My Mother Goes to Vote

We walked five blocks to the elementary school, my mother’s high heels crunching through playground gravel. We entered through a side door. Down the long corridor, decorated with Halloween masks, health department safety posters— we followed the arrows to the third grade classroom. My mother stepped alone into the booth, pulling the curtain behind her. I could see only the backs of her calves in crinkled nylons. A partial vanishing, then reappearing pocketbook crooked on her elbow, our mayor’s button pinned to her lapel. Even then I could see—to choose is to follow what has already been decided. We marched back out finding a new way back down streets named for flowers and accomplished men. I said their names out loud, as we found our way home, to the cramped house, the devoted porch light left on, the customary meatloaf. I remember, in the classroom converted into a voting place— there were two mothers, conversing, squeezed into the children’s desk chairs.