Lines to food banks and vaccine sites are miles long. Soldiers assist with Pfizer vaccine distribution in mega-sites set up in unused sports stadiums throughout the country, the places like ant colonies busy and efficient.
Police officers in full riot gear guard town halls and streets.
In our yard, forsythias are flames against the cerulean sky. Shooting stars land in blooms on green branches of azaleas.
our house grows dark corners
hinges that rattle
when doors slam then lock
our marriage
locked in a holding pattern
Robert and I argue most of the evenings now. Some mornings, my husband apologizes. He doesn’t remember the words exchanged but feels the need to say sorry when my eyes hurl lightning. We are on a rollercoaster, both nauseated, the operating manual in a language we don’t understand anymore.
Worry paper dolls with death ears.
It is now, as I begin to write this, the evening of April 9, 2021. A year after Robert and I developed a nightly ritual of listening to music in the living room or conversing on the deck, enjoying the extra time together, both holding a glass of our favorite drink in hand. Also, it is my birthday, which my husband forgot this year. And I don’t remind him.
It is two months after I threw a remote control at his face. It hit the bridge of his nose. The apex of our relationship’s disgrace.
King Crimson
on full volume
& suddenly vulgar words
what a shame!—
hurtful words
that stain our puppet mouths
words pulling light from
our startled puppet eyes—
two spinning stars
in the dark COVID sky
How did we get there?
January 7, 2020
The Chinese health administration confirms first cases of a novel virus. Our oldest son, who had visited home for Christmas, is on his way back to Japan flying over the Pacific Ocean on China Eastern airlines. He plans to spend the next two days visiting Beijing. Before Sam lands in Osaka, his destination, Robert’s heart gives in for the third time. Pacing a small waiting room in Chilton Hospital where he is undergoing another emergency surgery, I weep to my iPhone, feeling guilty to call our younger son to seek support, absorbing his calming voice like balm.
January 29, 2020
“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can take,” Garrison Keillor quotes Zelda Fitzgerald on the Writers’ Almanac this morning.
March 11, 2020
The virus is identified as a coronavirus 2019-nCoV. The World Health Organization declares a global “pandemic.”
A parasite that bats had carried for thousands of years finds a host in a pangolin. The mammal, whose scales are thought to treat pain and arthritis, is sold on a Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, China. Just like that the invisible enemy invades our lives, changes values, and threatens our future.
The warning signs were there, though: the swine flu in 2009, Ebola outbreak in 2014.
Credit card charges from pubs in Manhattan. “A business lunch with an architect,” my husband would explain. “A beer with a client.”
President Trump downplays the outbreak and predicts coronavirus will be eradicated soon. Mayor de Blasio shuts down all non-essential construction sites in the City. The bidding process on the Bleecker Project took five months, so when work must stop three days into the first stage of demolition, Robert is livid, and his workers in disbelief.
At the university, we are directed to continue instructions remotely.
Coronavirus sneaks in a breath at a time, a sneeze, a touch, and we stay six feet away, our homes too small to accommodate the news.
The virus will affect 212 countries worldwide within a couple of weeks.
For the first time, I create an online Forum for a literature class I teach in the Spring. A discussion of Toni Morrison’s story “Recitatif” that week interrupted, I instruct students to listen to Jimi Hendrix play the National Anthem in Woodstock. I attach a YouTube link and post prompts for brainstorming: There was a great deal of tension between black and white Americans during that time in our country’s history. How does this information help you understand the interaction between Roberta’s mother and Twyla’s mother? Does the way Roberta’s mother treats Twyla’s mother give us a clue about which girl is white and which is black? How are they different in the diner, at the end of the story, and what does this tell us about their social class and race? I remind students to look for details in the text, to read other students’ posts and respond to at least two peers.
March 13, 2020
Every day is weekend now, so my husband and I establish a new routine of sleeping past seven. We watch CNN in the morning while binging on coffee. We follow the updates on fatalities—two in our town as of yesterday— over 40,000 worldwide. The numbers are rising daily. In Louisville, Kentucky, undercover police force their way into an apartment where a 26- year-old Breonna Taylor sleeps. They fire ten rounds of shots and kill Breonna, an emergency medical technician. Both Breonna and her companion are black, the undercover officers white.
March 17, 2020
It’s Tuesday morning. The US has more than 4,400 coronavirus cases and 87 deaths. It’s raining. In front of a computer screen in the office, I read and comment on posts in the Discussion Forum then e-mail reminders to students who forgot to submit work that week. I log out and text my children, who are working remotely now, too. I miss them. I ask how the work is going, if they have toilet paper. Dinner plans? Chris offers his usual one-word response, and it is “Yes” this time. Cate responds with a photo of a solitary roll on a shelf and an emoji with furrowed eyebrows. It’s scary, she texts. How long will the lock down last?
March 25, 2020
The order of paper goods and masks I have placed two weeks earlier is canceled by Amazon. Supposedly, the masks were shipped from China but never arrived, and toilet paper continuously is out of stock. Instacart doesn’t deliver to our town, and Peapod is sold out. In the meantime, items from my online shopping carts steadily disappear. So does the food at home. Equipped with a construction n-95 mask, I drive to Stop-and-Shop. Not only the dispenser for wipes to disinfect carts is empty, but so are the aisles where paper goods and cleaning supplies are supposed to be. Single bottles of juices and yogurts ornament refrigerated shelves. I seize the last container of Fairlife milk. Shoppers in masks line up silently six feet apart in the frozen food alley. Without making eye contact, I stand on the next available square outlined in red tape on the epoxy flooring. I am directed to a register number 2. I wait behind a plexiglass shield until a beep prompts me to remove my credit card and gather the plastic bags of groceries. At the store next door, I purchase four cases of Robert’s favorite ale, the last item on my shopping list. I decide to buy five bottles of Merlot, too. I don’t plan to go back to the store soon. Back in the car I realize, I’ve been holding my breath. I remove the mask and take two deep breaths. I sob while driving back home.
April 16, 2020
In most major cities, demonstrations over racial injustice and policing erupt. My daughter marches with friends every weekend. Are people wearing masks? Are you wearing one? I ask, panicky. Values shift when reality loses balance.
What is happening?
Robert calls me from the TV room to listen to the breaking news. The COVID-19 was engineered on purpose and escaped a Chinese laboratory. Also, drinking disinfectants might be a possible cure, the president suggests then unveils Guidelines for Opening Up America Again saying, the data suggests that nationwide, we have passed the peak of new cases. Most of the states choose to reopen while each day brings a thousand new deaths. Movie theatres, gyms, restaurants, and bars welcome customers at 25 percent capacity. Beauty salons are booked within an hour. Business owners talk about freedom and choices. I understand the concepts, and yes, I believe we must be able to make choices to remain human. But when did endangering or taking a life become the righteous choice? Is it because the weapon is invisible? Is it because the killer won’t be held accountable?
May 25, 2020
Protests against police intensify after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, where one of the four officers called to investigate a $20 counterfeit bill knelt on the man’s neck and back until he stopped breathing. Videos prove Floyd was complying and that bystanders, horrified, urged the police to stop. George Floyd was black. The officer is white. Will he go on trial for manslaughter? Will he be convicted?
Peaceful protests turn violent.
In the melting pot
of lowlands and mountains
a divide a mile deep
on the south a steel wall
twenty feet high
on the east windows
boarded up against looters
& on the west trees
burn for weeks
constant blood moon against
shrouds of smoke that choke
like the knee
on a neck.
Two months into the pandemic and over 83 thousand deaths are recorded in the US. The virus has mutated 14 times, and three children in America died from its complications. COVID-19 spares no one. Schools remain closed and students on Zoom, like zombies, stare at blue screens for hours. How will this experience affect their social skills? Emotional health? Children—the nucleus, the future. My children—my everything.
May 10, 2020.
On Mother’s Day, my husband plants two bushes of red roses in the planters he had built on the patio. Chris makes a surprise visit home but refuses to come inside, worried about his dad, who is a high risk after three heart attacks. Standing in the driveway six feet away, we wear masks.
How much longer will the virus govern our lives?
Meanwhile in backyards, azaleas bloom white and red. Our neighbor is staining his dock a shade darker. He leaves a bottle of Zywiec beer on a stone wall that divides our backyards and walks away. Robert cleans the bottle with a Lysol wipe. Yards away, the men drink together.
It starts to hail. Freezing rain sizzles blooming plants.
March 30, 2021
It is our anniversary. We both apologize to each other. 36 years ago, Robert and I promised to love and support each other for better, for worse, in sickness and in health. So long together there are no days without common memories.
It is a year after the World Health Organization had declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. By now we know that children and healthy young adults might be asymptomatic while spreading the virus. There are 2,730,000 deaths worldwide. The WHO confirms that a variant of the virus detected in Britain is deadlier than other previous versions. Over 544 thousand deaths have been recorded in the US by now, more than all casualties during WWI, WWII, and the war in Vietnam combined.
241 black people were killed by police in the year 2020.
The new president aims for the country to begin to find a degree of normalcy and begin to move on from the coronavirus pandemic by the July Fourth holiday.