Getting used to long streets that are emptier than usual...almost. Photos Copyright © 2020 by Ronald A. Williams.
MY ROUTINE CHANGED. I used to wake at seven a.m. and leave for the gym, returning at ten for a shower, and then it was off to one of the several restaurants I frequent, for lunch and editing until four p.m. Narcisa, my wife, would be in some part of the country, doing what she’s very good at: telling people what to do. She's an independent consultant specializing in executive leadership recruitment and board training. Day's end, I'd crawl into bed and watch TV until I got bored with the simple storylines, and I'd look to read something with more substance.
Then, in mid-March, all of that changed.
I had been on a cruise around South America, having casually mentioned to friends in Australia that I had intended to go to Tierra del Fuego since I had heard about it as a child in my history class at Coleridge and Parry in Barbados. This was in January, and by late February we were embarked on said voyage. Then, slowly at first, the world began to shut down. We had gone from Buenos Aires to the Falkland Islands and were on our way to Tierra del Fuego when the news increasingly became about the travails of China and then Europe and their response to the novel coronavirus.
It all seemed rather remote until the captain announced that the protocols on board would change, and we'd have to wash hands every time we approached the dining room. Being American, I felt this was an infringement of my right to be filthy if I wanted, but being at sea, where the captain's word is literally law, I grumblingly accepted this intrusion. By the time we had reached Punta Arenas in Chile, about fourteen hundred miles from Antarctica, the drumbeat of frightening news had begun. President Trump had shut off flights from China, and while I felt this was mostly political, the increasing number of cases in Europe was becoming a worry.
A quick call to American Airlines confirmed that, while things were rather quiet at sea, the landlubbers were playing on a bit of a sticky wicket. Ten thousand dollars later, and we were on a flight back to the US, leaving some weeks before the end of our trip. It was not a moment too soon. We left Santiago de Chile, and two days later Chile closed its ports. It would not be long before the US would be battening down the hatches as well. But we were home.
Going into hibernation
The driver had warned me about shortages at the supermarket, and upon reaching the house we dashed off to see what we could rustle up. To our delight, there were no lines, the shelves were for the most part well stocked, with the surprising exception of the paper products section, particularly the toilet tissue. This only confirmed my long-held hypothesis that Americans are full of shit, but that is gratuitous. The cleaning section was likewise denuded, and my mind returned to the captain's irritating order about handwashing. Evidently, he was not the only paranoid obsessive.
And so the days of staying at home began. For the first week, I didn't exercise, treating the time like an unwilling schoolboy who had found himself presented with an unexpected holiday. The news, irritatingly, went from bad to worse, but, like the president, I did not think this would last long. We, after all, were the United States, home of the smartest scientists on the planet. We had tackled HIV, Ebola, H1N1 and the swine flu, and had kicked their asses. Sort of. How long would this sucker last against our combined might? More to the point, I lived in Prince George's County, the wealthiest black jurisdiction in the US. All I had to do was hibernate for a couple of weeks.
But the news kept coming, and Italy, one of my favourite vacation spots, was becoming a disaster zone. The news still felt remote. So I wouldn't go to Italy for a while. Then New York got its first cases, and suddenly the thing was close. My daughter Thanya and granddaughter Ayla live in New York. Both are asthmatic. My other daughter, Olivia, and my grandson Peter were next door in New Jersey. Complacency was now replaced by mild concern. New York spiked, and fear crept into my mind. Ayla developed a rash and a persistent cough. We waited with dread, but within a week she was back to normal.
Somewhere between here and there in Trump's America.
An unreal world
The numbers kept going up, and Mayland’s governor closed everything down. I settled in for the long haul. We went out and shopped for about a month's worth of supplies, never intending to leave until they had a handle on this thing. The house became divided into zones of occupation. Narcisa took the second floor, and I took the third. The house is built on a slope, and the first floor is the library, the place where I wrote when I was more disciplined and got up at four a.m. to write. We moved to separate bedrooms since our sleep patterns had become radically different. In any case, and more importantly, we watched different TV programs. Social distancing within the house, even when there was no need.
New York had gone to hell when I got a text from a friend who is a nurse. This prompted a call, and the world she described was so unreal that it took a moment to realize that I was the one living the unreality.
The TV was giving statistics that couldn’t be taken in. Words like intubation entered my vocabulary; spike, flattening the curve and hospitalization became current. But it was the deaths that created the fantasy. She sent me a video of several corridors in a hospital, and all I could see were body bags, lying in funereal anonymity along floor after floor of this charnel house. Real news or fake news, it was meant to alarm and bring home the point: our best and brightest may not have a handle on this as we would like. My friend was a nurse. It wasn't her hospital, and she couldn't say whose it was, but she was scared. She spoke of her fear every day when she put on her clothes to go to work, because she was not sure if the doctors knew what they were doing, and the nurses were asking each other if this or that was the right way to do things.
This woman, a born-again Christian with an inherent sense of modesty, talked about coming home each night, sometimes after double shifts, and undressing outside on the porch, no longer caring if the neighbour saw her nakedness, because she was determined not to bring COVID-19 into her home and possibly infect her daughter, who had just graduated from college. We stayed on the phone for over two hours, and as I listened it occurred to me that I did not live in the same world as she did.
Isolated wealth from poverty
It has become commonplace to talk about two Americas, one characterized by opportunity and wealth, and the other by significant social and economic strife. Indeed, the current health crisis has exacerbated this national condition and made the contrast between the two Americas even more stark. One America possesses the best our schools, universities and business companies have to offer; the other is marked by citizens who seem not to be able to conceive of the possibility of their own success.
There is a third America, those who live on the margins of success. They have some academic qualifications, a steady job and a place in society. They also struggle to find a means of escaping the clutches of a system that creates the illusion of success while ensuring that they are never free of debt or the worry about their ability to pay. Although often characterized as a minority, this is really all of the working poor. I was not surprised when I heard that COVID-19 was having a proportionately negative effect on minorities, Blacks and Hispanics, because when had diseases not? The poor have always had diminished chances of surviving any crisis. We are paying attention now because it has political value. All one has to do is look at average life expectancy, deaths in childbirth, incarcerations, murders, etc., etc., and the same thing will be evident. We are structured to keep wealth isolated from poverty and all the disabilities that poverty carries.
With all that has been going on, my life hasn't changed. There are still no lines at the grocery stores or the bank. While my gym is closed, I have my woods and the development, limited to only twenty homes in which to run, and I almost never see anyone. The people who cut my lawn, take away the garbage, bring my mail or, in one of my rare moments of madness, my pizza, have to go to work, possibly out of a sense of duty in some cases, but also because of economic necessity. Our one inconvenience is that we now do all the cooking and cleaning, because we don't want workers in the house, and all the restaurants are closed. I can socially distance, and it does not affect my income, though I've suffered losses in the market last quarter, and it will be worse this quarter. These workers can't socially distance. They never could, and that is why they die younger, have more diseases, and their kids are at risk.
Now, all the talk is about returning to normal. I can't say that I'm not on that bandwagon. After all, my money is generated by economic activity. Given what I have seen among so many who are tangentially attached to my life, though, all those workers who suddenly became essential but no better paid, I can only hope that, on the back side of the pandemic, we can create a more gracious and equitable society. I'm not optimistic. All I hear is about getting back to normal. Perhaps. But then again, normal wasn't that great.
Ronald A. Williams is the author of several books, among them A Death in Panama and The Dark Land. His most recent novel is Eurydice's Song.
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