunteer for about a year already, and it never once occurred to me that this was a huge deal, something that should be acknnowledged. Until I saw that family who had nothing, but were so overcome with joy and hope for this President that they welcomed me into their home and offered me comfort and rest when they had so little.
I was in South Carolina, canvassing with a woman I’d driven down with, Jennifer, and another woman who had been added to our team. She was from Maryland, a nurse I think, with a kind smile. She had an easy, familiar way of talking with the people in the neighborhoods we canvassed. That must’ve been why the little girl we encountered in our last neighborhood was so drawn to her.
She couldn’t have been more than four or five. She seemed shy, but unwilling to leave the side of Laurel, our Maryland friend. She would look up at her from below her eyelashes, and follow her as we went from house to house in the neighborhood, knocking on doors that were almost never answered.
“Where are your shoes, honey?” Laurel asked the little girl, picking her up off the ground. It was cool out, and the ground was probably even colder, though the little girl didn’t seem to mind. A boy of about right or nine came running over when he saw the stranger pick up his little sister.
“Dats my brudder Eli,” the little girl said by way of introduction, pulling her index finger out of her mouth long enough to point to the boy now standing with us.
Laurel was unfazed as she asked the boy where their mother was, and why his sister didn’t have a coat or shoes on. The boy explained their mother wasn’t home, but he was in charge. I watched this conversation unfold with Jennifer, and knew how it was going to end. Laurel got Eli to point out their house, identical to all the others in the neighborhood because it was part of a Section 8 housing complex. It was street after circular street of one story houses connected to each other, doors all neatly painted dark green while the rest of the stucco facade seemed faded and dingy in comparison.
She marched Eli to their front yard, and carried the little girl, whose name turned out to be Mikayla. As soon as she put her down, the two kids ran into the house, and came out an eternity later carrying old coats and a pair of shoes for little Mikayla, who dutifully sat down on the ground and tried to wrestle her shoes on as her brother rode around us in small circles on a bike made for a much younger child.
I wondered where it had come from when Laurel began helping Mikayla put on her shoes.
“These shoes don’t match! Eli, where are the matching shoes to these two?” Eli stopped his peddling long enough to explain that he couldn’t find the match to either shoe, but that it was ok, those shoes were fine. Mikayla looked dubious, but immediately followed Laurel as she went into the house herself to find the missing shoes, padding behind her with her dirty, little feet scuffling across the dirt yard.
“God, what happens if their mother comes home and finds Laurel in her house with her kids,” I asked Jennifer. “I’d be pissed.” I knew Laurel was concerned for the children, but this seemed like such a bad idea. Laurel soon came back out with Mikayla, still in mismatched shoes, looking exasperated.
“You watch out for your sister, okay Eli? If you’re in charge you need to stay with her until your mom comes home. I don’t want to see her outside by herself again without a coat and shoes.” Laurel struck a tone that was halfway between motherly and stern, but Eli seemed to weigh this directive with great gravity. He dropped his bike as we started to walk away, but when Mikayla started to follow us I knew there was trouble. She hugged onto Laurel with all her might, her little hair twists shaking as she cried. Her face was already tear-soaked, her eyes wide and bright.
I couldn’t bare to watch as Laurel pried the little girl from her leg and called for Eli to come get his sister. “Eli, you need to keep an eye on her. I may have been a nice lady, but someone else could come and take your sister or hurt her if you’re not paying attention, ok?” We headed back to our car. I think Jennifer and I were both in disbelief at what had happened. Had Mikayla been ready to just leave with us? A bunch of strangers?
Laurel was thoughtful in the car, and much more pragmatic about the whole thing. “She looked just like my little niece. I hope their mother gets home soon.”
“But…they were home by themselves! Eli is, like, eight!” I was incredulous. My step-brother and I had to stay with a babysitter when I was that age, there was no way I was competent enough to care for myself, let alone a younger sibling.
Laurel interrupted to explain, “That’s just how it is out here. Their mother is probably single and working. She can’t afford a babysitter, so she lets the neighborhood raise her kids.” She shrugged. That was that.
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oh, sugar! 
I love this post. It drew me in. I could definitely read a whole series of short stories like this about your campaign experiences!