McMaster Alumni Short Story Contest 2021 Winner

Rebekah Loconte

The Graduation

“And that, Congressmen,” exclaimed Senator Brooks, pounding the table to emphasize his conviction, “is why it is imperative that we return all women over 18 years of age to their sphere of blissful domesticity. This is not only their natural place in society but, given their nurturing instincts, it’s the only one for which they are perfectly suited. Thank you.”

Senator Brooks unbuttoned his suit jacket with his left hand while his right hand pulled up his chair for him to sit back down. The fluidity of these motions identified Brooks as an experienced public speaker who knew that returning confidently to one’s seat was the necessary finale to accentuate the strength of one’s arguments. He drank water from a glass on the table and locked eyes with several male senators who were still nodding their approval at his rousing speech.

The 221st Congressional Committee had heard a fortnight of testimony on the merits of removing women from all public spaces. Sociologists, historians, politicians, statisticians, and other experts had all weighed in on this watershed moment.

Mary sat riveted to her screen, mouth agape with incredulity. As if pulled out of a spell by the media cameras panning over prominent women in the viewing gallery of Federal Hall, Mary double-tapped the screen. It vibrated alert and obeyed her command to call Sophie.

“Eeyello?”

“Sophie! Are you watching this right now?!”

“Hey, Mary. You mean those miscreants in the capital trying to ban us? Hell, no! I turned that crap off days ago. No way they remove women from public spaces. Never gonna happen, Mare!”

“Well, what ARE you doing?!” Mary demanded, amazed that any women in the country would have anything better to do. “What’s more important than watching the fate of our lives play out in real time?”

“I’m being domestic,” Sophie replied, sardonically. “No, but seriously, I got this killer kale and carob muffin recipe. Gotta get the kids to eat their veggies somehow, ya know?”

Mary sat in silence, searching for the right words to convince her friend to turn her screen back on.

Taking advantage of the pause in conversation, Sophie continued: “Listen, Mare, I gotta get this mixer going. Don’t worry about it. We’re not in the 21st century anymore. Like I said, never gonna happen! Bye, hon.”

“Mum? Mum! Are you watching?”

Mary’s youngest daughter was practicing her high-heeled strut in the kitchen.

“Oh…uh, sorry, sweetie. I was just remembering when the Female Affairs Commission made its ruling. It’ll be 20 years this month,” Mary replied, forcing a smile for today’s occasion.

Ignoring her mother’s gauging comment, Joan smoothed out the pleats in her gown as she caught her reflection in the refrigerator’s screen door. “Help me pin my cap on?”

Mary took the cap and bobby pins off the table, walked to her daughter and cleared her throat as she prepared to broach the contentious topic from a different angle today.

“Of course, Joanie. You look beautiful!” Mary beamed as she pulled the tassel over to the right side of Joan’s head. “I only wish I could be there in person to watch you cross the stage,” she whispered and hugged Joan tightly.

Immediately pulling out of the hug, Joan rolled her eyes and countered with, “Mum, don’t start! You know it’ll be live streamed and you can watch it like all the other moms.”

“I know, but, Joanie, don’t you want to do something with all your education?” Mary dropped the pretense and tried to pull Joan back into the conversation and hug.

Joan, side stepping the hug, grabbed her phone off the table and made for the doorway.

“Mum, please stop living in the past! I’m perfectly fine with raising a family and using my education to build up my kids and support my husband someday. The 45th Amendment was real progress. Don’t ruin this day for me, mum!” Joan strutted out of the kitchen.

Trying to salvage the moment, Mary called after Joan hoping her daughter would hear the smile on her face, “Well then, tell dad to take lots of pic — “

The front door slammed shut.

“ — tures.” Mary stood in the middle of the kitchen picking the rubber tip off the last bobby pin. She sighed and threw it in the garbage.

High School diploma: check. Brainwashed daughter: check. Miserable mother: check, Mary thought, as she grabbed a towel from the laundry basket on the counter and began folding it. Like stepping into a coffin, Mary felt the stifling weight of defeat quickly envelop her again. With an hour until the livestream, Mary did a mental checklist of the chores she could accomplish in the meantime to distract herself.

Twenty years had done little to dull the ache from the loss of her freedoms. Since that devastating ruling, CanMerica had picked up the shattered pieces of women everywhere and patched together a new way of being across the country.

Yes, there had been protests. Women were given sufficient time to rave against their perceived injustice but, eventually, the military disbanded the crowds and silenced the voices of the organizers. There were many martyrs.

Once occupying public places became felonious, women took over social media platforms. The feeds became so flooded with outrage and LOV hashtags — Lift Ovary Voice — that men slowly started deactivating their accounts. Some, feeling unable to help, thought it best to remain silent; others were simply tired of hearing ‘hens clucking’.

Mary remembered one co-worker had actually written that expression below her post about changes the Famous Five had made centuries ago. Inevitably, the platforms were bought out by the government and removed on the grounds of inciting riots but not before unofficially being renamed Femmebook and Instagyn by unsympathetic men.

Mary placed the last towel on top of the folded stack, grabbed her basket and went to the basement to get the next load from the dryer. The vacuity of these chores permitted Mary’s mind to constantly wander into the past. Mary despised these memories that plagued her. They were especially oppressive whenever celebratory events occurred. She resented that her sons’ wedding receptions had to be in the back yard for her to attend or that her husband making partner meant that she had to play the role of happy hostess instead of going out for fine dining.

The disgruntled housewife headed back upstairs with her arms full of April Fresh smelling whites, when she noticed something odd in the furthest corner of the unfinished basement. Two flaps of a cardboard box labeled “uni books & essays: keep!” were sticking straight up.

“That’s weird,” Mary muttered under her breath as she set the basket down on a step and walked over to the box. She looked down at the relic from her youth. Full of wasted talent and what-ifs, she hadn’t rifled through its contents in decades. But someone had. Curious, Mary reached overhead and tugged the long string that dangled from the sole incandescent bulb in the ceiling.

Had her husband been looking for an old textbook to help with a case? Given the number of paralegals who worked under him, this was unlikely. Mary knelt down, open the other two flaps of the box, and inspected its contents. As she had remembered, her textbooks from her most engaging classes lay buried beneath a pile of her best essays.

Mary picked the first essay up as if reading the title might solve the mystery of the disturbed box but it was what lay under the essay that was disturbing. It was not another essay as she had expected but her third year Philosophy of Education textbook, Rousseau’s Treatise on Education.

“Stupid,” Mary said as she picked up Treatise remembering how her professor had told the class that Rousseau considered this book the best and most important of all his writings. Initially inspired by Rousseau’s theories, she despised the book about half way through. Mary looked for the dog-eared page she clearly remembered marking to show her dorm mates later.

“How did it go again?” Mary thumbed the book, until it rested on the down turned page. “Ah, here it is,” she read the highlighted passage:

“The whole education of women ought to be relative to men. To please them, to be useful to them, to make themselves loved and honored by them, to educate them when young…”, Mary clapped the book shut. “Still stupid,” she grumbled, refusing to take in such nonsense for a second more.

But why would Joanie read this? Mary wondered as she ran her fingers over the embossed title.

She peered back into the box. She had not noticed that beneath the first textbook lay yet another one. She placed Rousseau’s book beside the box and picked up the second book that lay where essays should have. A Vindication on the Rights of Women by Wollstonecraft.

Mary fondly recalled her Political Theory elective. She had entered it on a whim and gained a deep respect for many of the Enlightenment thinkers. “Back when I thought I might change the world,” she reflected aloud.

Like most university students, Mary did not have time to read every book required on each course syllabus but poured over most of the books and hoped that listening closely to the lectures was enough to do well in the course. Wollstonecraft’s was one of the books she had wagered she could do without, so Mary was astonished when she discovered that this book had been read cover to cover. Inside were highlighted paragraphs and margin notes in Joan’s penmanship.

Feeling electrified, Mary hurdled the laundry basket, took the stairs two at a time, ran to the main-screen of her house and commanded it to call Sophie. It rang for an eternity before her best friend was on the other end.

“Hey, Mare,” Sophie said, dispensing with the formalities, “just popping some corn for the big cere — “

“Joanie’s been reading!”, interrupted Mary breathlessly.

“I guess she’d have to be, to graduate,” Sophie laughed.

“No, my old university books! She found them — she made notes — I thought she was happy with… life”, Mary trailed off, not sure what this discovery meant.

Sophie, knowing Mary only ever needed a spark of flint to come out guns blazing, measured her response carefully. “It doesn’t mean she’s not happy, Mare. Maybe she’s just curious or trying to understand where you’re coming from.”

“No. This isn’t sitting right with me, Sophie. This means something. Maybe it’s a sign or whatever. Like when all those bills slowly took away our rights…well, I mean, maybe this is how it starts!” Mary didn’t really know what she meant but felt something gaining momentum inside her, like clouds swirling into the beginnings of a tornado.

“Mary? The only thing about to start is the ceremony.”

Mary’s eye’s widened. “Yes, that’s it! The ceremony! I gotta go.”

Sophie breathed a sigh of relief feeling that the storm had passed. “Do you want to come and watch it over here?”

“I’m going to it,” Mary said quietly, like she was sharing someone else’s secret. “Joanie highlighted a section about the happiness of individual women and the moral rejuvenation of society being woven together.”

“You know that’s impossible, Mary. Look, we’ve known each other forever so please don’t take this the wrong way, but I — hello? Hello?”

Mary was no longer listening to her friend any more than she was listening to her own thoughts. Mary’s body was moving of its own accord now except there was no plan. It only knew to get the keys to her husband’s car and go to Joan’s high school. She grabbed the car keys off their hook by the door, instinctually swiped her husband’s baseball cap off the next hook, and slipped out the front door. She held Wollstonecraft’s book tightly like it was the winning lottery ticket to a new life.

Mary breezed through traffic without detection from police or Girl Guides, as they were ironically called now: guards who escorted women back home or confined them if they refused. Mary parked up the street from the sprawling brick driveway of Joan’s school. The all girl’s school was the best money could buy and only now did this strike Mary as wasteful spending. Mary shoved the book into the deep pocket of her cardigan, tucked her hair under the ball cap, and walked toward the mouth of the driveway.

What was she going to do anyway? Stop the speeches and read a passage from Wollstonecraft, imploring these young girls to demand a university education? She began to see the rows of fathers, grandfathers, brothers, and uncles that made up the audience. Maybe she would just hang back under the shade of an Elm tree and watch her daughter cross the stage. After all, hadn’t that been what she said she wanted?

She was 400 feet away from the crowd. The types of flowers lining the stage, the gold balloons filled with confetti, and the crest on the podium were visible now. It was all so beautiful. Think, Mary, she scolded herself.

“Hey!” a young man’s voice called from behind her.

Mary did not look back but quickened her stride.

“You can’t be here, ma’am!” came the voice again, followed by the static of a walkie-talkie. “Security, at the Main Entrance. We have an intruder. Requesting back up.”

Mary moved like an Olympic speed walker now.

“Ma’am! Ma’am! Stop where you are!” the young guard’s voice sounded like one that didn’t want any trouble.

Mary moved into a jog. In her periphery she saw two more guards flanking her like lionesses joining in to narrow the escape route of their prey.

“Stop, running!” wheezed an overweight guard on her left. Mary sprinted and pulled her book from her pocket as if it were a baton she needed to pass on.

A single bullet pierced through Mary’s fourth and fifth ribs striking deep into her right lung. Mary’s hands wildly shot up into the air causing the book to take flight, pages flapping in the breeze. The band’s rousing rendition of the national anthem drowned out the mayhem from everyone else’s earshot.

On the red bricked driveway of Our Lady of Sorrows High School, Mary saw Joan’s row approach the stage and Joan smile. Then her labored breathing ceased as the guards approached her cautiously. The heavy set guard kicked the book away and lowered his weapon, “I thought she had a gun,” he confessed apologetically.

While the third guard radioed for an ambulance, the young guard bent down, picked up the book, read the cover, and looked at Mary.

“Stupid”, he mumbled, shaking his head.
. . .

Thank you to our judges:
Ross Belot
Richard Carter
Haider Khan