COVID STORIES

I used to ask my grandma about World War II, and she’d tell me she hardly remembered it, she was so young. But on her seventh birthday, she remembers being devastated: her special day was ruined because she didn’t get a birthday cake.

“Rations,” she says, by way of explanation. “We didn’t have any flour.”

Mum has been bugging me to keep a journal, because we’re living through history, because this is what our grandkids will ask about. It’s important, she says. I suppose I should give it a go.

Wake up. 9am. Scroll for a while. Shower. Breakfast. The usual. You know how it goes.

And I have to admit, the brave doctors and nurses aren’t always on my mind. I rarely think about the bus drivers, the grocery workers, the teachers. Am I callous? I don’t check the news, I check Netflix for new shows. I take a long bath, try to think of other ways to cross off each long hour of an endless day. Go for a walk, read, change my outfit, look out the window. I’m getting desperate. I decide to bake a cake but soon realise that we don’t have any flour. This will probably be the hardest part of my day.

This isn’t history, what I’m living. In fifty years, my grandkids will open their textbooks and read about the tents lining Central Park, the brave medical workers risking their lives every day, the politicians (leaders or cowards), the stock market.

“Grandma, where were you during the pandemic?” they’ll ask.

“If you read your textbook carefully, you’ll spot me, hiding in the white spaces between the lines of text. The cracks, the crevices. I hardly remember it at all.” Then, as an afterthought, “Sometimes we would run out of flour.”

10pm. Pyjamas. Teeth. Quick scroll. Say goodnight, turn out the lights. Smile. Fight. Cry. Live. Survive. Whatever.

 

I picture the last time I walked out of my high school like a slow motion scene from a movie, like those flashbacks in opening scenes. I’m walking down the outdoor steps, laughing with the two friends I’d just had ninth period class with. As I laugh, the camera zooms in on my face, capturing the casual glance over my shoulder, back towards the high school, before my eyes return to my friends and I descend down the steps toward the parking lot. Little do I know, that will be my last glance, my last day of high school. Dramatic sounding? Maybe. But accurate and cinematically artistic nonetheless. It’s not everyday that an event in your life amounts to movie material without you realizing its significance in the moment. That’s how it was—for me and I’m sure many other high school seniors. One day there and the next day, well, not. High school over. The turn around is a lot to process, which is probably why the slow-mo scene replays in my head, each time my brain putting its best foot forward at understanding.  

When you’re watching a movie, you can’t keep rewinding and replaying a scene for eternity because you’ll never finish the movie. No matter how much you may love the scene, or no matter how much you need to see it again to help you put together the details. So, despite the urge to review again and again the last day of high school in my mind, I gotta hit play and carry on through my days in quarantine. I Zoom with friends, walk my dog, run in the basement, do some puzzles, eat lots of foods, bake. Nothing extraordinary or too inspiring. But I get through it, I fill the days. Keep pressing play. When my mind wanders to the future and I think about the tentativeness of events that seem essential to a healthy closure from high school and childhood—prom, graduation, a last summer at home, even starting college on time—I remind myself that movies never leave things untied. They never cut off during the rising action, leaving questions unanswered. And anyways, why would I want to fast-forward to the end, no matter how much I’m dying to get there? Without all the scenes in between, you can’t appreciate that last one, it wouldn’t even make sense. As anxious as I am to see it, I don’t think I can ever predict the final scene of the movie that began on that day I walked out of high school. I guess that makes this a pretty good movie. I’ll be here, watching.

 

Dear Coronavirus,

You can threaten us physically, but you cannot quell our bustle. We have fled our physical realm and perched in our respective social media abodes, tweeting, chatting, posting, gaming, Zooming. We know about you; it’s old news. We post updates: ten thousand, fifteen thousand, one hundred-and-twenty thousand. We encourage each other to stay home, wash hands, appreciate those working on the front lines who sacrifice their health to preserve others’. We have even made a joke out of you. You can wrack us with violent cough attacks or clog our lungs with opaque yellow phlegm, but you cannot stop us from calling you Rona and Spiny Boi. And yes, while this is a small victory to wield even as you fell our brethren by the thousands every day, humor and hope are more contagious than any pathogen. We will keep ourselves alive by sharing puerile jests in the virtual world.

I must admit, you have given us privileged, couch potato types the opportunity to feel rather heroic. We can criticize anyone for straying outside, blaming your proliferation on them, while we revel in our lazy superiority. We can criticize the powers that be for not acting soon enough when just a month ago, we were sobbing at the notion that parties, dinners, even school would be canceled. I was to attend an awards ceremony, you know. I was going to wear a gorgeous green dress with a subtle leaf pattern and smile vaingloriously as I accepted whatever flimsy certificate I earned. I would have taken pictures that I could have included in my college application, boosting my image.

Speaking of which, you have screwed over the high school class of 2021. You have driven us into a frenzy. We’re scrabbling for extracurriculars because many of them have been vaporized. The Internet must be abuzz with our searches for virtual opportunities and pages to raise money for charities. A spike of fear shoots through me when colleges reassure that they will be more understanding due to this situation; I know very well I need more, this mantra ringing in my head for ages.

The outside world has become hushed as people talk to each other less and huddle inside their homes, but the voices in my head have grown louder. Responsibilities, emotions, assignments, and random thoughts continually play squash with the walls of my brain. The landscape in my mind is becoming a nuclear wasteland interspersed with Zoom meetings, quizzes, news, and beautiful people with monstrous alter egos from all the young adult novels I poison myself with.

The front door may have permanently swung shut, barring me from strolling out into my neighborhood, yet my life has maintained the same freneticism as before you settled your deadly blanket over the world.

I do hope they find a vaccine soon, so you can be eliminated and I — we — can return to reality.

Sincerely,

The “First World”

 

The streamers and wrapped up presents laid out on the table make me smile. They are almost enough to make the stifling air stop suffocating my lungs. Almost. I don’t bother trying to open the windows, it wouldn’t make a difference. I sigh and for the umpteenth time in the last two weeks, I wish we lived in a house with a garden instead of a tiny apartment. Or, that I could at least go out, and run. In France, people are allowed to go out for a run, but not in Spain. Unfortunately, I find myself in Spain, and as the coronavirus has spread so quickly here, the country is in full lockdown. However, I soon push the thought away. It would only make being trapped here, worse.

I glance again at the presents trying to guess what they are. To be honest, I initially didn’t have much hope this would be a good day (who would, spending their birthday locked up in a tiny apartment without all you love?). However, things seem to have brightened up. I am going to do a video call with my family and camp friends. The latter of which, I am especially looking forward to. It’s the first year they have taken the initiative of doing something for my birthday. Plus, baking the birthday cake with my mother should be fun.

The house is slumbering, so I quietly return to my room. I grab my laptop, and peruse the slides I need to study for the end of year French exam. Yep, I am still having it in June. Unfortunately I don’t have any external exams this year, so unlike those with A Levels and GCSEs I still have exams. At least, I am on vacation and don’t have additional schoolwork to do, —just study. I am thankful for that, because apparently, the teachers think that because we are at home, we are going to slack off, and so, send double the amount of work they normally do. Still, that doesn’t stop me from wanting to cry out in frustration. I shake my head, and try to focus on studying but my eyes drift through my bedroom window,to the gleaming sunlight streaming in. I have an overwhelming urge to just sneak out and… breathe. I also can’t help but think I’m going to be pale as a ghost when the quarantine ends. Oh well, at least I won’t have to take vitamin supplements anymore and will be able to actually breathe!

With a frown I force my eyes towards my laptop. I groan thinking may be I should take the day off when the phone intrudes my thoughts. I snatch it from my bedside table, and grin. Caro, one of my best friends calling from Paris. Yes, I might not be celebrating my birthday in Copenhagen, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a bad birthday. Not at all.

My gap year in China was disrupted on January 31^st. It was the week after Chinese New Year and the coronavirus had grown from a benign, far-away tumor to a pressing, straining problem. When the news came – pack your bags, say goodbyes, we are evacuating to Taiwan – public transportation had all shut down. Kunming, a city of ten million, had only four confirmed cases. Still, nerves rippled through the city. Everyone wore a face mask. Neighborhood security guards took temperatures. I packed my luggage and expectations in one afternoon, then said farewell to my homestay family.

“CongCong will be back,” my homestay dad predicted, using the nickname my parents call me.

“Think of SARS. It took eight months for things to get back to normal. In eight months she’ll start college in America,” my homestay mom countered.

“I’ll be back. I don’t know when, hopefully sooner than we expect. But I’ll be back,” I said.

My homestay sister helped herself to the last bite of salad, wiped her fingers, and gave me a hug. The next morning, I was on a flight to Bangkok. The morning after, I was on a flight to Taipei, Taiwan.

My gap year in Taiwan was disrupted on March 18^st. “Expect the unexpected,” as Tim Gunn would say. If I hadn’t truly internalized that as an eight-year-old watching Project Runway, I’ve internalized it now. The plan was to stay until May 1^st. Plans changed. Back in the US, all my friends went home from college. I said goodbye to my gap year friends in San Francisco. I flew to DC and texted hello to my high school friends.

Mom, dad, sister, and grandma were waiting for me at home.

 

My sister pushes out her hands and commands: “Stay away from me!” She’s half-joking, half-serious. I laugh and haul my luggage to the guest room. My grandma is staying in my room. This tickles me. Grandma planned to return to China last week, but decided to stay and wait out the disease. Now, Nanjing hasn’t reported a new case in twenty days. Corona rages on in the US.

At home, I pass time like normal. I eat and play cards with my family as normal. I procrastinate on Chinese homework I’ve kept from my time in Kunming, as normal. All the while, I think about how abnormal these days are.

COVID-19 has touched every corner of this Earth. It’s followed me like the moon. Thinking as a biologist, that’s highly respectable. Not many diseases can strike a balance between transmission, death, and fear. A perfect storm, COVID-19 has struck all three. I nod my head to you, good microbe, and ask that you stay away from me as I am staying away from you.

 

This year’s spring comes seizingly enough. April earns its name as the cruelest month, quarantine sadness on everybody’s lips like a broken door, or violin strings.

In the early days, the news used to tell me that it is not my body against the virus, it is all of you against the brackish yellow of my skin. Now I go out, and we are all wearing masks like white flags, like surrender. It’s the roaring twenties, baby, Jay Gatsby wishes he were us; how much this year has taken from the world already.

I text the group chat five times a day, looking for new emojis to obsess over. I take blurred selfies in the bathroom mirror. Gemini season is in a month and a half now. Tuesday slides past; Friday apologizes like a Möbius strip. Chaos theory says we are going nowhere, so I sit and wait for the unremarkable to begin happening again.

In the meantime: since we are in the business of rationing touch, I hold your hands in blueshift dreams every night. We have menthol-colored rendezvous to empty out bottles of sanitizer, count the fingers on latex gloves. A surreal iteration of the apocalypse hurtling at terminal velocity. I learn that when one sense is lacking, we find ways to compensate with stranger and smaller intimacies. Call me again soon, offered through the beautiful glow of a digital screen. Here, your family needs the masks more than we do, said by my mother at her job. Abbracciame, heard nine-thousand kilometers away in Italy, meaning hug me. Meaning hear me.

Bertolt Brecht testifies in his poetry that, yes, there will be singing in the dark times. I am inclined to agree.