Element of Surprise

by Mengyang Zeng

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When I was assigned to write a “covid diary” in mid-April, I knew people had an expectation of what they would find in such a thing—victims and their lives: friends on a screen, sleepless nights, anxious parents, bills, gloves, groceries, etc. These are the things that I would write about if I were someone who was suddenly dragged out of their daily lives by the pandemic, only I wasn’t. I came to America from China in late January—I experienced that once, already. When the virus had its outbreak in New York, I was numb to seeing people doing the same thing that my parents and friends did three months ago. It was like seeing your neighbor screaming because their kitchen is on fire while your own house had already burnt down years ago. This means I couldn’t write about victims. “Victim” is a very fresh word—their wounds are still fresh, dripping blood. I am mummified.

I had to write about something else. I wanted to write about those who are “not victims.” By that I mean I wanted to write about the ones who made memes out of Covid in January, or the guy who spit at my Asian friend for wearing a face mask. You get the idea. 

But as the writing progressed, I realized those people are also victims—they are also struggling to get their lives going. (I am slightly happy about that. Can’t lie.) The ones who cause pain also experience pain. Ultimately, we are the same person. I came to realize that the ones who needed to be written about are not the victims or the non-victims, but the humans. People are human despite how fresh their wounds are or whether they are wounded at all. A cake is still a cake, in whatever way it is sliced. It is easy to forget that. 

At one point the celebrities all gathered and sang John Lennon’s Imagine: Imagine all the people . . . living for today . . .but I don’t think people need to be imagined. People exist. We just need to remember that. And I wanted to write something as a reminder. The writing felt the most sincere when doing this. This essay is not the best in the world, not even the best on this street, but if anything makes it slightly valuable, it’s this sincerity.

—Mengyang Zeng


Today is April 27th, 2020. I spend my day in a poorly ventilated bedroom. This place looks and smells like a hamster’s cage. On days like this, I spend more time asleep than awake; there’s no room for surprises in my reality. I go through the motions: I am not seeing, I am not listening, nor am I thinking. My life is a pre-recorded tape: I switch from dreaming to daydreaming, from side A to side B. 

I’d like to tell you a story, one about loneliness, racism, isolation, politics, irony. I’d like to tell you about tragedies, only I can’t. Those stories have been told by someone else. 

February 13th was my birthday. I remember someone gave me a cake. I opened the box and the cake was shattered; they had dropped it. They thought it would be fine. It wasn’t. 

1

On January 19th, 2020 the first case of COVID-19 was found in Guangdong, the province I live in. At that time it was still just called “coronavirus.” The patient was in Shenzhen, a city eighty miles from my home. I didn’t know what that meant. A few days before that, the news had reported some new lung disease that had been discovered in Wuhan. I thought it was a scientific discovery, like “new species of rabbit found in Greenland.” 

I went out that day, as usual. School was about to start. 

I was on the subway and I thought, “Braised noodles! Braised noodles!” I was going out to eat braised noodles. Some people in the subway wore face masks, but in China, people wear face masks all the time. The television in the station was broadcasting something about the new disease, so I pictured a new species of rabbit: big, fuzzy, blue, squatting on the barren plain of Greenland. 

While I was eating my braised noodles my mom called me. She said I should avoid crowded places and if possible, come home, because it would be hard for me to get on the plane back to school if I got sick. I said okay, I was just out to eat braised noodles anyway.

2

On January 22nd, my mom said that I should probably wear a face mask on the plane, because the government suggested it. We couldn’t find a face mask in the house. At last we found a tiny one on the bottom of a drawer. It was meant for babies: it didn’t even cover my face. I thought it was funny and I posted a selfie of me wearing it. Someone in the comment section was worried: “That thing is not going to work.”

I secretly threw the mask away before I got on the plane. I didn’t like how it felt.

3

On January 27th, my mom asked me if I could buy some face masks in New York and mail them to my aunt, who is a doctor, because her hospital was running out.

4

On January 29th, my dad got a fever. On January 31st, my mom got a fever. They both tested negative. It was just the flu. 

5

My google search history on January 31st: “conventional urn.”

6

In an assignment for my writing class in early February I wrote: “The virus is here . . . It’s not in New York, not yet, but it’s here, in us, in the people, it’s not in our bodies but it’s in our mind, in the phone calls from home, in the conversations, in the news, it’s in the blood. It’s a knife hanging above our heads, it’s here.” 

7

On February 6th, I sat at the front of a classroom. Everyone was asked to introduce themselves. The goal was to break the ice. 

A boy stood up and told us he was from China. “But Not Wuhan!” he added. He was so proud. An expression emerged on his face, somewhere between that of an Olympic champion and a soldier. 

Then he laughed. Then everyone laughed. Everyone—the teacher, the students, the TA. It was grandiose, a moment of celebration: no one in this room was from Wuhan. We reached a consensus: We are not the ones dying, we are not the ones locked up; we dodged a bullet.

Thus the ice was broken.

For days after that, I had a delusion that I was a character in a sitcom, the laughter from that moment floating around my head as if a laugh track had been merged with my life. But apart from the laughter, there is another voice stuck in my brain, one from a video filmed in Wuhan. I watched it on the same day of that class—a middle-aged woman chasing after a hearse. “Mama!” She screamed, over and over, just as a toddler would. 

I thought that woman was me. How am I not her? 

How is anyone not from Wuhan?

But those people laughed. I wanted them dead. I don’t believe in a god, but every night before I slept, I prayed for something to happen. I wished upon the stars for Godzilla or alien invasions, for a giant flood to swallow the whole of Manhattan. I thought it was unfair. When Mount Vesuvius erupted, only the people in Pompeii were buried—others simply looked out their windows and were amazed by the unusual sight. For me, that thought is insufferable.