Joan Is Okay(51)

I said I didn’t want my hair to look like a bird’s nest.

Why would it look like a bird’s nest? Does my hair look like that? No, so why would yours? I’m sitting here trying to help you. It was just a suggestion.

And like that we were arguing. From the sorry state of my hair to when I would be getting married and having my first child. He doesn’t have to have means, she said about this elusive husband. Or a title, she added. As long as he was good to me. I let out a laugh and got back a glare. Tami asked why wasn’t I more worried about these practical matters when people who never marry become outcasts, and a woman isn’t a real woman until she’s had a child.

Some words will take years to forgive. Or never. I, the childless non-woman and wife to zero senators, wished to reach out to my sister-in-law, but she also knew how to push me away. Has she forgiven her own parents for their dismay in her just becoming a mom? Hurt can be paid forward and often is, to make your own feel less.

Tami, these are my choices, not yours, I said. How you would handle a situation is not always mine.

Her head shrank a little back into her neck, and yet even so, she didn’t develop a double chin or look any less refined.

What she was trying to say, she clarified, was that to grow, a woman must be willing to take on many roles. You can do anything well, Joannie, so I have no doubt that if you set your mind to being a wife and mother, you’ll be fine, maybe even fantastic. Don’t force yourself to be alone. Feminists have kids too.

I had many thoughts at that moment but no good reply. So, I just let my turn to speak run out until Tami started to talk again.

And once you have kids, no one will harangue you, not us, not anyone. No one will see you as a child anymore or assume that you’ve deviated from the path or missed out. As a mother, you become legitimate, thus untouchable. Consider it an out.

Of motherhood Tami had once said that there was no other job and I’d replied of course there were other jobs. Funny to me now how motherhood could work. That having a child made you a real woman who was no longer a child, but then once your own children became adults, you reverted back to the child.

Sounds of bare feet down the stairs, of hushed talking, and of my nephews trying to be discreet but failing. The fridge door opened but did not close.

I asked Tami how having kids was considered an out. The more I had, the more I would have to do, the more places I would have to go. Pediatrician visits alone, the dentist, emergency room scares, then back to the grocery store to stock up on more food. My mother would need to see them. From China she would fly over, and then my many kids and I would have to fly over there to see her.

Your mother is going to be here.

I said I didn’t think so.

Tami’s cheeks flushed and so had mine.

Can I ask you something? she said, her voice like a blade, and without waiting for my reply, asked, Do you see yourself as better than the nonworking woman? Is motherhood somehow beneath you?

Absolutely not, I said. But since motherhood has been exalted to sainthood, I felt that the nonworking mother thought herself better than me.

No, not better, she said. Just different.

Oh, different, I said. I said I hated that word.

We stared at each other for a bit longer and then at the coffee table. She put a hand to her throat and started to rub it. I’m not sure that you know this, Joannie, but you can be very intimidating sometimes.

Intimidating? Me? I thought about all the things I’d been compared to. I told Tami no version of me was that fearsome.

But that’s why you’re intimidating. Look at all that you’ve accomplished. You’re completely unafraid to plow right on ahead when most of us would be. I want you to have it all, I really do, and thinking ahead for our collective futures, your brother and I also don’t want you to be alone. We don’t want your mother to be alone. So, with your career now set, is it not time to shift your goals?

I didn’t give her a straight answer and she didn’t press me. Enough time passed that we both stood up and went back into the kitchen where everyone else was. My mother was sitting by the island with her hot water and phone, a cloud of steam around her. Fang had just come downstairs, hair wet from a shower, and started the coffee. My nephews had found some pool toys in the closet and were whacking one another with foam noodles.



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ON MARCH 1, A woman traveling back from Iran became New York State’s first reported case. A French health official advised against cheek kissing, or la bise, and handshakes. The U.S. surgeon general tweeted, Seriously, people—STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing the general public from catching #Coronavirus. A Washington State man was the first American to die from it.

When I checked my inbox that week, a deluge of messages from the board of directors at both West Side Hospital and our sister East Side branch laid out the changes to come. Intensive care units would be expanding, some to entire floors, and in worst-case scenarios to lobbies, atriums, meaning that in worst-case scenarios atrium cafés would have to close.

I wasn’t shocked that something like this was happening but that it was, in fact, happening as predicted was somewhat more of a shock. When I told Fang and my mother that I had to return to the city for work, my mother said oh okay, and that was it. She was in a better mood than usual ever since Air China had reached out to her with a spot on an April flight and with the virus in China now handled, her sisters were sending animal videos again, of house pets doing funny, acrobatic things. As our mother chuckled to herself, then went into the living room to scroll through her phone, Fang and I glanced at each other, knowing there was no way that plane was taking off. My brother then asked if I wanted to go back to work, given that I still had two weeks of leave. I said they were officially calling back everyone, even nurse and physician retirees, it was all hands on deck for what would probably be a monthlong service, at the very least. Since deaths followed cases by a month, hospital capacity in April would probably hit surge level 1, then level 2, then level very, very bad.