I've Got No Words

"Um, we are under curfew now so.....it's almost nine...."  I mentioned hesitantly to the men repairing our toilet.  Yes, the toilet that decided to nearly fall through what ended up being a rotten subfloor, which also had to be rebuilt.  In the middle of a pandemic, when I would prefer to be about twenty feet away from all humanity but cannot live without peeing.
"Do you think they will stop people on the highways?"  one of the repair men responded.  I found myself worrying about his skin, his slightly darker skin and what the police would do to a man of his color driving down the street after curfew while protests against America's treatment of black people filled the streets of our city and spread across every state in the nation.
"I don't know," I answered, "I've never experienced something like this."
It was the first night of curfew, after the protest erupted the Friday night before.

People that aren't from Atlanta don't really know the layout.  No one lives downtown, in the business district where the tall buildings are.  We just don't.  We live in neighborhoods with different names within the city of Atlanta that surround the downtown area where people work or go to school.  My neighborhood is one of the closer ones to downtown, about one mile from the Capital, even closer as the crow flies.  I can see its gold dome when I walk around the neighborhood.

Soon there was the ever present buzz of helicopters.  Sirens screaming and cops speeding down my street on their way downtown.  Ambulance sirens.  Convoys of police trucks all headed in the same direction.  The National Guard driving military vehicles in front of our houses.  And worse, later, when it got darker, loud booms resonated from downtown while we watched the news on TV, impotent, while they tear gassed the protestors and fired rubber bullets at them.  A mile away.

After days of protest in Minneapolis, Atlanta finally got going on Friday, the 29th.  Our mayor appeared on the television, begging protestors to go home and to not destroy things.  I voted for Keisha Lance Bottoms and I believe in her.  I believe in black leadership for the city of Atlanta.  It can be no other way.  She seemed honestly in fear for the protestors and in fear of what people might lose if their stores were destroyed.  Immediately after, T.I. took the microphone with the same message, followed by an impassioned speech by Killer Mike.  I turned my face to the side so that Alec wouldn't see that my eyes were tearing up.  I could only imagine how hard it was for them to implore the protestors to not destroy things when in the back of my mind all I could think was tear it up....tear it up....no one pays attention unless you do....we deserve it....we deserve this place to be burnt to the ground.....Berenice King followed Killer Mike and my emotions swirled with love for my city and the eloquence of our community leaders, combining with immense sadness and anger.  I can't breathe.... his haggard voice filled my ears and I squinted my eyes to avoid the image in my brain of his face, crushed under the knee of a nonchalant cop.

The buzz of the helicopters continued and I continued, sitting in my house, one mile away, watching the news.  Day three, I noticed a different kind of buzz.  By Sunday, I saw things on Facebook and whispers from neighbors that "they" were going to target residential neighborhoods.  WHITE RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOODS.  I love my house and obviously would prefer it wasn't burned down, but it sounded ridiculous.  THEY were coming for us.  I saw the buzz from Grant Park to Decatur and even worse, people in fear that their Target store might get hit.  Oh, god forbid the Target.  I like Target too, I buy a pair of flip flops there every summer and even a pair of cheap sunglasses but jesus christ, you care more about a Target store than what this really means?  A man died, another man died.  I looked out on my street that night and saw that a number of houses had their lights off, as if you closed your eyes no one could see you, even though you are the one with your eyes closed.

One of my neighbors ran afoul during a COVID construction project in their backyard and ended up on our front porch with masks on.  They brought a bottle of wine, which I uncorked immediately and basically put in juice glasses.  We realized the minute that we drank it that it was exceptional wine, and we later found out it was the most expensive wine we had ever swilled and that they were asking us for something special.  When I realized we were flanked by another high-priced neighbor, I felt like a Beverly Hillbilly.

I watched when the tree men came to cut down the oak.  They had a 100 foot crane.  When they sawed at my oak, which is even taller and older, I winced.  And I stood in my yard and watched.  But then, I stayed.  I saw a rustling way up in the beautiful tree that was coming down on our property line and realized there was a man, way up in it, suspended by only ropes, with a large chainsaw hanging off of his ass.  I was stunned.  I sat there for four hours, watching this guy work in coordination with the crane, cutting the tree down, limb by limb.  I cringed when they took large limbs off from over the top of my house, the crane swinging from side to side, mere feet from my roof and kitchen windows.  I watched and I watched.

Soon, they were down to the trunk.  I watched while they cut off ten feet.  And then another ten feet.  Then, they cut off the rest.  It was large and round.  It took a really long time for the chainsaw to get through the base and then, the claws of the crane lifted it into the air and through the sky over the yard.  It looked like a human body.

I watched it, suspended and swaying in the air and cried like I haven't in a long time.

Stuck in the Middle With You

I took hydroxychloroquine once.  Or, for like multiple weeks.  I had malaria.  I have never been that sick in my life and it was hard to get my hands on it in the United States.  I was twenty-eight and weighed 135 pounds.  I was not a seventy-something year old fat man taking it for off-label, false preventive measures.

I dreamed that I saw Steve climbing on the rocks the other night.  When I woke up, I was sad that it was just a dream.
I had another dream about my dead friend, Margaret.  She was leading me through a mall with empty classrooms, again.  But it wasn't sad.  It was just weird.

I'm going to have to say something about the Rona, the COVID, whatever the fuck you want to call it.  Three things could have happened.  In November-December, it was obvious there was some janky shit happening.  We are the United States of fucking America, and anyone saying that there were no ears to the ground is crazy.  Or, negligent, which brings up le'Orange.  Inclusive, massive testing should have been put in place, as well as contact tracing, before all this shit hit us.  PPE.  Get the beds ready.  We wouldn't have had to shut down like this, which was the last choice because nothing was left.  And now... now.  A culture war.  le'Orange created a shut down because of lack of planning and then, rallied against it, saying it was some sort of violation of human rights.  The mighty le'Orange has won again. 

I'm from Michigan.  My mom moved us to Georgia when I was ten, but I still have an affinity for the state.   When I see "protestors" wearing tactical gear, Confederate flags and carrying massive weapons, I have doubts.  Those are not ordinary activists.  Those are people that have an agenda and were probably shipped in.  When I see random folks that joined them, out of fear for their livelihoods, I wondered why the state and the feds didn't provide enough for them to stay safe and stay home.

My mom gave five hundred dollars. She sent it to my account and I took it out in twenties, along with another two hundred other folks put in.  I bought a bunch of potatoes, tomatoes, oranges, fresh things and dried things:  rice, macaroni, whatever.  I drove the car onto the ramp and entered the abnormally vacant highway.  I haven't been that far away from my house in months.  The large, electronic signs that usually warn of traffic jams and accidents instead said "SICK?  STAY HOME"  and "SIX FEET DISTANCING".   I drove to my student's house and knocked on the door.  It was flimsy.  All the dogs were barking and no one was answering.  But I knew they were there and was relieved when I heard foot steps and their mom opened a window on the rickety second floor.
"Come to the other door..."  she said, poking her head out and smiling.  The steps to the other door looked kind of crazy.
I climbed up the steps and placed the bags of food in front of the door, the envelope of money hidden between the produce.  She opened the door and my little girls peered around it, still in their pajamas.

I smiled and waved and ran back to Alec's car, hoping this would help them at all.

Wish You Were Here

I watched Steve inside her terrarium for weeks.  I would monitor the weather app on my phone, trying to figure out when temperatures wouldn't be down in the forties at night.  It has been unseasonably cold.

The day arrived when it would be warm enough and  I took her terrarium outside to the backyard and opened the lid.  I thought she would flee, run away immediately.  She didn't.  I sat on this Mexican blanket I have and watched her.  For hours.  Finally, I turned the terrarium on its side and kind of scooted the moss she was riding on out of the cage, with a stick.  She eventually jumped off.  And sat there.  I encircled her with branches so that she wouldn't camouflage herself and went inside to pee.

When I came back, she was still in the circle.  The neighbors from the house that used to be orange were having an uncomfortable conversation with tree removal people.  I knew they saw me and wished I would go away, but I couldn't.  It's my yard and I had to make sure Steve was okay.   I sat and I watched.  Alec came out and we moved the Mexican blanket and her terrarium farther away.  I sat on it with my book, while Alec sat on a chair next to our blanket.

Suddenly, Steve ran toward the blanket.  It sort of freaked me out and I moved away.  She hadn't moved a foot all day, but suddenly she was running twelve feet, and then rested herself on the blanket next to me.  Alec and I sat and talked.  And Steve sat there.  Then, she ran into the terrarium.

"Let's take her in..."  I said,
"put the moss back in and she'll live inside."
"No.  You know what the right thing to do is."

We picked up the terrarium with Steve inside and put it on a table we have by our backdoor, sideways.  She sat inside for a minute, then ran out on the table, into the sun.  She sat there for a while.  Then, she jumped and attached herself to a retaining wall.  She ran up onto the top of the bricks and genuinely looked happy, warming her belly on the hot bricks.  Lola and the asshole neighbor dog ran toward her and I was really alarmed when she didn't move.

"Girl, you need to learn some survival skills!"  I sputtered at Steve while I held Lola back from stepping on her.
Alec came out and helped me scoot Steve on a piece of paper to a safer place on the bricks.  I heard large birds overheard, we have hawks and owls, and I reached over Steve to make sure they wouldn't come at her.

When I looked down, she was gone.
Alec and I look for her everyday, hoping she's out there, on the fence, on the bricks, somewhere.

"I really wish we saw her one more time..."  Alec said quietly, one day while we stood where we released her.
"Me too."  I responded.

Georgia Is Open for Business

I hadn't seen my older neighbor in a while.  He's a smart guy, so I assumed he was staying in, but not sick.  I kept thinking I heard the Allman Brothers blaring from his house on certain days and then one day, I think I saw him striding up the giant hill between our houses, Sandinista scarf and long white hair, blowing in the wind.

"Oh my god, it's them!"
Alec and I ran outside, with Lola right behind us.  Jet noises were everywhere.  The Blue Angels were flying over Grady, and our back yard.  We missed them.  I knew it was an unnecessary expenditure, but I was still disappointed that we didn't get to see them.  We forgot that they were coming.

"FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU!!!"
I watched a deranged man, early in the pandemic, yelling and screaming down the sidewalk, shaking his head wildly back and forth.
I've seen him again, openly yelling at people.
"Get inside!  Get the fuck inside!  You, get the fuck inside, get inside!"
This was a month ago.

Kemp opened up Georgia.  It's weird to say that I live in Georgia, because I don't.  I live in Atlanta, the largest city in the southeast and a blue dot in a sea of red.  I was scared.  I couldn't believe it.  Alec, Holly and Emma work in restaurants.  I don't want any of them back in, not yet.  They got what, two weeks of unemployment and now, now that was too much?  I don't want my twenty-three year partner, my sister and niece sent off to die because Georgia doesn't want to recognize that their lives matter.  If their restaurants reopened, I knew they would lose their benefits.  Alec would lose his employer-sponsored health insurance, as well and I don't know who would marry us in the middle of this shit storm.  All for some dumb hick's gut feeling and I'm sorry, your redneck ass is not throwing my family's bodies at this.

Most of Atlanta's restaurants decided not to reopen.  And believe me, I was glad.  I thought the rest of our liberal town would follow suit, follow our mayor, stay the fuck in.  I was stunned when I went out for my modified jog in what used to be an isolated area only to find giant groups of fat people in their thirties, bar hopping on bikes that they had never owned before.  Without masks, while I still wore mine.  It was everywhere.  People were everywhere, on my front sidewalk, on my two mile route, every where.

"GET INSIDE!  GET THE FUCK INSIDE!  GET INSIDE!"  I wanted to yell at everyone.
But guess what folks?  We open.  We are fucking open.

Let It Come Down

I look at the news and watch people lining up for food.  Streets having to be closed down because ten thousand people lined up in cars for a box of raw chicken in areas of Georgia.  I didn't see Spain on the news doing that.  Italy either.  China, no.  It disgusts me.  We should have never been in this situation. We are one of the richest countries in the world and drive the global economy.  And, we are one lost pay check away from sitting in line with ten thousand other people waiting for a box of food.  It is too much.

I go out around the neighborhood.  I jog.  I go to my sister's house, a block away, because we are basically quarantined together.  I wear a Sandinista scarf on my neck and pull it up it anyone comes anywhere near me.  The mask won't protect me.  It will protect them from me.  I read that in China, people wear them as a sense of civic responsibility. That they care about the rest of the populous and are trying to protect them.  From themselves.  Collectivism instead of Individualism. Individualism is what got us in this mess.  And you know what?  Every time some asshole comes at me during the few trips I take outside of my home, some shit face wearing zero mask, while I run and climb through bushes and the middle of the road, I want to rip my Sandinista mask off and cough all over them, as a means of saying thank you for giving not a single shit about me.



*Title, Paul Bowles

Paul Thorax is No Longer Welcome in This House

The first couple of weeks went by surprisingly fast.  I rode that awful Chromebook from work like it was my bitch, assigning stuff, putting cool things up.  I couldn't believe it when the first two weeks were done, then the next week leading up to "Spring Break".  The weird, daydream nation strange dent in my couch was obvious.

I thought back to Alejandra, in the days before the school shut down.
"Did you watch him last night?  You know, Donald Trump?"  I whispered while we worked on phonics.
"Yes.  We don't like him, but feel like we have to listen."
"I feel the same way,"  I responded.
"We have to know what's going on."

As I sat on my couch, trying to create a decent learning situation for my students, alternating between my $25 school issued computer and my Macbook, as well as paper and pencil, I felt like it was some odd mission control station.  I had to clear off the couch when Alec would come in.

Surrounded by mission control, I watched The View at 11:00, hoping it would make me feel like I was a housewife.  Then, the local news, to find out any pertinent Georgia information and how many more were infected or dead.  Then, Donald Trump would come on.  And I watched, because I felt like I had to listen.

I would look at social media, after 3:00, my sign-off time.  And yes, we did have to sign-off.  I got pissed at parents referring to "homeschooling" or that their children were "self-schooling".  Isn't homeschooling when you all teach them yourselves, instead of pushing play on all the lessons I have been making?  All the stupid videos that the crappy internet in my house can hardly handle that I post online for you?  Lessons, materials, etc.?  You want to home school?  Great, count me out.

I've heard people arguing inside houses.
Alec and I have fought during this time, mainly when he reads me parts of Paul Theroux's new book.  Some idiot in that book actually mistook his last name for Thorax, which actually makes me smile.

I walk around my neighborhood, trying to get some exercise.  I don't go in the park anymore, because social distancing appears to be optional for a lot of people and I'm sick of jumping walls and climbing through bushes.  I see lots of boxes piled up behind people's houses, Amazon boxes and oddly, a lot of new giant TV boxes.  I guess they decided if they needed to be locked in, a big TV would help.  Sometimes I try to be carefree, think of funny things.  Then, I think of all the people dying around me and I can't really do it.

I sat through another Zoom meeting at work.  Praying is becoming very regular and though I don't really agree with that, I figure my discomfort of it pales in comparison to the relief my coworkers apparently get from it.  One of my coworkers put up a picture of his wife, in full protective gear, ready to enter the room of a COVID patient.  I was horrified.

Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race.  I am not a bro.  I have voted my opinion and am absolutely sick of being told that wanting someone except for Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden is some sort of act of treason.  I have never attacked people online or in person.  To the contrary, I feel like I have received some of the most divisive rhetoric coming out of the DNC camp - did you take your ball and go home?  What about your marbles?  You know what I have to say?  You get more bees with honey, bitches and I am not a child.  I am a forty-eight year old woman and just because you settled for a the guy that told you everything 'Merica can't do, you better quit attacking me for wanting something better for all of us. 

Our refrigerator broke the same day.  Alec and I have stayed in and stocked up and I felt freaked out watching all that food rot.  He called repair men, went online, did it all and the end result was a new fridge, expensive, though I am not being paid by my second job and he's on unemployment.  The fridge couldn't be delivered for a solid week.  A friend of my sister's did a huge act of kindness and delivered two giant coolers onto our front porch within thirty minutes and Alec went out into the COVID world and bought thirty dollars worth of ice.  We put the food in the coolers, closed the blinds to the kitchen and turned on the air conditioning.  The kitchen tomb reminded me of Ferdinand and Isabel, way down in that crypt in Spain.

I added one of the last segments of The One and Only Ivan onto my virtual learning page.  I have been trying to finish that read-along with one of my groups for over a year.  I listened to the recording of Ivan exploring the outside for the first time in decades and started to cry.

"Alec,"  I yelled.
"Paul Thorax is no longer welcome in this house!"

Canary in the Coal Mine

Kitty, I didn't even tell you about some of the worst parts.  Lola was sick again, a week before the virus hit.  The diarrhea, it was a slower onset this time, but when the vomiting happened, it was intense.  I could hear her stomach gurgling and knew what happened in September was happening again.  And, it was raining.  Alec and took her to the emergency vet in the rain; he sat in the backseat with her and I drove without windshield wipers all the way there, at the end of rush hour.  They insisted upon keeping her overnight and I didn't argue.  The blood had happened again.  When Lola is not well, I am not well.  I stop functioning in anyway, shape or form.  I stared at my phone all day of the 3rd and was relieved when they let us pick her up. I piled my stuff on my desk and waited until 3:00, called in sick to the Housing Authority and went to get my dog.  The only reason I didn't call in sick to regular work was because I had already requested a personal day on March 16th, for her birthday.  I was sick already and if we could just make it through this, she and I would have a long weekend together, for her birthday.  We would all feel better.  We got her, along with bags full of medicine.  Her arm was shaved again, from IVs.

In February, Alec and I had had prepared for the virus, a little.  I bought five pounds of basmati rice and ten pounds of dried beans.  A couple of those giant, two liter bottles of wine.  Some extra toilet paper.  I ordered an additional bag of dog food.  I really thought if this thing really happened, they would tell all of us that we literally couldn't leave the house for two weeks.  QUARANTINE.  And Lola, Alec and I would hunker down and play board games, only to emerge two weeks later to normality.  I feel like an idiot for thinking that now.

The school dreams started immediately.  My selective mute appeared the first night, but she was talking.  A lot.  And she was really fat and had makeup smeared all over her face, though she is only six.  The second meanest teacher at the school yelled at me one night and slammed her classroom door in my face while we argued about interpreters.  I sat up, feeling sweaty, though Alec and I had most of the windows in the house open and it was chilly.  Lola laid between us, her face burrowed against my leg.  Steve was in the Conservatory, her belly large and resting on a twig, looking out from the large bay window that overlooks the street.

When they sent us home on March 13th, I sheltered in place.  I thought I invented the term, until I heard it used on the news.  They use it for shootings, and I work in a school.  I only went out to the grocery store and even limited those trips.  And Petco twice, for crickets for Steve.  Okay, I bought beer from the gas station.  I went to the dog bakery on March 16th, Lola's birthday.  I know that is questionable, but I guess I didn't get it yet.  I haven't been within six feet of another person except Alec for two weeks.  I was surprised when people started talking about shelter in place orders in Atlanta or the surrounding counties.  Wasn't that what we were already doing?  When I got sent home from work, I went home.  Except for the dog bakery.

We've been doing a lot of Zoom faculty meetings.  I was stunned when my former roommate - classroom-mate, appeared on the screen when she logged in, in a hospital gown with an oxygen thing in her nose.  I knew she was sick, I knew she had a pneumonia and sickle cell, I knew she was hospitalized.  I didn't expect to see her face, ghostly and haunting from inside the death zone, isolated from her husband and one year old child.  I wanted to scream.

I watched the Senate arguments about the bailout-stimulous-whatever the fuck you want to call it and got pissed.  God forbid someone gets a few hundred dollars more than they already make.  What the fuck do they thing we are going to do with it?  Go to Paris?  Paris is closed, bitches.

I wake up now at 4am, instead of 3am, when my mind goes wild.  I lay in the bed with the breeze coming in and Lola pressed against me.  Sometimes Alec is there, sometimes he has moved to the couch because both of us have thrashed around too much. The owls went wild again the other night while Lola and I laid and listened. I hear the sirens, the ambulance sirens that have always haunted me in the night, on their Grady route, and I question if it's the slow sound of a person already dead or the wild siren of a person that might survive.
And, I don't know if the sirens are real or not.