Moments: Please Let Her Finish

She had come to speak about kidney disease awareness. But that, she would soon discover, was not what people wanted to hear from her.

She is visibly nervous. Her hands shake as she holds the microphone. At first, her voice isn’t clear. A man in the back yells, “speak louder!”

She begins again, “Raise your hand if you know someone who has kidney disease.” A few people do.

“Raise your hand if you know someone who has had a kidney transplant.”

More people raise their hands. People look around to see how many people have responded to the question.

“Raise your hand if you know someone with diabetes or high blood pressure.”

Almost everyone raises a hand. She continues, “Did you know that one of the leading causes of kidney disease is diabetes or high blood pressure?” She enunciates each word, emphasizing her point. No one responds; it is clear from her tone that her question is rhetorical.

She appears to be gaining confidence. She is not a lively speaker but people are listening, or so it appears.

One man at the front of the audience is listening intently. He is wearing a gold hard hat, and a suit. His wooly hair is dyed gold as well and it peaks out under the sides of his hat. He is scribbling furiously in the wrong direction, from right to left, on a legal notepad. She catches a glimpse of him and a look of concern washes over her face.

“I want to work in concert with you all,” she says, “because this is your community and you know what’s best for it.”

A man on the side of the room stands and interrupts.

“So I want to know are you going to bring jobs into the community?” he asks.

Everyone turns in his direction. The chairwoman says, “Sir, please let her finish.”

The man continues. “It just seems like if you’re going to bring a new project into the neighborhood you would think about hiring people who live in the community.”

The speaker looks terrified. “I mean we’re still putting the plan together, but we most certainly would think about getting people from the community involved,” she says. ”That’s why we’re here because we want your support.”

Now, the man in the gold hard hat interrupts her, too.

“Wait,” he says, “no one is talking about the veteran population!”

She looks at him, frazzled, and stutters through the rest of her presentation about kidney disease.

-Keisha Fleming