Megan Okonsky

The Dog Survived

It’s impossible to know if the dog could identify her mother’s blood in the grass. By that, I mean her human mother. People—particularly stressed new mothers of human babies who are already feeling underappreciated—don’t like when humans call pets their “sons” or “daughters” or “babies.” But for all intents and purposes, Binx had a human mother, and her blood had been spilt across the wild grasses outside of the cabin.

The blood’s metallic smell wasn’t overpowered by the dew that was forming. The blood clung desperately to the grass and the pathways, shining in drops that formed in dead patches of dirt. It showed off. It begged to be found, to be admired. Binx had a great nose, but a tiny brain, and her nose plunged into a puddle of blood close to the house. The movement of the liquid scared her, and she threw her head back, hound snout first. Slap-slap-slap-slap. Her ears were so big that they smacked each other under her chin as she tried to shake off the blood. The blood mostly flew off, onto the dirt pathway, into the lifting fog. Small drops landed on her ears, patches remained on her wet nose. If Binx had been interested in listening to the sound of the morning she might have heard the tinkle of her tags echo into the morning, not quite reaching the cabin. But Binx wasn’t interested. She was tired, the kind of tired that pulled her eyes in different directions and made her (human) mother laugh. She wanted to sniff the blood and she wanted to sleep in her bed.

The door to the cabin wasn’t locked because it had been kicked off its hinges the night before. Binx had been too far away to hear it. She trounced over the wooden door, avoiding the broken glass that had shattered underneath it. Silence followed, consuming the cabin as Binx paused. If you squinted, she might have blended in with the living area: the brown in her coat matched the wood throughout the floors and the walls. Her brindled legs—black and white, from the 25% blue tick hound her mother uncovered in Binx’s DNA test—could be mistaken for the cowhide carpet on the floor. At least, it could be mistaken for the carpet the night before, when it was clear of pink tubes of intestine cutting through it. Binx regarded the remains. She didn’t know they were human, tiny brain and all, and she didn’t explore. They ran a few inches away from her feet, and the smell was not of another dog or of meat. With a final sniff for reassurance, Binx trotted away and into the kitchen, where she curled up in her bed and finally slept.

Terrible, terrible things happened at the cabin the night before. But rest assured, the dog survived.

Chapter 17

11:20 p.m. The time was pasted on top of a picture of Sweet Potato Grace. The picture was a drawing, one Wanda made during the pandemic when there was nothing else to do besides take up a hobby. In the drawing, Potato’s jaw hung open, revealing her sharp little teeth. She looked up with pleading eyes. I wish I had given her more treats when she looked at me like that.

11:21 p.m. Above the time, my phone displayed the date: October 3rd. My birthday was in 39 minutes. As a birthday gift to myself, I forgave myself for the late-night indecision. Should I call Mars? Should I not?

Mars deserved a call. Spoken word was her preferred way to spread the news about a party or an adventure down to a watering hole or whatever they planned to do that day. But I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the phone that night, taking Mars away from her friends and the fire, just to ask her such an embarrassing question:

Can we keep what I told you tonight a secret?

I felt guilt and confusion and shame in a sticky sort of way that kept me from coming out of the closet, seeing the light, or facing the pitchforks. Yet, I felt guilt and confusion for hiding, too. Telling Mars felt like a peek into the outside world, but I didn’t feel ready to swing open the door and blind myself with ridicule, or freedom, or both.

I had planned to come out after college graduation. Really, I did. Even if I had to keep things a secret after telling Mama, I had planned on telling her. I hadn’t expected COVID to send me back home and I hadn’t expected her to throw me into a full-time job at Swear-It’s. Life moved so fast and so slow during COVID that no plan seemed right. I couldn’t be myself and work at Swear-It’s and keep my Mama happy and look for other places to live. It just wasn’t possible.

It was so easy for everyone online. “Mom, I’m gay.” “Dad, I like girls.” “I have something to tell you…I’m transgender.” Hugs and happy tears follow. No tut-tuts or wringing hands or reputations that follow you like a weight around your ankle. No reputations that follow you like they followed Roger. If I let myself dream, I didn’t dream about texting Mars that night.

I dreamt about texting Roger.

Roger Lindsay was Tombstone’s resident handyman, caretaker, and homosexual. His mother was my health teacher and his father was a handyman who died of a heart attack while Roger was traveling the world. Oh, the tales he told about street merchants and spicy foods and boat rides across the ocean. He had been living in Austin, Mama told us, until he hit 50, and he came back to Tombstone to care for his ailing mama. For that, if only that, Mama respected him. And his precision when taking on repair jobs. On the rare occasions when Mama couldn’t fix a broken who-knows-what in the house or the shop, she would call Roger.

“He’s a fruit who has chosen a life of depravity,” Mama once told us with flared nostrils, “but he knows a hell of a lot about plumbing.”

“I thought euphemisms weren’t allowed in this house,” Nene Miriam replied as she scooted past.

“The point is, Roger’s decent because he keeps all that stuff private. If he hadn’t been photographed for the Texas Tribune at one of those rainbow sin marches, no one would even know he was living that way.” She shook her head. “Disgusts me, but having to call a plumber in Bloat Hill disgusts me more. “ Eight-year-old Fanny was disappointed when Roger turned out to have inadequate advice on walking in heels (“like the rest of this godforsaken town,” she pouted.) I, however, found Roger’s breadth of knowledge fascinating. Every time he laid a pipe or tamed a screw - don’t tell Nene Miriam he did any of this - I was by his side. Off the counter, my little legs would dangle, safe in the cosmic knowledge that Roger’s and my souls were compatible in a way I couldn’t describe. I miss the candy bars we would split and the stories he would share.

I had to beg once to watch him fix a leak. The day before, I borrowed a documentary about Pride from the public library and snuck it into my room. The sight of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera set alight a curiosity and a feeling of kinship I couldn’t quite explain. I had to know what they had done to get on the cover of a DVD. Roger would know. He knew everything.

Roger was under the sink when I asked him about it. “Roger? Who is Marsha P. Johnson?”

“We don’t all know each other,” he said, quick as a whip. He didn’t pause or look away from what he was doing - just kept on wrenching.

“What?”

“Oh, I’m just being silly. Where did you learn about Miss Marsha?”

“She was on the cover of a DVD. It had one of those big rainbows like you’ve got on the inside of your toolbox.”

Roger took a deep breath and slid out from the sink. If I ever get the chance, I would love to ask him what was going through his mind.

“Hmm,” he finally said, “Did they show this at school? What grade are you in now?”

“Fourth. Mrs. Novak is my teacher, but she didn’t show it.”

“Ha! Like heck she did!” Roger said, throwing a bolt into a bucket. “Cassidy hasn’t looked my way in 10 years, not since I got back from living in Austin.” He sat up, leaning my way and lowering his voice. “Do you want to hear a piece of teacher gossip?”

“Yes!”

“Cassidy Parker, before she went off and married that oil man, was my senior prom date.”

My scrunched face sent Roger into a howling laugh.

“Oh, I knew I was a Friend of Dorothy, Pinky. I had known for a long time! But Cassidy would have thought I was talking about Dorothy Braun in the year above us. Oh, what a hoot. I was the only man at Tombstone High that year who bothered to match her corsage to her dress. Lime green. I still shudder to think of it.”

“Who’s Dorothy?”

“Some people will tell you Dorothy Parker, but don’t let those uppity queens fool you. ‘Friend of Dorothy’ started with The Wizard of Oz and those beautiful red shoes.”

Roger enjoyed watching me climb through his codes like it was a jungle gym. “It means I’m gay, Pinky.”

“Is that why you went to Austin? Because…you knew Dorothy?”

“That's why I went everywhere else. Travel is like a mirror, dear. Tombstone is like an ID card with a picture you don’t remember taking and personal information that someone else wrote.” He held my gaze with a paternal sternness I recognized from movies. “There’s family in Austin,” he told me clearly, “but Texas is Texas, okay? Remember that, and be careful.”

“Mama says there isn’t any need to travel because we have everything we need in Tombstone.”

Roger’s face fell. “Everything but a good place to get Indian food and…” He stopped himself. “No, Tombstone is a nice place, I suppose.” He went back to work.

Roger never said a bad thing about Tombstone, not really. He never said a bad thing about anyone his whole life. People never offered him the same courtesy. Especially not Mama. The day after I asked him about Marsha P. Johnson, Mama found the DVD and called Roger on the phone. She shook the whole house with her shouts and spitting rage. I cried into my pillow that night, unsure of how to defend myself without confronting an unfamiliar feeling of shame.

But I’ve never cried harder after Roger passed away. Matthew Ernst broke the news. “Did you hear that old fag died?” he told people on the playground. I heard him from across the blacktop.

“Don’t say that!” I said, stomping over to him.

“He died last week,” Matthew told me, looking me straight in the eye. “No one knew because he lived alone. His cats were eating his face.”

“Stop it!”

“My daddy said that’s what happens to old fags. They die alone. No one loves them.”

I ran to the nurse’s office, not sure if I was short of breath because I didn’t like to run or because I was crying louder than I could breathe.

Roger had died of a heart attack, one year after his mama’s death. Neighbors found out because they saw his indoor cat roaming the streets. I overheard Brenda talking to Mama one day about it at Swear-It’s. At the mention of Roger, Brenda shook her head and looked to the floor.

“Caring for a parent is difficult, Irene. Maybe he died of a broken heart.”

Mama shot back by saying, “His mother certainly did, seeing who he turned out to be.”

I may have been raised to believe that men were terrible, but that wasn’t true of Roger. He was the closest thing I had to a father and that’s why I just wish I could have asked him what he thought about my new friends. What did he think about what Mars told me that night? And what I told her? And what I felt?

How could I explain it? I know my body’s filled with organs and blood and cells, but with Mars, I just feel every hollow space filled with the desire to be close the distance between us. I felt that way when we were half a town away or sitting right next to each other. What was that, Roger? Was that what I thought it was?

A few nights prior, Sweet Potato Grace had begun to show up in my dreams. I don’t know what happens when people die, but I hoped that Roger could show up in the same way. I decided to sleep on my question to Mars.

“You would have loved Roger, Sweet Potato Grace,” I said to my phone screen. Those angry eyes. She always looked impatient, no matter what time was displayed on the screen.

11:25 PM.

Introduction

Kamala. Tulsi. Marianne. Elizabeth. Amy. Kirsten. In 2019, these six women stepped up to the plate and announced their run for President of the United States. They stepped onto a national stage in debates that had seen very few women before them. Watching them gave me hope for me, for my daughters, and for future generations of women around the world.

But lingering around feelings of hope was a full range of emotions: sadness, fear, and frustration. The presence of these six women on a national stage was a reminder that it is unusual to see women on a major party’s ticket. The United States of America had witnessed the vitriol and sexism that Hillary Clinton had faced in 2016. What would a woman, especially a woman of color, be subjected to if they were to run against Trump?

In the eyes of the women running for President, I saw the everyday women who I had encountered throughout my career. Law and non-profit work put you face-to-face with women who are fighting for justice. They are fighting for themselves, their sisters, their colleagues, and women all around the world. Women fight every day, reporting sexual harassment or sexual abuse, unjust pay disparities, and other barriers that had prevented them from exercising and enjoying the rights promised to all people.

The first few months of the 2020 election were historic, but outside of the debate stage, women seemed to be moving backward. When COVID-19 hit, many women felt forced to leave their jobs to care for their children. Unemployment rates for women hit 15.5%. In the final months of 2020, women struggled to get back to their jobs, but still faced serious challenges of balancing childcare responsibilities and regaining the forward momentum that they had in their careers pre-pandemic. Unemployment rates for Black and Latina women significantly trailed that of white women.

The story of women choosing childcare over career, out of choice or out of societal pressure, is not new. Every woman I know has told this story in one form or another. These stories have greatly impacted me and shifted my focus when it comes to the fight for gender equity. This is why I decided to write this book. I cannot sit around waiting for changes to be made in the workplace. We cannot allow stale expectations of men and women to control this story anymore. In 2021 and beyond, we must awaken and rise together.

Equality Vs. Equity Throughout this book, I will examine the stereotypes, mindsets, and expectations that hold women back from achieving gender equity. I choose to say “equity” rather than “equality.” When reflecting on stereotypes and where they come from, we must also reflect on the barriers that have kept these stereotypes in place and the role of opportunity in this journey. Solutions must include policies and strategies that retroactively account for the barriers that women have faced financially, socially, and even physically.

Here’s an example of why I strive for “equity” instead of “equality.” You ask two people to lift 100 pounds. The first person has been training to lift 100 pounds their whole life. They have no problem accessing a gym with weights and a personal trainer who will guide them and keep them safe. When they tell other people that they want to lift 100 pounds, they are congratulated and given protein shakes to keep them fit.

The second person simply hasn’t had those opportunities. They were never allowed in a gym and they couldn’t buy weights. Personal trainers refused to take them on as a client. No one would assume that this person would one day be asked to lift 100 pounds.

Inaccessibility prevents people from realizing their true potential. “Equality” is giving both people the opportunity to lift 100 pounds. Both people in the example could work toward lifting 100 pounds, although the first person is more ready today to lift 100 pounds than the second person. Access to resources and support from others played a huge role in their present abilities. Equity accounts for the shortcomings that a person may have faced in the past. Equitable solutions “even out the playing field.” Women have undergone centuries of discrimination, trauma, and setbacks in the name of systemic sexism. This book will address the ways that we can fight back, and why our mindset should zoom out and look at long-term goals that dismantle and rebuild our entire system.

How Did We Get Here?

Before we talk about solutions, I want to introduce a parallel movement that suggests why we must dismantle and rebuild over smaller strategies. The Black Lives Matter movement has made huge strides in recent years, but still has a long way to go before our society sees justice for all people. In recent years, advocates have called for Band-aid solutions. They haven’t worked. Now, they are calling for larger reforms that reimagine the law enforcement system as we know it. Similarly, women cannot call for Band-aid solutions or try to solve the problems of systemic sexism ourselves. We need large-scale change.

Eight years ago, a movement called for changes in the workplace. Lean In asked women to step out of their comfort zones, ask for higher pay, and walk away from the “myth” that women needed a mentor to succeed in the workplace. The history of systemic sexism in the years that followed, which included the #MeToo movement, challenged the idea that women should shoulder the entire burden of fixing or eliminating sexism. Leaning in does not help women open any doors when those doors have been shut and padlocked for decades.

We are all in this together. Men, women, and all people have to collectively look at our society and how it upholds sexist beliefs, norms, and expectations. Women have long been expected to stay quiet, stay at home, and accept being second-best to the strong, macho man. Our responsibilities have been limited to household chores and rearing children. These expectations still stand, even as women have earned spots in the workforce. Our roles are limited to that of a secretary, even though we have the experience and education to serve on the C-suite.

Societal norms leave a lingering sense of doubt in many women’s minds, especially if they choose to transition into motherhood. When they come home after a long day at work, that doubt doesn’t always go away. Women with partners may not get the support at home (or at work) that they need to balance parenthood and a career. Women without partners have few options: parental leave, fair pay, and other policies are far from guaranteed.

Success, Failure, and Hope

Women have managed to succeed and achieve greater representation in corporate settings, politics, and other spaces. In the second part of the book, I examine the wins that we have made. I attribute many of these wins to the strength and determination of networks and mentorships. The guidance I have received, and the guidance I give to others, allows us to awaken and rise.

Progress is rarely linear. Despite wins in recent decades, the fight for equity has been met with stagnation. The #MeToo movement was a beacon of hope, but the resulting fear and withdrawal displayed by men are a reminder that our strides will be met with setbacks. Women may be represented more on national stages, but when they earn spots in a debate against men, they are still interrupted, disrespected, and expected to resort to stale stereotypes.

Women cannot let these incidents wear us down. Until we dismantle and rebuild our system, we will face microaggressions and other attempts to remain subordinate. Looking to the future, how do we handle these incidents? Do we speak up, or do we brush off these comments and focus on the larger goal? The answer isn’t so simple. Our voices and minds are extremely powerful, but we must rely on our values and aspirations to move us in the right direction. Your journey will look different than your sister or your female colleague’s journey. That’s okay. The ultimate goals of this movement are so much larger than any of us individually.

Along our journey, we may fight for policy change. We may speak out against microaggressions. We may mentor other women or navigate through the corporate jungle gym. All of these wins are pieces of a much larger puzzle. Flexing or bending the system isn’t enough; we must dismantle and rebuild it.

What Does Awakening Look Like?

For years, women have tried to “have it all.” In order to achieve gender equity, we must reimagine what it looks like to have it all. We must refocus our efforts into what we want, and instead speak up for what we deserve. Demanding and getting what we deserve is easier said than done. Hard conversations need to be had. Boundaries need to be set. Demands need to be made. This process starts with you, but our end goals must include larger changes. Remember, our goal is to dismantle and rebuild the system - not simply live within it.

We must transform the mindsets of both men and women if we want to see our goals met in our lifetime, or the lifetime of our children. Men must get onboard, as they are a part of the system, too. Not all men are going to be excited to fight for gender equity - if they were, we would be living in a very different society. Women cannot let these frustrations deter them from moving forward. Gender equity benefits all of us: man, woman, and in between. I have various talking points and actionable items that men and women can use in their daily lives to get the conversation started. These conversations can act as a catalyst for larger movements. Reframing an individual mind can be the first step in reframing the way that we see men and women in society at large.

What Will This Book Do For You?

Throughout this book, you will hear stories from and about women who have undergone the struggles of navigating different careers as professional women. I believe that sharing these stories is a powerful tool that women and men can use to awaken and rise. 2020 has been an isolating year. You may find yourself feeling alone amongst career obligations or instability, childcare pressures or responsibilities, and a nasty, divisive political climate. Rest assured, you are not alone.

Our political landscape, national corporate culture, and society at large have been built using a system designed to push women out of the workforce. Individually, you can try and chip away at the foundations of this system without much progress. You cannot dismantle and rebuild individually. Fortunately, you are not alone. The women in this book are just a select few women who have undergone sexism and harassment, and made appropriate changes to still succeed as leaders in their field. Women all around the country share these stories. If we all try to individually break the foundations of systemic sexism, we will all tire ourselves out. This book aims to be a tool for bringing us all together. Together, we can shake and dismantle the foundations of systemic sexism and rebuild a better system for our children, grandchildren, and future generations. I hope to inspire you to move forward in a way that allows you to live out your ambitions, reach all of your career goals, and collaborate with other women destined to make large-scale change in the world.

The world has been asleep to the true influence and presence of systemic sexism, in every aspect of life. This book looks at how women’s struggle for equity plays out in film, on social media, at wine nights, and on the White House steps. If you have picked up this book, you have probably heard the rumbling of change, urging you to awaken. Now is the time to awaken...and rise.