— A spectacular personal narrative by Sophie Hu
Man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal. — (Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey)
History has become lists of numbers and letters, a timeline on the pages of a dog-eared textbook passed from one student to the next. The American Revolution of 1776, the Civil Rights Era of 1954-1968. We forget that under the heaps of words and analysis, humans were there. Between the lines, before the capitals and after the periods, people fought, people saw, people cried. Sometimes, we need to understand that we don’t just learn about history to pass the test, but because it matters. The stories of the people matter. Our voices matter in the course of history.
“I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
Our CILT seemed to have paid attention in her English class, because she started off with a hook that was undeniably attention grabbing. And just like that, we all became confidantes to the secret she was imparting, that would change us forever.
CILT stands for Counselor in Leadership Training, essentially a camper with extra responsibilities and authority. Each cabin had at least one CILT. A tall, dirty blonde and smiling seventeen year old was the CILT of our cabin, Double Diamond. So when, while we were cleaning the lodge for our after-dinner chores, she stopped us without her customary smile, everyone knew instinctively that something was off. The brooms were placed on the wall, the dust piles were left strewn on the floor, and we took our seats on the benches that we shoved into the back of the lodge.
The air was thick with more than dust, as she looked us in the eyes, grim and determined.
“Roe v. Wade was overturned today.”
It’s funny how you can expect something to the point of certainty, and it can still come as a surprise. You know it’s coming any day now, but you never think that day could be today. And today was so far from what I expected. I imagined hearing about it from an Apple News spotlight notification, and feeling the righteous rage that was exacerbated by news pundits screaming into the camera.
I never thought it would be at my sleepaway camp, hidden in the crook of the Rocky Mountains. We were sheltered from the outside world, by the rough terrain, by the lack of internet, by being in the present, with each other. Except now, the outside world burst through the fortifications, guns blazing, bombs dropping.
I can spew all this poetry now that I have had time to process, time to think, but at that moment, I had no thoughts. It was just sheer shock, a feeling of emptiness in my stomach that had nothing to do with hunger. No one talked. There were the blank eyed stares, the incredulous smiles, but no words were spoken. Part of me felt that this was some sort of sick joke, like the one about the queen dying that circulated around camp, because no one could deny or confirm it without access to their phones. However, as our CILT continued, my disbelief was eroded away. She explained how the CILTs were told by the counselors, who were the only ones allowed to have phones, and how the counselors instructed them to tell nothing to the campers, because of the sensitive nature of the topic. She disagreed, feeling that as young, biologically female children, we deserved to know the news that could and would shape our futures. And for that, I’m eternally grateful because I didn’t have to receive the news from written words on a piece of paper my sister sent me a couple days later, but from the spoken words of the living, breathing, feeling person in front of me.
Even as we were all sworn to secrecy by the unspoken agreement of snitches get stitches, even as our mouths were shut before our minds knew what to say, we were in silence together. We felt it together and the whispered conversations on bottom bunks during break time was evidence that no one took this lightly.
That was what stirred me. If I had received the news at home, safe in my blue state where abortion rights are protected, I would feel a spark of indignance and disappointment. And like all fires, that anger would have fizzled away into ash. People forget, people move on, as more news stories ding and arrive on a platter for sampling, and the old ones are relegated to the dusty history textbook for tired students and archivists. Only for a moment would I feel that shared anger that people feel when they hear of coups or genocides, happening on the other side of the world. It would have felt a world away, even within the same borders.
But my friends weren’t from New Jersey. They were from Texas, Kansas, Utah. The news wasn’t just news to them. It was now their life. In the Rockies, as physically isolated as we were, we had the warmth of camaraderie to keep us sane. But once we were dragged back into the sea of people and noise, in that barren wasteland of abandonment and apathy, we would drown. When my friends left camp, they would be facing the effects of the ruling head on. Reality was being changed in front of us, and we could do nothing about it.