The first night I lay in bed and touch my face. I rub my eyes and stroke my chin. Earlier I trekked through JFK airport, settled into an airplane with no empty seats, waited for two hours in Atlanta’s International airport, and boarded one more plane. During my eight-hour trip, I don’t scratch my nose or bite my lips. I grab door handles with a paper towel. I use sanitizer wipes on my tray table, armrests, and mini tv. I wash my hands a lot—back and front, under my nails, between my fingers. I sneeze twice into my elbow and feel bad for the folks sitting in my row. If they’re like me, their ears pick up every cough and sneeze, even when it’s far away. People in the airport avoid bumping into each other. They keep their distance when they go in and out of stores and move through lines. I guess they don’t want someone to forget and brush up against them or reach for their arm. Some travelers wear blue paper masks and others white plastic ones. Some have already, I guess, tired, and they let their masks dangle around their necks. A lot of the people working in both airports sport blue plastic gloves. None of them look ill, only like they’re trying to be careful. I try my hardest not to get sick too. Or let my fear about the virus make me sick.
I land in San Antonio. It’s March 4th. I’ve heard there are cases of Covid-19 in the city. In my hometown of New York City, they have started to disinfect the subway cars every seventy-two hours. But schools, restaurants, gyms, and theaters are still open. The hospitals aren’t overcrowded yet. The city is still issuing parking tickets and court summons. No one is clapping and hooting at seven o’clock in the evening. But there has been a rash of deaths on the other side of the country. The mayor in Seattle has declared a civil emergency.
When I register for the conference, a fellow writer extends her arm for a handshake. I don’t reach back. Instead, I mumble something and give her the sign for namaste. She understands and laughs. It seems like everyone I come across in the next few days is laughing and worrying and wondering what will happen.
As I move from one conference room to another, I watch people put their hands on things that I won’t like the escalator railing. But I can’t avoid touching things other people have like my credit card I take back from the woman who rings up my burrito and the seat belt in the first Uber and the three after that. I remind myself there are people who face graver threats. Starvation. Drought. Kidnapping. Hurricanes. Bombs and booby-traps. There are people who can’t look forward to going home, a sanitized sanctuary with a shower and sink and soap, and bottles of gooey hand sanitizer. I live with these people—on this planet—and we breathe the same air, and each and every one of us can get sick and get better or get sick and die from the virus or something else.
I’ve thought about what it means to be at risk before. I used to teach public school, and experts in the field worked hard to identify at-risk youth. They went after the students they figured would drop out of school, sell or steal, get hooked on drugs, land in prison, or get stabbed or shot. My nephew ended up at a school for those types of kids. ACES was in Connecticut, right outside New Haven. When I visited, I learned that the elementary school students, who were all black and brown, weren’t allowed to touch each other. Not at all. Ever. Not a hug, or a playful poke or a friendly slap on the back.
In my nephew’s classroom, a few posters hung on the walls promoting self-respect and good listening, but there was no student work on a bulletin board, or toys tucked into a corner, or books on the shelves or desks. The students, some with messy hair and ill-fitting clothes, sat in evenly spaced rows, and the teacher stood in front of the room, closer to the blackboard than to them. The other adult in the room, a teaching assistant, watched the seven-and eight-year-olds carefully. He scanned the rows up and down, left and right, and made sure the students didn’t touch each other. When one boy moved his desk an inch closer to another student, the assistant sent him to a corner. These students didn’t get to push each other on the playground and make up or cement a friendship with a hug in the morning and at the end of the day.
I understand that not all touching is good, but I believe we all need the kind that affirms us. I suspect the students at ACES, and volunteers who’ve cuddled drug-addicted newborns, and the thousands of people imprisoned in solitary confinement, and those living alone in quarantine and those sick with the virus know it too.
Contributor Notes
Originally from New Haven, Connecticut, Catina Bacote lives in New York City. Her essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, Gettysburg Review, TriQuarterly, December Magazine, The Common, The Sun, Southern California Review, and the anthology This Is the Place: Women Writing About Home. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa and teaches at St. John’s University.
