In the days after birth control was banned, some of us went wild with our hair. We added bright colors and patterns and lobbed off chunks to form spiked pixie cuts. Many of us shaved our heads.
Some of us arrived at the bus station with militaristic go-bags. Many of us brought rifles or handguns. One lady carried a ziplocked bag of crackers and a crisp book of crosswords.
We came from the cities and the suburbs. We were students and teachers, bankers and lawyers, artists and engineers. We were daughters, aunties, wives, mothers and grandmothers. Some of us brought kids: infants sleeping softly in a sling, toddlers asking questions that were easier to answer at the time.
We gave each other symbolic stick tattoos and created protest signs with fat permanent markers. We used flat, flush strokes and didn’t worry about making mistakes. We shivered that cold November morning and were quiet, so very quiet, but there was a charged electricity in the air that made us feel alert and alive.
We sat on the bus in fifteen rows of eight. Most of us were giddy from a lack of sleep. We smelled sweet and faintly musty, like the scent of unwashed clothes mingled with cucumber-mint hand lotion. One of us brought a bottomless bag of breakfast fruit and although the fruit soaked our hands — our hands tough and worn, soft and plump, wrinkled and taut — when the bag came our way we didn’t turn it down.
On the ride we silently wondered: Would we make a difference? Would it matter this time? Who did we think we were, anyway — but if not us, then who?