He stepped up to the podium, remembered not to tap the mic, and spoke.
“Is this on? Can everyone hear me okay?”
He was clearly nervous, but the crowd was generous. They lowered their signs. The sun was beating down on them. They had just been chanting loudly, so his speech was giving them a break but also sucking the energy out of the moment. A few people flashed him thumbs up, and someone in the back cried out, “You got this!” to gentle laughter.
“Good, because this is going to require a little audience participation. The last time I spoke to all of you, I was asked to do it on the fly, and I wished I’d had something prepared-”
“You were great!” the same voice from the back called out.
“Great” is too kind, he thought, but it would have been insulting if she’d said “fine” or “sufficient” or “meh,” so he appreciated her choice.
“Well, thank you. As some of you know, I write novels. I thought I would take this opportunity to share a story with you that’s just an outline right now, and you can tell me if it works, and give me some feedback about how you would like it to end. Would you all help me with that?”
Lots of nods. Even some “Woohoo”s, but they were cautious ones. Good, he thought. Normally he would have been bothered by the way they had gone quiet, but they were listening intently.
“The story starts with a guy in a hospital bed. Mid-thirties. He looks strong and healthy, but he’s just waking up, and he’s dazed. He doesn’t know where he is. He looks over, and there’s another man in the room, a guy about his age snoozing in a chair.
“The snoozing man wakes up and is pleased to see the man in the bed, but the guy in the bed has no idea who the other man is.
“‘I’m your oldest friend,’ the man says. ‘My name is…”
The writer at the podium smiled and shrugged. “And I don’t quite know what their names are yet. I have some ideas, but for now let’s call the friend ‘W.’ W not only introduces himself to the man in the hospital bed; he starts to tell the man who he is, too. ‘You were in a terrible car accident. They had to put you in a medically induced coma. Your body has healed, but even before they put you under, we knew you’d lost your memory. You didn’t recognize any of us. Your name is-”
The writer laughed a little. “I don’t have a name for him, either. For now we’ll call him ‘A.’ So W has to fill A in on who A is. He tells him that A is this great guy, and everyone has been rooting for him and worried about him. W points around the room, and there are all these bouquets of flowers, obviously expensive ones. ‘You are very loved,’ W says. ‘You are a powerful person. You own a business and have employees who look up to you. You’re a pillar of the community. You served your country in the military back before you started your business, and you served honorably, and everyone respects you for that. You’re married, and…”
The writer paused because W pauses here in a noticeable way. “‘You don’t have kids of your own, but you have nieces and nephews who love you. Your sisters are going to come in over the next few days now that you’re awake, and they’ll bring their kids so you can meet them all over again. We’ve talked about how this is going to take some time, and I know it’s difficult, but we’re going to look on the bright side and try to enjoy filling you in on who you are, okay? We’ll make it fun. Because you are a great guy, A, and all of us who love you are looking forward to telling you that.’”
The writer looked up from his rough notes. “So, at this point, the reader really likes both these guys, right? We feel sorry for A, but we’re glad he has this good friend who’s clearly a thoughtful and caring person helping him readjust to the world.
“And then A’s wife comes into the room, and her behavior is really weird. Let’s call her ‘U.’” The writer chuckled. “Saying that out loud sounds strange. ‘U’ the letter, not Y-O-U.” There were a few laughs. “And not E-W-E. She’s not a sheep.” More laughter. “So U comes in and she doesn’t run over and kiss him or take his hand. She stands back away from the bed at a distance. She looks at the ground. She’s very apologetic. She says she knows he can’t understand this, but she needs him to sign some documents to get their divorce processed. She’s been waiting for him to wake up so she could get this done, but they were working on getting a divorce even before the accident. She’s really sorry this has to be his first experience with her, she says, but she’s decided it will be easier for them both if he just signs the paperwork and she walks out of his life. That way he can figure out who he is without her around to complicate things at all.
“And A doesn’t know how to respond to this. He looks to W, and he sees W is red-in-the face pissed. W looks at A, his jaw clenched, and speaks in this pinched, voice, like he’s trying not to shout. ‘I recommend you don’t sign anything just yet.’ W looks at U. ‘We told you not to do it this way. Why are you doing this?’
“U wouldn’t go near A, but she takes a step closer to W, stares hard at him, and says, “Fuck. You.’ And then she storms out without even looking at A again.
The writer held up his hands. “Sorry about the f-bomb, kids. Characters in stories don’t always use polite language. Your parents can take that up with them.” This got a laugh, mostly of relief. “At this point, what do we think of U? She seems pretty terrible, right? The reader won’t like her very much. And this will be compounded when W explains to A that U is a terrible person. She used to be nice, back when A and U got married, but she’s become lazy and entitled since A’s business got so successful and they got rich. And that’s why W didn’t want him to sign any paperwork just yet. A will have to deal with it eventually, but according to W, U is trying to take everything she can away from A, so A really needs to learn who he is, talk it all over with his lawyers, and figure the divorce out later. W waves a dismissive hand towards the door. ‘She’s waited this long. She can wait a little longer until you’re back on your feet.’
“Then the story speeds up. A checks out of the hospital, and W drives him back to his house. U has already moved out, so A has the house to himself, and it’s a mansion. Clearly he’s done very well for himself financially. But right away there are pieces of W’s story that aren’t fitting. There are two children’s rooms, complete with toys and kids’ decorations, but W said he had no kids. And then he goes into work, and there’s applause when he arrives, but he can feel a lack of warmth and see a lot of sideways glances from the employees. He talks to one of the senior managers, an older guy named B, about this, and B says that A was a ruthless boss, and that’s exactly why the upper management respected him so much. A always played hardball. He smashed two attempts by the employees to form a union, firing the people who were calling for it under the pretext that they were bad employees since it’s illegal to fire them for trying to form a union. That allowed A to keep wages as low as possible and maximise profits, which B completely agreed with and admired. A takes this in and struggles with it. Hadn’t W said he was loved? He’d said that his employees looked up to him, but was it out of fear? A doesn’t want to be that kind of person.
“So A starts looking into the company more deeply, and as he pours over internal documents, he finds out that the business is rotten to the core. They’ve been knowingly polluting the local river and keeping it a secret. Even worse, the product they make harms the customers who buy it. And he was cheating on his taxes, cheating his investors, cheating his suppliers, and lobbying local officials, bribing the corrupt ones and blackmailing the honest ones, to make sure a lot of his cheating was becoming legal. A realized he had a chance to start over, but he wasn’t even sure where to start. He would have to come up with a new product, safer supply chains, better treatment of workers, everything. It would be so much easier to just continue as though nothing had changed. But he didn’t want to be his old self. He could be a kinder boss now. He could be a better corporate citizen. He had a chance to reinvent himself.”
The writer smiled, but it was a sad smile. “At this point the reader thinks this is going to be one of those stories where the guy gets turned into a snowman or a dog or a child or whatever, reevaluates his life, and suddenly becomes a decent person. But she’ll notice we’re a bit early in the story for that big turning point. It’s going to get worse before it gets better, folks.”
Some nods and a bit of laughter from the crowd, now rueful.
“Once A starts going through his phone messages and his emails, he learns he used to cheat on his wife all the time. And when he dumped those women, he was terrible to them, too, threatening them with different kinds of harm if they ever told U about their affairs. As he reads the threats, he gets more and more horrified by who he used to be. He decides he doesn’t want to know. He just wants to start over. Those things are in the past, and he’s a different person now. He gives up on the project of learning about his old life. That was before. This is now. That’s all he needs to know.
“And I think the reader will sympathize with that. We’re still on A’s side, despite the kind of person he used to be, right?” The writer looked at the faces in the crowd. Some nodded, but their smiles were gone. They could feel it coming, though they didn’t know what “it” was yet.
“And then a woman comes to his house. Her name is … well, let’s call her “P” for now. When he opens the door, she asks to come in, and he’s immediately attracted to her. And then she explains that she’s one of the women he cheated with. He feels guilty, not just about the affair back before the accident, but about his response in the moment, because the first thing he thinks is that he can understand why he cheated with this woman. Not only is she significantly more physically attractive than U…”
The writer looked up at the crowd. “Not more attractive than Y-O-U. More attractive than his wife.” The crowd laughed.
“Not only is P more attractive than his wife, but she carries herself with a confidence that’s compelling, and her smile is kind, far kinder than he deserves, he realizes. She explains she heard all about his accident and amnesia, and she decided she wanted to come talk to him as part of her own healing. She feels very guilty about their affair. She tells him she loved him deeply, and that was why she allowed him to treat her the way he did. He was physically abusive to her, she says, though not at first. Slowly he got worse and worse, and he did it because he was used to it. He’d spent so many years abusing his wife, U, that he just slipped into the same pattern of abuse with P as well. And the abuse wasn’t just physical.”
The author stopped. “I won’t get too graphic because I know there are children here, but I think I have to use the R word because it’s essential to the story.” No one moved. No one covered their children’s ears or took their kids away. “Okay,” the author continued, “then P explains that he raped her because he frequently raped his wife U, and when P tried to get out of the relationship, he not only beat her more, but the emotional abuse ramped up so he could keep her feeling like a possession but also keep her quiet.
“And A is horrified by all of this. He gets really defensive, at first trying to explain that he is not that person anymore. She says she knows that, but she feels he needs to know who he was. He gets even more scared and angry and starts telling her that maybe he shouldn’t believe her. Maybe she’s a liar. And then he settles on that theory, firmly accusing her of trying to trick him. She persists. He steps towards her, all his muscles clenched, thinking he’s going to demand she leave his house or maybe he’s going to throw her out or maybe …” The writer looked down at his own balled fists. He paused. The crowd was completely silent. Someone coughed, whispered an apology, and even that could be heard. “And in that moment,” the writer continued, “he realizes she’s right. She is telling the truth. He really was the kind of person who could do such horrible things because he’s displaying it right now. He begins to weep. She steps towards him and pulls his head down into the crook of her neck, not a romantic gesture but an expression of pure comfort. And she tells him that it’s taken her a lot of hard work to not be scared of him anymore, but she’s there now, and she really believes if he confronts this, all of this, the absolute worst of it, he can choose to be a better person. But he has to push himself, she says. He has to be willing to really open his eyes.
“So he decides to do that, and he contacts U and tells her he needs to know everything, and he’ll sign whatever she needs him to sign. He tells her he is willing to meet wherever she feels comfortable, and that lets her know he’s at least aware of some of what he did. She agrees to meet with him at a bench between the courthouse and the police station where she will feel safe.
“And when they meet, he starts by apologizing for all the things he’s learned about. And, to his amazement, she tells him some part of her really does want to get back together. She loves him and wants to work it out. Or she wishes she could. She used to love him, anyway. She’s not sure. She needs him to understand that it’s worse than he knows. ‘I know you aren’t … him, anymore. But that doesn’t erase what he did,’ she says. ‘A, the accident that caused your amnesia? It wasn’t your first car accident. It was your second. When they found you after the second accident, the tox screen showed you were drunk and high. You were trying to forget. Because you didn’t want to remember the first accident. It was just you and our two girls in the car, and that time you were sober, but you turned around in your seat to hit one of the kids. You never told me which one. Maybe you weren’t sure. Maybe both of them. And when you turned, you must have twisted the wheel, and the car flipped, and…’ And U is looking down at her hands in her lap, and they’re shaking, and A wants to take her hands but he’s afraid to touch her now, afraid of himself and her reaction to the man who murdered her children, and … “
The writer looked up quickly, then slowly scanned the crowd. “And that’s all I’ve got so far. I’m not sure how it ends. So one thing I do when I get stuck in a plot like this is take some time to think about who the characters are, and then I let them guide me and tell me what they do next. So let’s go back to those ideas about their names.
“I think I’m going to call A “America.” It’s perfect for him. A lot of people don’t even know where the name “America” comes from. It’s not a Native American word. It doesn’t come from any of the people of the nations who were already in America. It doesn’t come from the British who landed in Plymouth or Jamestown. It’s not from the Spanish who conquered Florida. No, it comes from an Italian map maker. I guess he decided if he was making the map, he could put his name on there, so, like our character, America doesn’t have a real connection with America. So that seems like the right name.
“And U is the people of the United States. She has suffered so much at America’s hands. The beatings. The rape. The murder of her children. And she’s all of us. She is the Native people who had their land stolen, their culture stolen, their languages stolen, their bodies raped, their children killed. She is the Black citizens who had their bodies stolen, their basic humanity unrecognized. She is the women who have always been treated as less worthy, their rights dribbled to them one at a time, each new right presented as though it should be enough. She is the immigrants who came from all over the world and were told they would find freedom and opportunity only to find themselves in one of the least equal nations on Earth, and then told the only way for them to get ahead here was to take part in burning the bridges behind them, mistreating the next immigrant to be more accepted by the ones who came before. She is the white worker who is told she has to be afraid of every person of color who wants to take her job, take her house, rape her, and kill her, so she needs to keep them down in every way she can. And yes, she is even the most wealthy billion-heir who is also miserable because she’s been told she has to work a hundred and fifty hours a week clawing her way up the corporate ladder and stepping on everyone beneath her or she’ll lose everything. That sense of constant desperation and dread, in a country so wealthy that no one ever needs to feel it or hurt anyone to have their basic needs met? That’s her. That’s United States.
“And W is White Supremacy and Patriarchy. He does what he’s always done. He tells America that he’s great, not because that helps America. It’s clearly not helping him repair his marriage. No, White Supremacy and Patriarchy tells America that he’s great because keeping America ignorant of who he is preserves, protects, and promotes White Supremacy and Patriarchy. White Supremacy and Patriarchy doesn’t serve white people. He doesn’t serve men. White Supremacy and Patriarchy lies to everyone and harms everyone to protect himself.
“B, of course, is Business. Business admires ruthlessness and appreciates profit because, in our system, he’s literally, legally not allowed to care about anything else other than maximizing his shareholder’s returns. He doesn’t have to be that way. He’s not in other countries, But here, Business is legally obligated.
“And what about P? P is Protesters. She’s you. Y-O-U this time. Protesters love America, and she also feels guilty about that love. Once she did the work to get over her own abuse, she could see America for what he was. But she loves him anyway and wants him to be better. She is the one who conquers her fear so she can hold America up and tell him he needs to know his past even when he doesn’t want to.”
Then the writer looked down and shook his head. “But I still don’t know how it ends. Even after Protesters tell America he needs to learn the truth about what he has done, what he has created, the situation in which he still finds himself, and even after he decides he wants to be better, how does he possibly reconcile with United States? How do they become The United States of America after everything she has gone through? Once he knows, how can he even dare to ask to make The United States of America whole? How can he expect her, after everything she’s suffered, to ever trust him again? I don’t know how this story ends.”
“Therapy!” someone yelled. It took everyone by surprise, and a ripple of laughter spread through the crowd.
“Truth and reconciliation commissions!” someone else yelled.
“Reparations!” someone added, and that got a smattering of “Yeah!”s and “Amen!”s.
The writer smiled. “I agree, but long therapy sessions aren’t a fun ending to a book. They’re just hard work. Seriously, though, I recognize that I will have to come up with fictional names. I know my writing is never subtle, but this is some Pilgrim’s Progress level didacticism. I can change the names so it’s not so heavy-handed; the reader will get the metaphor, right?”
Then he pointed at the counter-protesters on the other side of the lawn, the ones wearing and waving a mixture of American flags and the flags of countries the United States defeated in wars. “I just want us all to remember the sympathy we felt before we knew America’s name. He didn’t know his own history at first. And then he didn’t want to know, and we still felt for him. He got defensive and even dangerous because he didn’t want to know his own history, and we all understood. This is hard stuff to know. It’s a lot to carry. The reader will get that, right?”
He inflected as though the question was rhetorical, but a woman in the front surprised him. “No,” the protester said. “Keep the names. They won’t see it because they won’t want to see it. We’re all here because we know we have to tell them.”
