(If you have not yet listened to Part One, that is here)
Janet was dreading Thanksgiving this year. She dreaded it every year. Holidays made her feel a sense of foreboding. What was coming next, she thought, how much worse could it possibly get?
It had been a rough few weeks for Janet and countless other women in the country. She barely remembered election night except that at some point, she rooted around in a closet, dug out her ex-boyfriend’s electric razor, and … shaved her head. Did she really shave her head?
As she lay in bed, still too depressed to make coffee, she ran a palm over her scalp and felt the stubble. She’d actually done it. She’d shaved it all off. And how could she have forgotten? One morning, she stumbled into the market in her bathrobe and was greeted with sympathetic stares by the cashier. No, it wasn’t the election they were referring to. They all thought she had cancer.
“Can I do anything for you, dear?” One of them said, touching Janet’s arm. ”You can get me a new president and a better country,” Janet had snapped back. The woman’s face melted from concern to a shared knowing of the tragedy that had just taken place. Janet could see her working it out in her mind. Janet was one of those women who shaved her head after the election.
Well, so what? Janet thought as she clutched her robe tightly around her body before ducking back into her house, slamming the door behind her. The only reason she’d gone out was that she’d emptied every wine bottle in the house, and now, she needed another glass. Yes, it was the morning, no, don’t ask her about it. Janet knew that if there was any time to remain permanently drunk, this was it.
What a terrible night that was. November 5th. She figured the election would be close but Rick Wilson had assured her that Trump would lose and lose badly.
She’d watched the results come in until she heard the independents flipped to Trump in record numbers. That was when her heart sank. It was like watching the Needle at the New York Times flip from Hillary winning by 95% to Trump winning by 95%. Now, the needles were all pointing Trump’s way again, all of the swing states.
How could this be happening? After all the ways the Democrats and the media showed the American people how evil and monstrous Trump was? Now, she had to wait months for her hair to grow out. What had she done?