Joan Is Okay(52)

My brother asked if I was worried about getting sick.

I said I’d take all the necessary precautions.

You can stay here as long as you like, he said and I thanked him and he said no need to say thanks.

Thanks, I said and he said no need to say thanks.

I could guess what Fang was going to bring up next since it was already on everyone’s mind. America still has a lot of problems, doesn’t it, my mother had said the other day, maybe yesterday, while we were channel surfing and a snippet of domestic news came through. Problems that weren’t hers to fix but she looked expectantly at me, as if they were mine.

Had I heard what they’d been calling the virus? Fang asked me now and everyone had.

On February 11, the WHO, careful to keep the name scientific, settled on COVID-19, CO for corona, VI for virus, and D for disease, 19 for the year that the disease appeared. Some Americans took the word corona to mean something else, and Google searches for the beer virus, or a virus that you could get from simply drinking beer, surged. But some government officials also believed that it was important to keep the American people informed and reminded of where the virus really came from. So, the China virus, the Chinese virus, the kung flu.

Videos had started circulating online, most I couldn’t even watch through. Clips of Asian people being attacked in the street and on the subways. Being kicked, pushed, and spat on for wearing masks and being accused of having brought nothing else into the country except disease. The harassed were usually women or the elderly, the easiest target was both. The worst part was that few people around the harassed did anything. No one stopped the crazy white lady from swinging her umbrella at an older woman’s covered face or from pointing the umbrella at the woman like a gun. Proud to be an American. Go back to China. Neither Fang nor I mentioned these events to our mother but it seemed she already knew given how often her friends in China asked if she now felt in perpetual danger. Who wanted to go to America anymore was also their sentiment, when the other side of the world was doing much better and had none of this type of unrest? Every country has its problems, doesn’t it? was my mother’s only reply, and that she was trying her best to return. What of her two children then? they’d asked. Was she worried about them living in that country all on their own? No mother doesn’t worry, but my children are grown adults, and have been for a long time. They can take care of themselves.

My brother felt the attacks would continue, so didn’t see a point in my going back. Like most of his stances, he wasn’t entirely wrong, and to his question of why go back, I sighed, I shrugged, as if I didn’t know. But I did know. I was going back because, for better or worse, this was the job.

Could a family’s migratory ways lead each member to find their own sense of belonging? Where did my brother belong if not within his wealth and aspirations to reach the land of giants? Where did I belong if not within the confines of a well-defined job? And where did my mother belong, with her own children or to that other life she and my father had created elsewhere after we’d grown? Home could be many things. It could be both a comfort and a pain. It could exile you for a little while but then demand that you return. I was going back not because I expected anyone to care about me or us, not necessarily to be seen as a good person, a kind person, but because the work needed to get done and I already knew I was a good doctor.



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I’D ALWAYS HEARD THAT on the day my parents got on that plane for America to start anew, six-year-old Fang had cried, screamed, and had to be pulled away from the departure gate where he had wrapped his hands around the no-family-members-beyond-this-point metal bars. Finger by finger, my aunts had to pry him off the bars and carry him away.

That was also what I saw on deathbeds. Son or daughter. The type of child who, after the algorithm had failed and we had explained that it had failed, went on to shake the parent’s arm as if to wake them up. Hey, I’m right here, feel my arm on your arm, my hand on your face; feel my total and complete despair, so come back to me and please don’t just leave me behind.

I was already forgetting things about my father. I was forgetting how low his voice could be, how he would mumble and flatten his tones. In truth he could have meant another chuàng, besides the one about going off to sea. I should have asked him which he intended, but I never got around to that.

The other chuǎng is third tone, not fourth. For this chuǎng, we put a horse (马) inside a door (门), such that the character itself, 闯, refers to breaking down barriers and charging through. I was reminded of the Trojan horse, the surprise gift horse outside, but also of horsepower, which now belonged to cars. A green Mustang might be irrefutable American muscle, but so was the driver inside. He was pure American muscle with a Chinese heart. Goodbye, doctor-daughter, goodbye, but also see you again.



* * *



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ON THE FIRST DAY I returned to the city and my classic prewar apartment, I bought and installed a deadbolt. Mainly to prevent cross-contamination and unwanted visitors, and what a comforting series of sounds it was, from the locking of my doorknob to the swinging of deadbolt one then two, to the latching of my safety chain. But from inside, almost every night, I could still hear a knock and Mark’s voice, asking if everything with me was all right, given what he was seeing on the news. He couldn’t quite believe what was happening and didn’t know what to believe. Was all of it real? Or a hoax? Or the media? Things were changing so fast, from open to shut down. Broadway had closed—inconceivable—states of emergency declared, bans on other countries, a toilet paper and a hand sanitizer shortage, to mask or not to mask. So how was I doing in there all by my lonesome? And could I please let him know what I made of the craziness out there or at least tell him that I was okay?