Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [120]
As I sat in my room at the Capitol Hill Hotel on the morning of Monday, October 14, 1991, I felt the longing simply to go home, as if leaving Washington and going to Oklahoma would put an end to the entire matter. “We’re leaving this morning. Make sure everyone is ready to leave by ten,” I told JoAnn that morning from my room at the hotel. “But what about the rest of the hearing?” she asked, surprised by my announcement. I explained to her that there would be no additional panel; I would not testify again and the hearing would adjourn.
JoAnn, the sister closest to me in age and experience, was my family contact throughout the hearing. When we were growing up, though nearly four years my senior, JoAnn had had to accompany me at bedtime. When I wanted to visit a burial ground which was located on our farm, my mother instructed the reluctant JoAnn to join me. When I, at eight, was ready to have my ears pierced by our Aunt Sadie, as my sisters Joyce and Carlene had done, my mother and I coaxed the reluctant older sister into doing the same.
Throughout this entire ordeal JoAnn, whose reputation in our family is of one quick to anger, had been a paragon of patience and calm. She did not know where I was but I spoke with her every day of the hearing trying as best I could to keep her informed of the events as they unfolded. And she tried to comfort me, though she, too, must have been angered and confused by it all. Finally it happened. All that I had for days dammed up burst forth like a geyser. Through tears I confessed to her, “I just want to go home.”
The testimony that I had given on Friday provided enough for those interested in hearing the truth to make an informed decision. I struggled to find a reason for a second appearance—something that could be accomplished. Few of the senators had any positive goal for the process. The Democrats were impatient from the beginning, and the Republicans seemed only interested in finishing my destruction. Even as I was preparing to go home, Senator Danforth was trying to publish allegations by Oral Roberts University students. Though I knew nothing of his plans, I decided to go home without testifying again.
Beginning the job of gathering the family together and getting them home, JoAnn first went to my parents. “Is Faye leaving today?” Daddy asked. “I’m not leaving here without Faye,” he declared. She assured him that we would all be leaving. So instead of bracing for another day of testimony, they prepared to travel back to their respective homes (except for my sister Elreatha, who stayed in Washington to spend time with her son, Gary Lee). My parents and JoAnn would head back to Tulsa; my sisters Doris, Joyce, and Carlene and my niece LaShelle to California; and Ray, Eric, Shirley, and I to Norman, Oklahoma. After making arrangements for the care of her toddler, Matthew, Louise Hilsen also traveled with us to Oklahoma to handle the press inquiries.
Our entourage of eleven boarded the airplane together. I sat beside my anxious father, who was on the second airplane flight in his life, and my equally anxious mother, who complained that the portions of airplane food were too large. Connecting to our various destinations in Dallas, we entered the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to the glare of television cameras and the inevitable crowd they seemed to generate. Arrangements had been made for courtesy carts to escort us to our connecting flights, but the hostility of the crowd was evident even before we could be driven away. As we moved through the gauntlet which had formed, we could not avoid the jeers and catcalls. “Shame,” one woman hissed. “Wench,” someone else shouted at me. I could detect only one person who offered support and encouragement. She was at the edge of the crowd as we