Good Morning, America!

The kitchenette was quiet when I came inside and unloaded my breakfast onto the table. I had gotten four hours of sleep, and I was remarkably calm and cheerful as I started to make pancakes and put milk on to warm. It was sunny again for the second day in a row. A gray squirrel ran on the stone fence outside, looking nervously into the window at me before dashing off in a hurry.

Hannah came inside, her hair wet, fully dressed. I was in pajama bottoms and a Madonna University hoodie. “Good morning,” I said, “wow, you’ve showered and everything. I just sat up, threw my hair in a ponytail, and came down here. Aren’t you going to bed after?”

“Yeah,” she said groggily. “But I knew if I didn’t shower now, I never would.”

“Kay. Well, I’m putting the pancakes on now. Do you want hot chocolate? I’m making some.”

“That’s sweet,” she said, sitting down with a sigh. “But I think I’ll be okay.”

“Kay. If you’re sure.” I poked the limp pancake forming in my frying pan. It was thin, more like a crepe than a pancake. You’d think my mum never taught me to make pancakes.

My phone buzzed on the table. “That’ll be Victoria,” Hannah said. “I’ll go let her in.”

She left, and I hummed contentedly to myself. I flipped the pancake. It drooped unhappily, falling in on itself.

“Pancakes,” Victoria said as she came in, fully dressed and almost as awake as I was, “You know that pancakes are good for hangovers? Of course, we didn’t drink enough last night to need pancakes…”

I laughed. “It’s more like a crepe than a pancake,” I said. “I’m making eggs, too. How do you like them?”

Hannah was sitting at the table, looking faded. She had not slept the night before, and on top of Monday’s sleepless night, Tuesday had only given her four hours of sleep.

Fiona came in, a little surprised to see us. “Good morning,” she said as she started to make cereal.

“Good morning!” I said.

“Oh, God,” Hannah said, “you are too happy.”

“Tone it down, Rebekah.”

“I’m sorry. Let me try again. It’s a terrible morning, Fiona. Life sucks. It’s too darn early. Better?”

Fiona laughed. “How’d it go last night?” she asked.

Hannah and Victoria looked at their plates. I returned my gaze to my dying pancake, contemplating.

We had started preparations for the Presidential Election at one, going to the Centra to buy Doritos and plastic wineglasses, Spar for bacon and custard cream biscuits, Mace for gummy bears and bonbons. We had been planning our Election Party since we had all gone out bowling together in October, and now it was time to pull all of the loose ends together. We would spend the night in Victoria’s kitchenette, which has a built-in common room, and then have breakfast in my kitchenette. I was going to make eggs and bacon and pancakes, which was exciting. I hadn’t made a group meal since the slightly disastrous hamburger night in September.

The only problem was the time differences. We calculated that things would start going in America around 10.00 (5.00 U.S. time), and that left us with hours to pass before we could learn what was happening back home. Because it was Tuesday, we went to iCafe, and were surprised by how curious everyone was.

“It’s today, isn’t it? Have you heard anything yet?” everyone asked us, their eyes wide.

“No, not yet. It’s too early yet.”

“Oh. Who do you think is going to win?”

“We don’t know. It’s 50/50. It’s a very even race.” Besides, I thought silently, I’m in the U.K.—how would I know what the Americans are thinking?

“Who do you want to win?”

“We don’t actually talk about that.”

“Oh. Why not? Don’t you want people to know who you voted for?”

“It’s a personal decision.”

They would nod, pretending to understand. The Northern Irish political psyche is vastly different from an Americans. “Well, good luck, for whoever your chosen candidate is.”

I would also nod graciously. “Thank you.” He’s going to need it.

Anem, one of the British girls in our house, joked about it when we saw her. “I don’t need to watch the elections. I just need to look at Hannah’s face the next morning. If she’s unhappy, Obama won, and if she’s happy, Romney did!”

The Americans at iCafe grouped together today for games, shielding each other from the curiosity. When the mediators asked us for team names, one of the Northern Irish girls shouted, “Our team name is Yes We Can—just for you, Stacha!” Stacha, an American studying here for three years to study autism, blushed.

When will it end, we asked each other with our eyes. I sat on my hands and wished for the night to begin.

“Are you going out? To the Parlour?” another person asked. “They’re having a huge Presidential Debate there.”

“No, we’re staying in,” we would say.

“Good luck,” they would say, and again I would nod, and say, “Thank you.”

After the games, red-faced and energetic, we went for doughnuts and hot chocolate, while Cosmin stood up for our usual Bible lesson. Our weekly iCafe session is hosted by Crescent Church, and all of the volunteers are Christians. Before each iCafe night there is an hour-long Bible study in an upstairs room, which I have never been to, but each night the group pulls together a power point and teaches us a valuable moral.

Cosmin’s power point was about Claims that night, and he started by talking about the election. “I know many of you are aware that tonight is a very important night for America,” he said, in his strange Romanian-Irish accent. Victoria, Hannah, and I all cheered. “Barack Obama, who is the president, is running to secure the presidency. Against a republican candidate. Mitt Romney.” He showed us the powerpoint, all of dashing photographs of the two candidates. “And they are each making claims, tonight, about who can better run America. About who will better influence the world…”

He went on, tying in the Presidential Election to the last moments of Jesus upon the Cross, with His magnificent claim that He was the Son of God, and how He was challenged by the man on the cross next to Him, who said, “If You are the Christ, why do you not free yourself, and free us with you?”

But it was the other man being crucified with Jesus that we remember most, for he said, “Do you not fear the punishment we are going to? For we have been justly accused of crimes, but this man—this man has done nothing wrong!” and turning to Jesus, he said, “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom!”

We sing these words at Mass every time Easter draws near. It is always a haunting song, slow and mournful, an elegy.

“I say to you,” Jesus said to him, “This day, you shall be with me in Paradise!”

I really could not see how Barack Obama and Mitt Romney could be compared to the two men opposite Jesus on the Cross, but Hannah and Victoria shut me up before I started a scene and then dragged me to the Drink store to by WDK Blue and Red.

I have never been in a real Drink store before, one that’s whole purpose is to sell alcohol. I went in and found what we were looking for immediately—WDK Blue looks like toilet cleaner, which stands out on a shelf—and waited for Hannah and Victoria to browse the dusty black bottles.

As we paid for the WDK, the cashier looked at us and said, “So did youse vote, then?”

“We voted absentee,” we said, “about a month ago.”

“Oh, I see. Well, good luck to youse.”

“Thank you,” we said, and we headed out, the WDK bottles clinking in a little blue bag. I was sorry that we didn’t get one of those large Drink buckets; they come in handy for all sorts of things. Apparently, though, you need to spend more than £5.50 to get a fancy bucket.

Victoria’s kitchenette was empty when we came, bearing sugary goodies and pop and the WDK bottles, which we put everywhere. Victoria set up her laptop, and Hannah and I set up ours (although the internet fizzed out, and we ended up relying in Victoria’s internet). We opened the WKD Red, because none of us had had it before. Victoria poured me a little bit, and when her back was turned I downed it .When she turned back around and saw it was empty she gasped and said, “What? Did she actually drink that? …Did anyone get that on video?”

No one had. I smirked.

We played political games; I sent everyone to isidewith.com to see which political candidate they most resemble in personal views. We were high up and the Libertarian and Conservative side.

As we were taking the quiz, a blond boy poked his head in. “So who won?” he asked.

“It’s too early to tell. It’s only five p.m. in the U.S.”

“Oh. When will you know?”

I laughed. “Five in the morning.”

He blinked, surprised. “More like three,” Victoria amended for me.

“That’s a long time.”

He went away. A little while later a girl came by. “Who’s winning?”

“None of the results are in.”

“Mm. Are you staying up all night, then?”

“Yup.”

She went away too. I turned on the t.v. and found BBC coverage of the entire event, laid out neatly, without any of CNN’s premature guesses or American biases. Each reporter was wearing a poppy on their lapel, in solidarity with veterans, and explaining to their U.K. viewers how an American election works, from swing states to electoral college votes.

The boy came back and started to make a late snack. So did the girl. Soon we were all discussing politics, and comparing.

Tom and Ashley Kate both liked Obama, and they were surprised at our reluctance when they brought up his name. They were also annoyed that Victoria would not tell them who she voted for.

“Why don’t you want us to know?” Tom demanded, breaking away from his original thesis, that America is headed to war with Iran. “Why is it such a secret? WHY WILL NONE OF YOU TELL ME?”

I turned the conversation around, so the focus was on him. “Why do you like Obama, then?” I asked. This is what I gathered:

The U.S., in regards to Northern Ireland, is extremely capitalist. Hannah will balk at me writing this—because she says we are not a true capitalist society, whereas I believe that if you’re going to do something you should not do it half-arsed. She would not see us as excessively capitalistic. But in any case, we are living in socialist territory here in Belfast—and before anyone gets upset, I want to remind everyone that Belfast is the second safest city in the U.K., that it is cleaner and nicer and the people are happier than in Dublin, and that there are actually more human rights here than in the U.S. However, in all fairness, as Tom later told us, all of this is thanks to Britain and its money.

Anyway, Tom continued, Obama was more like the Northern Irish in the way that they thought. He was kinder in foreign policy; Tom claims to have observed that more Republican presidents send us to war than Democratic ones. And if we go to war, he will go to war.

I interrupted him, to ask if this bothered him. He said no, he was glad that the U.K. and America were allies.

Good, I said, I’m glad we’re allies too.

“He’s only been a president four years,” he said, coming to the climax of his opinion, “what good is four years?”

“You forget,” Ashley Kate said, “they see four years as a long time. It’s not like our Prime Minister.”

Somehow this led to a discussion about sexual values. Tom was surprised that Hannah and I had not kissed anyone yet, and he was very frank about his own experiences in this field—such as kissing a guy on a dare.

“Why not?” he asked with a shrug. “We knew we were straight, we knew we weren’t attracted to each other. It was all for the craic.”

Craic is, of course, the buzzword for Let’s teach the Americans slang, and I learned a lot of dirty words for my slang list. Every so often I would look over at the t.v. and see that the numbers had jumped, and we would take a shot: Blue WDK for Obama, red for Romney.

“Why is Romney half gone?” Tom asked as he joined us in taking shots. The red one tasted like cherries, and the blue was blueberries. The blue was our favorite. I thought it burned less on the way down, too.  

“Because we hadn’t tried the red before, and we started drinking before the results came in.”

“Oh. You’re going to run out if you keep doing shots.”

“Yup.”

“You know this isn’t alcoholic, right?”

“Yup.”

“Okay. Just making sure.” He held up the bottle, then turned to Ashley Kate. “You know what, I bet you could get drunk on this.”

“Sure.”

“No, really. It doesn’t even taste like alcohol, you could drink it without knowing, and suddenly you’d be drunk and wouldn’t know why.”

That was about the time I stopped taking shots.

Tom stole Victoria’s laptop and started researching how many of America’s presidents had Irish in them. At one point he started counting our presidents backward: Obama, Bush Jr., Clinton, Bush Sr….going back farther than I could have gone.

“Wouldn’t it be interesting if we had gotten this excited about our election,” Tom said.

“I don’t think I even voted,” Ashley Kate said.

Around three in the morning, Tom, Ashley Kate, and Chrissy, who had joined us around two in the morning, left to go to sleep. Obama was ahead in the polls, but the race was still close. I was starting to fall asleep; when I tried to pour myself a cup of 7Up I ended up spilling it all over the raspberry bonbons and the leftover candy corn. Hannah was crashing on the couch, trying halfheartedly to get the internet on her laptop to work. Victoria was on her laptop, reading a goodreads review for Fifty Shades Free. I was munching Doritos like nobody’s business and working on a new story.

BBC started to show the Democratic headquarters. Everyone was waving the flag, and cheering. One of the poppy-pinned newsreporters said, “They are cheering because Obama just released a tweet. He says, This happened because of you. Thank you. Do you think that this is a premature celebration?”

A man replied to her question, then they went back to talking about the Women Factor, how more women registered to vote than ever before. How would the blacks and the Hispanics vote?

“Oh, shut up,” I muttered. “You’re labelling.”

At 4.30, more results came in. BBC took us to a chart, which propelled Obama over the 170 line. Hannah started packing up her laptop, her mouth pressed in a thin line.

“Hannah,” I said, “did they just say Obama won?”

“Yup. He crossed the 170 mark.”

“Well,” I said, “I guess it’s appropriate to start singing There’s No One as Irish as Barack Obama.”

We walked back to our room. A black cat was skulking in the shadows. A few white clouds passed over the dark blue sky. “What did we even talk about tonight?” we asked.

Holly 4 was quiet. When we had left the foyer smelled of cigarette smoke, and there had been loud music coming from the upstairs. Hannah went to bed, and I started writing in my diary, and going onto tumblr, learning what BBC had omitted. Maryland and Maine had voted for same-sex marriage. An openly gay woman had been elected a senator.

What amazed me most, however, was the number of United Kingdom citizens who were online, at five o’clock in the morning, just to see who ran for President. I remembered what Ashley Kate had said when we asked why she was so interested. “When America sneezes, we all catch cold,” she had said simply.

One of the girls in my flat was still online, cheering the re-election of Barack Obama. Another girl posted, “MY HOUSEMATE IS BLASTING “PARTY IN THE USA”. WE ARE IN SCOTLAND. HE IS SCOTTISH. IT IS 4:30 AM.” The Canadians were cheering. “Never scare us again, America!” they cried. Hastily-made Mean Girls references abounded. Obama was posting cheeky twitter pictures, and talking about how he had never loved his wife more.

Then, of course, were the rumours: Puerto Rico is becoming a State! (If that’s true, I can stop being sarcastic and confusing the Spaniards by telling them we have 50 ½ States.) I turned my laptop off and lay in bed for a long time, staring at the stars on my ceiling, wondering if this would all be a dream; if I would wake up and Romney would be the American president. A story that Mr. Pyle told me in high school was running in my head, about the man who went to bed thinking he had won the presidency. A reporter came to visit him, and his aide said, “I am sorry, the president has gone to bed, and must not be disturbed.”

“Maybe you should tell him he’s not the president,” the reporter said, “and see if he wakes up then.” That was how I felt—as if the world would rearrange if I closed my eyes, and be unrecognisable when I woke up the next morning.

But I had learned what fifteen years of schooling couldn’t teach me—that the American president matters just as much to the world as he does to us. I now realise it is not enough to vote for a man who will take care of Americans at home. Like it or not, America is a central figure—and we must vote with the world in mind.

Good morning, America. Did you hear us cheering with you last night?