1. When I was nine, I almost drowned a girl. We’d met that day, at the falls, and were instant friends in the way only nine-year-olds can be. Neither of us could swim. The river was shallow, all except that one spot at the base of the falls, which we gravitated toward like filings, daring the drop off until we were treading bottomless, in fear. Thinking it was my one shot to save us, I grabbed my friend and lifted myself up to scream. Dad came and tugged us to the shallows. The girl shivered in betrayal. “You pushed me down!” No, I hadn’t. Had I? I had only lifted myself up! My father shook his head and they both walked away from me.
Every day now, I am either myself, hurting others in fear, or the girl being pushed down, or my father, walking away.
2. I panic every second at the grocery store. What have I touched? Am I keeping a polite distance or just blocking the eggs? My face itches constantly and I am constantly in someone’s way as someone else is in mine. The cashiers hang casually together behind their plexiglass and lean around it to compliment my dress and my hair. I realize that those who have real problems are inured to drama. A plump girl hands me the bag with the eggs, and I want to press her hand, but I ask if she can please step back so I won’t be too close as I push my cart away.
3. Last January, pacing my darkened kitchen. I have insomnia. I hear floorboards creep upstairs. Cat? Or my older sister. She keeps an inverted schedule. It’s snowing outside. We have the day off. Work feels an abstraction. Sleep feels an abstraction. I imagine this is what the end of the world feels like. Now, I pace my kitchen on a bright, sunny day. I don’t have the day off, but I am not going in to work. Work is an abstraction. I realize it’s not the end of the world because it feels just like insomnia on a snow day.
4. I called off sick on Friday, March 13th. I had a chest cold, nothing major, but all the “talk” I thought would make people uncomfortable. The library had just announced it would stay open, but that signs would be posted limiting two students per study table, and a line of tape on the floor six feet from the circulation staff would keep them safe. By Monday these half-measures were vetoed, and I felt oddly annoyed to have missed my last chance to be in the office. On Saturday I go in to fetch my power cable, and I see the tape line is barely a foot from the circulation staffer’s chair. I’m furious. A middle-aged white man is un-stocking the fruit juice case.
5. The cats really don’t care.
6. It’s the first truly warm day and I can take walks at lunchtime. Someone affixed a fat rose to the signpost at the end of the dog walk. It’s daffodil season here, their delicate scent evasive on the breeze, so this drooping starlet started its life in a hot house or Mexico. They are still delivering things and someone is still buying roses, to leave one here, cinched with a twist-tie, the stem withered, the head falling like a discarded ball gown, for unmet neighbors to admire.
(This post originally appeared on the blog Raw Data: Fallout from the Coronavirus)
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