What you are about to read is an excerpt from WOMN, a collaborative effort of the women of Minnesota who kept showing up during Operation Metro Surge, holding the grief, the rage, the tenderness, and the fierce love that women know so well.
This month we are sharing stories from the chapter “It Takes a Minnesota to Raise a Child” detailing stories of how womn showed up to mother other people’s children during the surge.
If you see yourself in these pages,
Pass it to the woman next to you.
I’m not ready for this.
Each day, Lorraine had to pep-talk herself to go into the school building. The original plan was to get her hysterectomy just before winter break, and come back in late January. She’d said goodbye to her students before she left knowing she’d come back to a new semester, a new class roster, and a fresh energy.
She came back to a new energy, all right. But it was more icy than fresh.
Before she left, she had upwards of 30 kids, actual human bodies sitting in desks in each of her classes. But after Renee Good died, the school offered online learning, and most of the kids took it. Lorraine was lucky to get five in-person students, and another ten or so as bubbles on her computer screen, most of them with cameras off. This was like COVID, only far, far worse.
A queer white woman and a white man died, but this isn’t just about two white people. This is about every kid that’s sitting on my computer right now in a black bubble, not wanting to show their faces. I MUST do this.
After Alex Pretti was killed, more students disappeared entirely. Ghosts. Truant, according to school records, but Ghosts was how Lorraine felt about them.
She was no stranger to ghosts. Her husband had died unexpectedly last May. And now, her own belly felt inhabited by the ghost of her uterus. The hallways that used to overflow with noise were now haunted with ghosts of students.
I can do this. I MUST do this.
When she saw Maya come around the corner four classrooms ahead, Lorraine felt her eyes fill before she could blink the tears back. A ghost materialized into full human form.
By the time they reached each other, Maya’s face was already wet. Neither spoke.
Fuck it, Lorraine thought to herself as she opened her arms wide a few steps before they met. This was not a time to uphold appropriate teacher-student boundaries. This was a time to be human, together. Besides, Maya was Lorraine’s student last year, not anymore.
“How’s it going?” Lorraine asked.
“ICE won’t give my dad his meds.” Maya said as she collapsed into Lorraine’s arms.
Lorraine felt it instantly, Grief’s cold icy fingers squeezing her heart up through her throat. She knew that if she didn’t swallow it, she could erupt in a gush of uncontrollable tears.
So she didn’t speak. Instead, she hugged Maya closer as she swallowed, and swallowed again. And then she blinked, and blinked again to force the wetness back into her tear ducts.
Maya noticed.
And Lorraine knew that Maya noticed. But she didn’t care.
“I saw your GoFundMe,” Lorraine said, “and donated in my own name cuz I wanted you to know it was me.”
Maya nodded. Grief was still gripping.
“Well then,” Lorraine said.
I have to be the grown-up here.
She pushed a twinkle into her eyes and held Maya by the shoulders as she said, “What are we going to manifest?”
And poof, Grief let go as if Lorraine’s words became a pixie dust charm that brought Maya’s familiar sparkle back to life.
Manifesting was Maya’s thing. Last year, before all the things that happened, Maya would bring up manifesting at least a couple times a week. She dropped it casually into class discussions and civics debates as if manifesting should be on the curriculum for Lorraine’s government class.
“You helped me manifest a house for my family,” Lorraine said, “the least I can do is help you manifest your dad getting his meds.”
A year earlier, just months before Lorraine’s husband died, she entered a lottery for low-income first time homebuyers to get a house on auction for half-price. She didn’t think she could qualify, but Maya encouraged her to manifest it. Lorraine won the house, and told Maya that her Buddhist spiritual guidance had helped her get into the mindset she needed to be able to receive such a gift from the universe.
So now Maya was the one needing the manifestation powers, and Lorraine was happy to be the one believing in the possibility when Maya had doubts.
“We can find good in this,” Lorraine suggested, “Not like everything’s fine. But we can find it.”
Maya nodded, and swallowed slowly. They stood in the hallway, frozen in the moment until they both were jolted by the sound of the bell.
“Manifest.” Maya said as they parted ways to go to their separate classrooms.
The first thing Lorraine did each morning before logging into her online class was check her roster to see which kids, if any, had been dis-enrolled. She’d always pause on José’s name. She’d had José last year and was looking forward to having him in class again this year. He had dreams of being a first generation college student and becoming a math teacher one day. She hoped whatever it was that stopped José from coming to class wouldn’t stop him from one day inspiring the youth of the world to find adventures and fun in imaginary numbers and quadratic equations. José’s body had vanished from her world, but his brilliance and dreams of becoming a math teacher one day were left hovering in the air like the residue of a popped bubble.
When she did open the online classroom, two smiling faces always greeted her, cameras on. Nadia’s mother and Lucia’s mother had both been taken by ICE and were being held in a detention center in Texas. Neither girl knew when she’d see her mom again.
“Good morning, Nadia.”
“Hey Ms. P.”
“How’re things?”
“We’re okay.”
Lorraine knew Nadia was speaking for her family, not just as a polite greeting, but almost as a prayer, or perhaps a promise she was making to Lorraine or to herself and to her absent mother.
“Hola Lucia.”
“Yo, Ms. P.”
“How are you?”
“We’re okay, Miss.”
Lorraine looked forward every day for Nadia and Lucia to be in class. It made her self-pep talks worth the effort.
We’re okay, Miss became a mantra Lorraine repeated to herself as she walked through the empty school hallways, her heels click-clacking on the tile floors and echoing off the locker walls like a heart-murmur.
Her students needed her.
So she kept showing up, because she’s a teacher and that’s what teachers do.
We’re okay, Miss.
And Lorraine, who had lost more in the last year than she thought a single human could hold, believed them.
This is an excerpt from WOMN- a book about the women of Minnesota and what Operation Metro Surge made of us.
It’s a mutual aid effort — written by us, for us, moving hand to hand the way love does when it’s real. New excerpts will be released as I write them, every Tuesday, here on Fierce Love. When the manuscript is complete, I plan to release it the grassroots way. Self-published, and supported by grief at grounding community gathering events and independent bookstores.
If this chapter found you, it found you for a reason.
If you want to support this effort, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers will receive full chapters (not just excerpts) with my author’s commentary about my process and experience at least once a month.
Please add your voice by sharing in the comments. I’m listening. We all are.
That’s how this works.
That’s how we work.
I love you fiercely,
TeriLeigh 💜