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.

Stages of Corona

I drove to the grocery store when I left work on Friday the 13th.  I feared it would be like a snow day situation, but decided to try it out anyway.  A man sat out front, playing a saxophone.  I hadn't seen anyone do that at my grocery store before.  The sounds kind of drifted through the parking lot, like some sort of swan song.

I felt accomplished, because I already had a lot of online assignments and had worked hard on Friday, so I really felt like I was set up.  I remember being surprised when the state immediately called for classes to be suspended for two weeks, TWO WEEKS!  Not a day or two like at the county I live in originally did, but two weeks!  I intended to be vigilant and my previous work made this easy.   I guess I thought we would just ride this out and go back in two weeks, or maybe after Spring Break, in the second week in April.

Monday started making me wake up.  I had originally asked for it off as a personal day, but clearly was going to do the telework thing.   The district really had us structured, telling us to answer text messages within minutes, sign-off on spreadsheets that proved we were working, increasingly changing demands that we usually found out about after we hadn't done them.  It stressed me out and sort of pissed me off.  I'm not a slack-ass.  I'll do what I'm supposed to, because I care about it.  No one has to create tasks for me. I assumed I'd be checking email a couple of times a day and grading assignments and entering those who did the assignments in our grade books, since my district really only cares about percentages.  Those who couldn't get on the internet or just didn't for whatever reason, we'd catch up in two weeks.  I was surprised when we were told not to be out in public during work hours.  I didn't want to like, cocktail lunch it out, but I wanted to jog and try to get to the grocery store during non-peek hours, and I work after hours, anyway.  Optics.  Then I felt like an asshole because we were reminded over and over that we are still getting our paychecks and benefits, which most people weren't.

Things became more frightening when they started asking us to aggressively check-in on students that hadn't logged-in on our online platforms.  I guess that's when it dawned on me that we might not being going back to school this year.  And that a lot of my students, I might never see again.  That we would have to end it like this, with no warning.  Not just the fifth graders that will go to middle school even if I don't get to see them at the end of their school year, but the ones that get evicted when their parents can't make rent in a couple of weeks and scatter, to god only knows where.

It was dark out one night, earlier in the week, I don't know which day, when Alec's work called and said to not come back, and that he needed to file for unemployment, and that his health insurance coverage would end on April 30th.

The municipality where my sister and niece work sent home restaurant workers shortly after, but were more ambiguous about unemployment benefits.  My niece continues to work running takeout, though she doesn't have health insurance, but obviously needs the money and apparently, isn't even getting unemployment.

I emailed the parents of my students that hadn't connected on the online platforms, writing the Spanish part myself but using Google translate for Burmese, French, Arabic and Amharic.  I asked them to get their kids online and to take care of themselves.  Some of the languages my kids speak aren't even in Google translate.  I found out later that we weren't supposed to do that but in my opinion, extraordinary times call for extraordinary means.

I sat in the Conservatory, calling individual parents on my phone without guarding my number.  Honestly, they can call me whenever they want, with whatever they need.  I had already been texting them, hoping that the English might be easier that way, but I had a number of good conversations in slow and broken English, or in Spanish and they reassured me the kids were okay.  I asked them to call me with anything they need.

They made us do a Zoom department meeting on Friday.  I tried to be positive, but said little.  I noticed that the new Spanish teacher had really nice crown molding in his house and that some of the other teachers looked a little puffy and worn, like I knew I did.  The coach of course looked amazing, sitting out on his back deck like he'd just completed his workout.  People speculated about when we'd be back and what it would look like.
I finally spoke up.
"I don't know what we are going to be walking back into, whenever we go back.  Our students are low income.  They rent.  We see their stuff piled up in front of the houses every time we drive to work after the first."
"Well no... no, I just don't see that."  a teacher answered, one that usually hates me.
"They can't just put them all out....the government will stop that."
"Landlords can be very unethical."  I responded.
"And, many of our students are undocumented.  The will avoid anything the government might be willing to provide, based on their status.  Because they have to.  And those are some of the kids that have gone radio silent, the ones I haven't been able to get in touch with."
She paused and I watched realization wash over her face.
"Ms. Wagner, anything you hear, anything you hear, please tell me.  I can try to get my church involved.  I'm sorry but if anyone does not object, I know that we are in a public school environment, but I would like to end this with prayer."
"Prayer is what we need!"  the new teacher called out.
"He is the only one that can help!"
"Would you like to lead it?"  she answered.

And the teacher launched in to a prayer, a long prayer in his beautiful accent.  It was impassioned, begging God specifically for the undocumented kids, asking him to fix this.  It was very surreal, looking at my colleagues with their eyes closed and faces bowed in prayer, over Zoom.  I'm not into that kind of thing, but I definitely wasn't going to speak against it.

I stared straight ahead, as Mr. Bakwamba try to heal my world, heal us and save my students.  I wasn't ungrateful.