!!!***WORKING DRAFT***!!!
My parents insisted I find something, anything, that would “look good on my resume” during August. “Honey, you can’t just sit around all day here. Your friends from school, Lizzie, J, P, all of them, have jobs. Mike – we never see Mike anymore, he’s off working at that swim club everyday now. Why don’t you call up the hospital, see where you can volunteer, maybe you can do something that would help when you apply to grad school.” My mother had never stopped telling me what to do, even when I showed I could get good grades and avoid trouble in high school. I thought getting into Radcliffe would end all that, but apparently not. Dad, usually willing to let his baby girl do what she pleased, stayed silent.
While I didn’t wear a white-and-red smock, they still called me a “candy-striper” at Cincinnati General Hospital. The campus sprawled over several blocks, full of ancient stone buildings, sweltering in the middle of summer. I spent the day pushing patients into X-Ray, or upstairs from admitting, sometimes delivering charts or equipment. Occasionally, I got to take kids to the pre-op ward, for a tonsillectomy. Listening to the little ones chatter, I marveled at how a five-year old simply takes life as it comes, without fear or worry. My heart sank whenever I heard a parent chase away non-existent demons. I wished they’d let the kid be a kid; they’re perfect just the way they are.
Denise and Arlene stayed behind while Eddie and I drove that old VW beetle through Indiana to Chicago the last weekend of August. Along the way, he told me what to expect.
“We’re staying with someone I met last year at the SDS convention, Howard Lehrman. I think you’ll like him – he just graduated from Williams, is headed to Harvard Law this fall. His parents have a place along the lake, in one of those apartments north of the city. They’ve left town during the convention. We can take the “L” from there right to the International Amphitheater, where the Democrats are meeting. Free room and board, easy in, easy out.”
At first sight, Howard resembled a Russian revolutionary. Wild wiry hair sprouted above his eyes, made smaller by thick, square wire-rim glasses. A mustache and goatee framed thin lips, atop which perched a flaring hawk nose, Baggy, wrinkled khakis, a faded thin denim shirt and red bandana around his neck attempted to hide his patrician North Side roots. His thick veined hands, smooth as porcelain, emphasized his never-ending observations on everything that entered his head. Velvet toned, methodical and persuasive, he already possessed an assurance that his views were right and just.
Not waiting for an introduction, he looked at me, smiled, and said, “Sarah Jane, is it? I thought you were Eddie’s little sister. You don’t look like a Janie. What should I call you? Jane doesn’t sound right, you don’t look like my stodgy old aunt. Can I call you Sarah?”
Eddie cautioned, “Howie, I already told you, she’s got a boyfriend, from Wesleyan.”
Howard snorted, “Middletown. Really, how can you, Janie?” I sensed his eyes rove up and down my profile, assessing, judging. I tried to catch them, hold him steady on my face. Sitting down, he went on, “Psych major, huh? Where are you going with that?” Not waiting for an answer, he got up again, started pacing, and finally told us, “Right, let’s meet up with some people, figure out our plan.’
Soon, the apartment filled with cigarette smoking sloppily-clothed young men, and a few languid girls, stringy long hair hiding their sullen faces. They talked only of “strategy” and “tactics”, what phrases they might chant, posters they would hold, and expectations of tear gas and arrests.
Monday, the first day of the convention, we reconnoitered the park outside the Amphitheater. Helmeted police set up steel fencing across the streets. Others on horseback kept onlookers away. I noticed apprehensively the long slick black clubs dangling from their belts.
“They sure look ready for a fight,” Howard observed.
That evening, our little clan of protesters attempted consensus. Some, including all the women, asserted we should stand with the other protesters, resolute but non-violent. Others, the majority led most vocally by Howard, advocated for a more aggressive posture. My brother, Eddie, was oddly quiet during all the talk.
“The time is long past to play Gandhi. We have to push back, bring the fight home to them. Our brothers are dying in Vietnam. What are we afraid of?” Howard boomed.
The talk turned to self protection. Bandanas moistened against tear gas, which could also be used to cover our heads, so the pigs couldn’t drag us by our hair. No belts or pens, as those would be taken away at the jail. Sneakers, not loafers, to make running easier. Tuesday would be a practice run, feints and taunts, but trying to avoid direct confrontation. I stayed close to Eddie, feeling out-of-place in my cotton blouse and skirt. Eddie must have noticed, as we stopped to buy a pair of jeans for me on the way back to Howard’s place. I’d never felt right in them; to fit my hips and shorter legs, they ballooned around my thighs. But I didn’t want to stand out, so I went along.
On Wednesday, the day Eugene McCarthy would finally be denied the nomination, we joined the massed crowd outside. More and more people came, filling the confined space cordoned off by the steel fences, our designated protest area. Suddenly, some of the bigger guys clambered up and over, while others shook and pulled the barrier down. I felt people all around me surge, moving towards freedom. I tried to stay, to swim against them, afraid of the police rushing at us, raising billy clubs and shields. Horses neighed, rising on hind legs, snorting and spitting. The leading edge of our group, the first across the now prostrate fence, were grabbed, beaten, and yanked by their limbs or hair, to a grassy area across the street, where squat vans awaited. Some willingly went in, others were more forcibly tossed. I lost sight of Eddie in the melee. I screamed his name, feeling terrified and alone.
As I stopped, spinning around, looking for me brother, who should have stood out in the crowd, his wiry Jewish hair atop his lanky frame. Fighting the mob, I was pushed, shoved, pulled in all directions, finally falling down amongst the rampaging feet. A sharp clang reverberated in my skull, followed by bright flashes, and then darkness engulfed me.
I don’t know how long I lay there, but when I was aware again, Eddie, seated on the asphalt, was holding my head in his lap, rocking back and forth while holding his bloody shirt across my forehead. “Oh, my God, Janie, oh my God. Franny’s gonna kill me, she’s just gonna kill me.”
I wanted to reassure him I was OK, not to worry about mom, she’d understand, but the pounding in my head overpowered that attempt. I let him pick me up, hold me steady as we slowly walked away.