multitasking

These days, there is no current high-octane panic. Instead, it’s replaced with a low hum of ambient rage. I overhear a group of men on a zoom call talking about how women’s unemployment has dipped back down to where it was in the 1980s. I take a drink and feel the wine hit the bottom of my stomach. Someone says, Well, somebody’s gotta take care of the kids and I know it looks like I’m just one woman in a one-bedroom apartment, sitting in one room with one black cat in front of me, but really, I’m seated atop a jeweled throne befitted with daggers, one for each person that says this type of shit.

No words have I to process the backwards landslide that is/was progress for women in public spaces and places. No words to label the rage I feel when a friend receives an email reminding her to please make sure her kids don’t make an appearance during virtual meetings when it happened on one occasion. No words for the shaking anger at the gaslighting and denial that keeps people from believing that a man, banging on a door, barging into an office, shouting WHERE IS SHE over and over could feel like last moments before the bad thing happens. Again.

There are places to scream. Yes, we scream. Yes, we need to scream. Thank you.

But pay us money. Pay mothers. Value the tip of the iceberg of unseen work we do when we attend the PTA zoom while making dinner, when we soften our voices when the kids make an appearance in our zoom meetings, when we make sure there is coffee for the morning, when we tuck them in again and again. Pay us for our care since money is the only currency you value. Pay us for pushing you out of our birth canals you seek to control, pay us for that too. Send money to mothers. Send money directly to black mothers and watch as maternal health and birthing outcomes improve. Send money to mothers and see how carefully it is spent.

Write the truth about it all first, then push push push for policy that compensates us for the life force we create and maintain every damn day.