Saffron Tagliatelle

A malarial wet portends thunder and the fevered return of memory. I’m on Red Dust passing Union Station. I stop to chat with pro-Choice advocates, five black women, in a tent with a giant QR code and the question-instruction, “What type of feminist are you? Take the quiz.” They hand me a bandana, BANS OFF OUR BODIES. I muse about other such hand-outs and set off passing an anti-abortion rally in front of Lincoln. They are not handing out life-preservers or Life Savers or any other such not-so-clever goodies. A black woman on stage speaks of God’s grace and adds a celebratory nod towards Juneteenth. I scan the crowd for any recoil against the infiltration of wokisme but all I see is clutch of white women in white skinny jeans in matching navy t-shirts tucked into embroidered belts, arms folded beneath their breasts, dyed auburn hair helmeting anxious miens.

I cross Arlington Memorial Bridge and into my recollections. The night before, I’m at a dinner party in a refurbished two-bedroom with twin double hang windows overlooking Georgia Ave. It’s a younger crowd, graduates flush with their first years-worth of paychecks, gathered for a “golden” birthday on the 23rd. Everyone has Americana roots. Family and high school in Dallas, Knoxville, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis. Everyone has global appetites. A passing mention of years spent at an English private school in Shanghai elicit an inquiry into a familiarity with an ex who also went there. A table of ten conducts conversations in Chinese, Hindi, French, Spanish, Dutch. There is no bifurcation, yet, between the intellectual types (who are mostly preoccupied with extremism, domestic and global) and the business set (who seek out “technical” companies and work for Zuck and Musk). One woman asserts Thailand is not run by a military junta. Another interjects, “you are thinking of Myanmar.” Michael and I push back. She retreats into the mystical authority of the state, “I can’t call it a coup state because State hasn’t officially labelled it that.” We introduce our potluck offerings. Michael has made saffron tagliatelle. “Saffron,” he jests, “famously worth more than its weight in gold.” “The key question,” the guest and hostess interject nearly simultaneously, “did you steal it?” “I did actually,” Michael (a perennial good sport) affirms. “Good,” goes the guest, “because capitalism sucks.” So an adolescent thrill that sits awkward like baby fat on adulthood is refashioned as the shofar that brought down the Jericho of inequity. Later, a woman fits her fist into her mouth. A second guest copies her, “I can too!”

I arrive at Mount Vernon. Across from where the tour buses idle underneath oaks, drivers in folding chairs basking in the coolness of the tunnel they’ve created, is a placard acknowledging Ona Judge. Born Martha Washington’s slave, she accompanied the President and his wife to New York and Philadelphia upon his inauguration. They cycled her periodically back to Virginia to skirt a law granting freedom to permanent black residents of the non-slave states. She escaped at 26. North to New Hampshire. She married, had children, died at 75 in 1848. Are not all father’s embarrassed when their progeny inherit their sins?

I’m passing Union Station again, on the tail-end of my ride and the pro-Choice rally is on. Women with signs that hold “A Woman’s Place is in the Resistance” superimposed over a cartoon rendition of Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia gather along its edge. Many wear the BANdanas. Their signs clash with the speakers message. The speaker, a white woman, speaks with calm assurance that those gathered there today are in the majority. Their opponents but a minority, “a loud one.”

At a crosswalk, an older woman on a bike with a side-mirror attached to her helmet approaches from the opposite bank. A car slows but she still brakes. As we pass each other, she looks me in the eyes and says, “you never know.”