Friendships implode. A young woman gives up on having children. A couple lies to family to get invited for Christmas. The covid chronicles, by Megankstack
was putting the last touches on a collection of interviews exploring how the pandemic altered the lives of Americans when, after two long years of near-misses and lucky breaks, I finally and unambiguously caught covid. Of course. I dutifully snuffled and fevered in my room, trying to ignore the illogical but undeniable social stigma and rationalise away the fear that I might have infected someone more vulnerable. It was not a great week.
They decided to induce me. At one point they said, “Your heartbeat is fast, you’re stressed.” My husband and I were like, “Yeah, did you happen to see what’s going on in the world?” I started bleeding, enough that they were weighing the towels. Fortunately I delivered Hana vaginally. I think about this a lot: my doctor looking at me. In my memory, she wasn’t masked. I don’t know if that’s true. Hana was very healthy.
My husband is a freelance director of photography. When we did our taxes for 2019, we were like, wow, we made no money. We qualified for Medi-Cal [free or low-cost health insurance], which turned out to be a weird silver lining, because otherwise we probably would have had to pay out of pocket for insurance. It’s only now that my husband has a month’s worth of work in front of him. That hasn’t happened for two years.
The first time I went back to Trader Joe’s I shed a few tears. When I was there the other day, the checkout guy was not masked and the bagging guy was. The three of us started talking about our kids and how we’re doing our best. It was optimistic, chill. Even the guy who was not masked, I was like, thanks for chatting with me. It’s not like he had any insight or anything. He probably didn’t have an elder or a child at home.
It would always be settling down and then it would go back up really high and then it would settle down again. It was frustrating. My grandparents got it, but they didn’t have to go to the hospital. When it was my mom’s birthday in April, she had covid so we couldn’t really do anything. Nobody I know had to go to the hospital.
I couldn’t go anywhere. If I drove around the neighbourhood, Chris would track me and make sure I got back in time. I was locked in the house. Sometimes he would go to the liquor store. But he was the one who could go places. Or he’d let me come, no touching anything, stuff like that. I visited Chatt later in the semester and stayed for about a week with Dexter, who I was dating again. He’d had exposure to covid, so we ended up having to quarantine together. That was horrible. We got into a lot of arguments because he didn’t want to get tested. He didn’t care – he had nobody to risk. I was scared for my family.
Further down the road he said, “I’m not gonna lie, I just took one of those Xanax.” And I was, “Are you for real?” He told me he dropped out of school because he’d gone to the hospital for bipolar disorder and had tried to kill himself. He was shaking the whole time. We got to Plato’s Closet and he returned his girlfriend’s clothes.
Sometimes when I got home I was so mentally exhausted I couldn’t imagine telling someone about my day. It was enough to be still and try not to think about this 40-year-old forklift-truck operator who had nerve damage in his legs and would probably never be able to work again. I didn’t see the people who died. The ones I saw survived, but they were left with almost no muscle mass because their body had wasted away while they were essentially in a coma for a month. Their skin was in crappy shape.
So I feel less of a time crunch. Still, at least once a month I go into a bit of a spiral. I think about not being a mom and it’s kind of sad, but I’m learning to take that maternal energy and put it in other places. Like my dog. At Christmas, we had a debate with my family. My [nephew’s] wife is a prenatal nurse, so they were extremely worried about her getting covid. It’s a family tradition to get together on Christmas Eve and this year they wanted everybody to have vaccines. Well, I can’t get a vaccine because of my health conditions, and because of our beliefs we wouldn’t get them anyway. I just told my mom, “You call my aunt, and if we’re not welcome we’ll go out to dinner by ourselves.
The most difficult time was when we didn’t have any properties to work on. We’d got the squatters out and sold the house. Everything was still. Casey’s family lived out in the country, and his great-aunt wanted us to stay with her and turn her garage into a living space. That was the height of our depression. We couldn’t believe we were having to do that to survive. We packed up our dogs and drove an hour and a half into the country. I was not into it at all.
Then we came back. Casey and I would look on Nextdoor to see if anybody needed a bathroom remodel or house painting or anything. Slowly we built ourselves back up. My mother’s whole thing is, “Who knows what happens to you in 20 years if you get this vaccine? Maybe you grow a tail.” I’m about to lose my mind with this woman. I was trying not to be too dark. I said, “Mother, you will meet Jesus before that happens, so you have nothing to worry about. It’s my generation that needs to worry about that, but I’m good.” I made a logical point, and it was just dismissed, of course, like always.
We were in purple or red or whatever those colour-codes were – a highly contagious, dangerous area. You weren’t supposed to be outside. There were no cars on the road, which affected my practice because I do personal injury. Nobody was having crashes. Soon the rumour stopped about black people not being affected because everybody knew who was dying: black people.
Even though I was dating somebody, it was isolating. I most certainly drank a lot more than I had before covid – bourbon and dark rum. I’d sit out on my front porch with a little glass and watch the dandelions grow. This apartment belonged to my Mom. I moved in here with just two suitcases in 2010 after my divorce. I told her I’d be gone in two weeks, but I was having a hard time finding a place and then, within a month of being here, Mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She asked me to stay.
A month later, my mom passed away. When she started actively dying, I lay down next to her and cuddled her and said, “Mama, it’swe are all fine.” She was a single mother, and she was always worried about us. My mom was a Hindu and a priest came to say prayers. I actually saw her take the last breath. Crazy. And I still don’t know if she died of covid.
I started thinking about death a lot. Not in the beginning. I trusted what the doctors were saying. I did things like wash down all my walls – that felt really good. I’d walk outside with two friends, then pick up some food and eat on the patio of whoever’s house was closest. But near the end of that first year, all of a sudden I felt lethargic and didn’t want to do anything. I talked to my doctor, and we decided it was depression. That’s when I started to be really afraid of dying.
I didn’t know anybody in the community who got covid until this year. We’ve had two out of 100 who got it, after being vaccinated and boosted…It’s nice to talk to you. Thank you. It’s nice to know I’m valued.Martha Ronquillo, El Paso, Texas, 83,
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