8
On March 1st, the news said someone in Westchester got the virus. I panicked and told my suitemates that we should go to Whole Foods and start hoarding things now. They looked at me like I was on drugs. But we still went to get groceries, because I insisted, really insisted. We had masks and gloves on. We ran into our RA in the elevator and he looked at us as if we were celebrating Halloween in the wrong month. We told him we thought we might be forced to quarantine in the near future. He tried hard to hold back whatever thought he had. He said, “No!”
Two weeks later he sent everyone an email about the dorm closing.
9
Cindy and I walked out of the library. She was wearing a face mask. I wasn’t, because I had been harassed so many times that I decided not to until the self-defense knife I ordered from Amazon was delivered. Cindy said when she walks, she walks with her head down so people don’t see her face and thus can’t tell if she’s Asian or not. I said, thanks for the tip.
It was a nice day, a sunny day—the flowers were blooming. Girls with nice legs were wearing skirts. Spring was in town.
We walked by Washington Square park. People were lying on the grass like vegetables. They grew so well on their land. Sun shined upon them while they kissed and hugged, their heads filled with a new species of rabbit in Greenland. I imagined the flood sweeping them away, as easy as putting on a sock.
Cindy tugged my sleeve and asked me to take another route. When she saw the crowds, she saw hives of the virus.
10
My roommate and I didn’t get along. We were polite to each other, but under that thin ice of politeness lay a fiery pit of rage. I hated her. Her boyfriend smelled like a bloated dead whale. She had too much sex. Every night at 2:00 a.m., I had to bang on the door to sleep in my own room. She hated me too.
But she cried when I was leaving. We were standing in front of my parents’ friend’s car. They came to pick me up. I was ordered by my parents to go to Foxboro, MA, where things were less tense. It looked like a scene from a war movie.
She hugged me tightly, hurting my lungs. She said it broke her heart that I had to leave. She said she loved me and that I was the best roommate ever. She said she was sorry that she had been annoying. A single teardrop ran down her face.
So I hugged her back and I said, no, you are not annoying at all. I’ve never met anyone as good as you. I will miss you dearly.
On any other occasion those words would be nothing but lies, or worse, sarcasm, but in that moment, I was sincere. I forgave her so naturally. In the same second, I also forgave the others: the boy who was not from Wuhan, the hall manager, the sunbathers in the park, even the people who gave me reason to carry a knife around. I forgave them because they are humans. If I didn’t forgive them, no one would.
I wished for a flood and the flood was delivered. Now I have to build an ark. . . .
11
I was told that my roommate celebrated my leaving. Movies have their bad sequels.
I thought of an egg. There are a series of curse words related to poultry in Chinese, but this had nothing to do with that. My mother says, “Fetch me some eggs from the fridge,” and I do so reluctantly. Eggs. I am afraid of eggs. They are not light or heavy. I don’t know what to do with them. Mother, should I hold them with my palm or with my fingers?
Hard. Fragile. Containers of what could have been lives. But those could-have-been-lives are like snot. Lives that are disgusting. Slippery things that could have been. . . .
Haruki Murakami said (please imagine a soft Japanese accent): “Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg. . . . Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell.”
Murakami discussed eggs in the context of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. I am also living amidst a war. At least, that’s what they say. A war, a war, a war. Funds, corpses, jobs, China, Trump, statistics, a war is going on, a war, pay, someone’s going to pay for this, someone’s going to pay, someone, someone, someone. . . .
Who?
I look into the fridge. Which egg shall we end tonight, mother?
What’s the difference? Me. Him. Her. Us. Them. . . .
I met with my class on Zoom. The boy that was not from Wuhan is still in New York. The boy, a son of a millionaire, bragged about his COVID-19 financial aid. No one reacted. His camera was not on.
My hands went through the screen, cupping his face, like Juliet to Romeo. His head is round. If you knock on his forehead with just the right amount of strength he might crack and die. But maybe he won’t—maybe instead, you’ll hear echoes of the liquid inside. Could’ve been snot, could’ve been blood, could’ve been his life. Oh, he is another egg! Don’t, don’t blame the eggs. . . . Given time, he might become something else. Oscar Wilde wrote to his lover Bosie: “The supreme vice is shallowness. Everything that is realised is right” (15). Maybe if we put him amidst the vegetables, under the sun, then he would grow along with the others. . . . Aren’t eggs a type of seed?
His egg-head in my egg-hands. I said, O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou human?
12
I dreamed about the PE classes I took at primary school.
I was the worst student in that class, always the slowest in track. I broke my knees a few times. Too many times.
I was afraid of running. My classmates decided to prank me—they would run leisurely behind me, on purpose, for the first half of the race, to make me think I miraculously outdid everyone. They offered me a false sense of happiness, one that they would break a few seconds later as they passed me one by one. Then they turned around to enjoy my face: a face of anger, shame, and disappointment. I was scared of that. I would run so fast that I thought my knees would break, lying to myself that they wouldn’t be able to catch up. They always did.
Soon I wasn’t scared of being caught up to anymore—I learned that it was destined to happen. I feared what happened before that, where I ran with nothing and no one in front of me, panting, breathing heavily, sweating, feeling the ache from my knees, knowing that I was being chased and under attack, but unsure of when it would actually happen. The uncertainty hurt the most. . . .
The virus didn’t catch me in China. It caught me in New York. It turned its face toward me—I imagined it to be yellow and round—and it said, “surprise!” but I wasn’t.
I was not surprised.
13
April 27th. I want to eat braised noodles.
Works Cited
Murakami, Haruki. “Always on the Side of the Egg.” Haaretz, 17 Feb. 2009, www.haaretz.com/israel-news/culture/1.5076881.
Wilde, Oscar. De Profundis. London, Methuen, 1955.