N O N F I C T I O N
The Culture of Life
MEGHAN TRASK SMITH
W
HEN THE CHADS let go and the spaces left by their papery corpses officially elected George W. Bush president, I could hear the shouts and screams emanating from the backs of pickup trucks that raced around the flat, dusty campus. These sounds of joy bounced around in my skull and translated into my own muffled groans of defeat. It was early November, fall, but Texas skips this season altogether. The night was warm and heavy. I peeked through my blinds and saw clouds of shredded road and pebbles spewing out from under the tires of the truck screeching out of sight. Before it turned the corner, I caught a glimpse of my classmates in the back, lifting their bare arms to the sky, mouths drawn back into noisy Os, eyes shut tight. Their cheers heralded the rise of the Republicans and George Bush’ s“ culture of life.” Then, in the distance, the sound of gunfire, irregular and celebratory, popped in the darkness. I imagined bullets rocketing into the sky before arcing downwards, a salute to four years of concealed weapons, legislative anti-abortion attempts, and abstinence-only education. The continuation of the Bush line marked the end of my starry notion that Texas held any kind of answer to who I was.
Two years earlier, I boarded the plane to Texas with the determination of its rightness for me that only someone who has no idea what is right for them has. The fact that this silver escape capsule hurtled toward to a place whose roots and accents were deep and utterly unknown did little to undermine my unsupported confidence that I would fit into this new state as comfortably as a foot pushed into a well-worn boot. I had chosen this path because I decided it would work, and this path would work simply because I had chosen it. So there.
I made the decision to leave the chill of New England the moment I brushed the February snow off of my acceptance package. My brother grabbed at the box
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