Free Tomorrow by C. K. Kelly Martin Page A

to the sound of that disapproval. She looked exceptionally small in the distance, which reminded me of Isaac and made me wonder, like I had on and off all week, what would happen at the library art lessons the next night.
    Because opera wasn’t my thing, I wasn’t paying much attention to Arlette initially. But it only took a few seconds to realize that she wasn’t actually singing opera. Her fingers were strumming the chords of what sounded like an old folk song. Bening and Rosine swapped knowing looks and before I could ask them what was going on, the song had captivated me.
    It was about us. The U.N.A. when it had been the U.S.A.
    “From California, to the New York Island
    From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf Stream waters…”
     
    Nearby, someone began to sob. Only one person at first and then pockets of desolation began to spread throughout the National Mall, an inner sadness made audible. I heard someone behind me declare, in a pained voice, “Why is she doing this? Today’s supposed to be a celebration, not a lament.”
    “A lament’s more honest,” a contrary voice said back.
    I glanced over my shoulder, my eyes landing on the face of a man several years older than my mothers. Tears had burnt his eyes a brilliant watery blue, a colour and emotion so arresting that it took me longer to look away from him than it should have.
    Sandwiched between descriptions of the national beauty of the old America, the song kept returning to the simple refrain, “This land is your land, this land is my land.” With every word, the song stung. The Redwood Forest, suffocated. California, deserted. That was U.N.A. reality. Chills inched up my arms as I straightened my back and squinted at Arlette in the distance, remembering she’d been born in San Jose, before Canada had been unified with the United States and before the evacuation of California. Either Bening or Rosine had said so when they’d seen the Du Monde Day program.
    Arlette’s longing for the country of her birth, a place that didn’t exist in the same way anymore, put a lump in my throat I didn’t know how to get rid of. What did it feel like to love your nation that much? I’d been raised to believe the U.N.A. was a colossal compromise of principles. There were so many worse places in the world that eco-refugees attempted daily to reach our shores in hope of obtaining what we had. Food, water, some semblance of security.
    And with all that , it still wasn’t enough. The U.N.A. had to stand for something greater. That was what the grounded movement had drilled into me since I could speak.
    I believed it there and then —standing motionless on the lawn of the National Mall, listening to the cries of people who had lost something dear to them—more than I ever had. This land should be ours. Not the Ros’ and not the government’s. And our lives, for better or worse, should’ve been our own too. Lived in the real world, in real time, not wasted on a virtual universe. A mob near the stage had begun to shout at Arlette, either not realizing they were dismissing their own past or not caring. I laughed soundlessly; we couldn’t even agree on the matter of the land being ours. As wholeheartedly as I believed in a grounded life and true freedom, millions of others preferred force and illusion. There was no true unity in the U.N.A. We were like a random group of people shipwrecked on an island together.
    I’d known that already, but not the way I came to realize it on that afternoon. I probably would have gone to the Billings Library the day after even if I’d never heard Arlette Courtemanche bring people to tears, but she stirred something inside me out on the National Mall during that rainy Du Monde gathering. I didn’t want to wait years, maybe decades, for the U.N.A. to change. If we waited, maybe it would never become the better place we dreamed of. If we waited we would likely only run out of time, run out of oxygen, run out of undamaged DNA to