I am getting ready to go overseas. I’m excited — busily excited. My lists seem to get longer even as I check off my up-teen little boxes. Pick up pills, check. Find passport, check. Wash wool hat, check. Set up phone for international service, not checked. It is the very next task on the morning to-do list: call the Verizon’s International 611 number.
I admit that I’m in a much better mood after talking to my Verizon representative. Trust me, it doesn’t have anything to do with Verizon’s outrageous international rates. After trying to negotiate, argue or find some loop hole. I gave up and settled. Then a funny thing happened. I began talking to my customer representative, who was a real person and not a bot. I mentioned our New England foul weather. She mentioned where she was “it’s 93 sweltering degrees.”
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Montgomery, Alabama,” she replied, “where it’s already way hot.”
“But at least we can still get an abortion here,” I blurted.
I don’t know why I said that or at least what prompted me to say that out loud. And immediately began to anticipate a backlash. Maybe mobs of confederate flag wavers marching to North to close our last Parenthood Clinic? Instead — and there was an instead — my rep jumped right in before my fantasies knew what hit them.
“I know, I know,” she said excitedly, “it’s just so awful. People here are so upset. How can those men tell us what to do with our bodies and our reproductive rights! What if it was their child in trouble, you know.”
And I did know. And here she was making a great, impassioned speech and I couldn’t and didn’t want to stop her. She described protests in Montgomery blocking traffic, holding up signs and crying out in fury. She detailed letter-writing campaigns and described the letter she had just written to her governor. Which reminded her about that governor — “a woman you know” and “how could she have signed such a bill. It’s insane!”
On the other end of our phone connection, I’m nodding like a “ bobble head doll.” She can’t see me, I can’t see her, but we know we’re righteous and indignant togetherness. “I’m too old to have children, “she said. I’m nodding. Me too. But I have daughters. Me too. And my grand girls, they deserve better. They do. They do.
“We fought hard for those rights, didn’t we,” I say.
“Yes, we did,” she agreed.
“By the way, my name is Ruth,” I tell her.
She tells me she’s got a cousin Ruthie. We’re almost kinfolk, she says. And we chuckle.
“I’m Wanda,” she tells me. And suddenly I’m remembering a girl in my fourth-grade class named Wanda. I remember that she sat in front of me but moved away before we ever got to talking. Maybe now I’m making up for it.
“Guess we gotta keep on fighting. What else can we do,” Wanda says. Then she adds, “you know, I’d never have signed that bill. I don’t care how much they pressured me. I’d never have signed that bill.”
“Maybe you should run for governor,” I joke.
But really it’s not that much of a joke. It’s not impossible anymore that Wanda or someone like Wanda might run and win, because there is a ground swell of spirited and defiant women voters.
We’d been on our call for some time when Wanda said, “Thanks for talking to me. I haven’t talked to anyone about all this yet and I’m glad I did. ”
“And thanks for your help with my phone,” I say.
And I do feel helped, glad to know there are people like Wanda in Alabama and elsewhere. Glad to feel that perhaps good and upset folks will be able to put an end to repressive legislation.
“You have a wonderful day, you hear, Ruthie.”
You too, Wanda.
Nice Talking.
Nice talking.
PS. Even though I had just signed on to a ridiculously high fee for a few overseas phone calls and text messages, I gave Verizon a rating of 10 (they texted as soon as I hung up.) Your reason, they wanted to know, “your rep,” I typed.
Ruth Charney lives in Greenfield with her husband and two cats.