Heather Anne

6:30 in the morning--Super Tuesday--Amy and I queue up third and fourth at our polling place; the sun is not awake. In front of us a grandfather-type and a woman in mom-jeans chat about the unseasonably warm weather, and I give Amy a look that says we could have been first and second in line if she hadn't needed to put on makeup. She rolls her eyes because everything is not a competition, and steps out of line to read the rules posted on the side of the building. No campaigning within 100 feet of the polling place, I try to tell her, but she wants to read it herself.

With seven minutes left until the polls open, the grandfather-type stands on his toes to look inside the fellowship hall of the Presbyterian church. "Seven minutes!" he shouts to the line that has formed behind him. Thus begins his countdown.

In Slavenka Drakulic's memoir, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed, she remembers the first democratic election in Croatia. For 50 years people had been lining up on election day to vote for the Yugoslavian communist party, as if, Drakulic says, the communist party needed to be voted for. But in 1991, Croatia was an independent country and people were free to vote for whomever they chose. She remembers one man passing by the line she was standing in, waving his hand and saying, "I did it this morning," as if it were laundry, just another thing that needed to get done. Drakulic expected the breath of democracy to taste different, but it's not easy to take the stale out of the air when--for half a century--voting has been nothing more than an invalid exercise of validity.

I think about Slavenka Drakulic as I stand in line to vote. I think about what if I grew up in Croatia or Bosnia and Herzegovina, or would it have been Yugoslavia when I was a kid?

The first time I voted was 1988. My elementary school had a voting machine deposited in the lobby one day and I lined up during lunch to have a go at it. It was tall and wooden, like an old-fashioned phone booth, and when I went inside I got to close a curtain behind me, because I didn't live in The Soviet Union. People are allowed to vote in private in America. The inside was like the cigarette machine that sat beside the juke box at The Waffle House, where we sometimes ate breakfast on Sunday mornings. In the Virgina Slims spot--my mom's cigarette of choice--was George H.W. Bush's name; and in the Marlboro Lights spot--my papa's cigarette--was Micheal Dukakis's name. I didn't know then that Dukakis had worn a silly helmet and posed for a picture in a tank, and that it would go down as the dumbest political move since Richard Nixon refused makeup before his televised debate with the dashing and smartly dressed John F. Kennedy in 1960. What I knew was that my mom called Dukakis a "turkey butt." So I voted for Bush.

I think about my mom, too, as I stand in line to vote on Super Tuesday. I think about telling her when I was a tiny, little girl that I wanted to be President. I think about her telling me no, I'd get shot, just look what happened to Reagan, and Reagan was a good man. I remember my mom telling me, Anyway a woman will never be President of the United States.

Amy steps back in front of me, having now read all of polling place rules on the poster-sized, red sign. I think of saying, "Ma'am! Why are you trying to break in line on election morning! Have you no respect for the men and women that have gone before you to secure your suffrage!" But I don't, because voting makes Amy nervous--the weight of the country on her shoulders. I smile sweetly at her and think gravitas, gravitas and how delicious my Democracy pancakes were that morning.

I think about what "American" has come to mean, and how different that is than the day John Stockton draped himself in the flag after winning the gold medal in the 1996 Summer Olympics. I wonder if "American" will mean the thing it should mean ever, ever again. I do the wonderfully ridiculous bit where I hope.

The man in front of me rocks on his heels, peaking into the voting room. He turns and meets my eyes. And then, he grins. "One minute," he shouts to the back of the line. "Just one more minute."