My 12-year-old had a minor cold which lasted one day. In order to return to school, he needed to show a negative COVID test. The one day illness becomes a two day trial. In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where we live, it is difficult to find a nearby COVID testing site. It is easier for us to take the subway to Park Slope, a more affluent neighborhood on the opposite side of Prospect Park.
The CityMD urgent care clinic, which provides free COVID testing, opens at 9:00am. The Omicron variant and the holiday travel season are stretching all the COVID test sites beyond their maximum capacity. When we arrive at 8:45am, the line already stretches around the corner, two blocks long. It is December, and although the weather isn’t bad for winter in New York, it hovers just above freezing.
A young couple arrive and stand behind us on line. Luckily they are following this week’s New York State health order to wear masks, even out of doors. But as we stand there, line unmoving, they inch forward toward us. That thing that people unconscious of their surroundings do: keep creeping forward on line, until they are crowding the people ahead, as if it will make the line go faster. The woman talks on her phone right into my ear. I ask the young couple if they wouldn’t mind stepping back, I’m here with my son and we may all potentially be ill. They act like I am their bitchy mom and don’t really budge.
We wait about an hour, the line unmoving. I see a woman about three people ahead who has been holding a one-year-old in her arms the whole time. When will they let them in? The clinic keeps the waiting room sparse for social distancing, so they’re only letting people in as other patients exit.
My son and I pass the time by (quietly) singing Dua Lipa songs and jumping up and down in an effort to stay warm. He has a joke generating app on his phone we play with for a long time which comes up with one-liners that are more like zen koans: If a fly loses its wings, is it called a walk?
The crowding couple behind us give up and leave. They remind me of a recent photo I saw of people waiting to receive booster shots in London. The people are wrapped around a courtyard at St. Thomas Hospital. However, they are all six feet apart and masked up, even outside. Maybe this is not always the case in London, but they looked calm in their queue; no one was shoving one another with masks hanging from their chins, no one had to manage the line.
The middle aged woman who now fills the space left by the crowding Millennials is worse. She has a glowering expression, made uglier by heavy black eyebrows which are drawn on. Her white-rooted dark hair is drawn into a messy ponytail, and she is wearing what looks like pajamas. She shouts into her phone in Spanish, and what she’s saying is not very nice. She steps forward, screaming right into my ear.
We’re going on two hours waiting outside, but the line stays as it is. We’re getting really cold just standing there, so my son and I take turns standing in a patch of sunlight that has appeared on the other side of the sidewalk. We alternate to make sure we won’t lose our place on line. As I stand in the sun, I see a man instead of the woman behind us. Looks like she was holding a place for him. Maybe the crowding problem has ended for now.
The older man looks benign, even sad. His grey sweatpants are dirty and torn. He wears a filthy paper mask pulled down under his nose. Somehow he owns an expensive new model Samsung phone, which he shouts into. Thirty minutes pass as he creeps nearer and nearer. Because he was having a phone conversation, I had gestured to him to step back a little, which he waved away. Now I step between the man and my son, wrapping my arms around my son from behind to protect his body.
Too cold, I go back to the patch of sun for a minute. Watching from across the sidewalk, I see the man move all the way until his body is against my son’s back, and he is literally breathing down my child’s neck as he screams into his phone.
I’ve had enough. I move across the sidewalk in a rush. “Sir, can you please step back? We’re trying to social distance.” I add, to make my point clear, “My son might have COVID.” Not, you might have COVID, and you might be giving it to a child.
The man turns on me. “I’m fine. I’m not doing anything. You aren’t even on line, you left to go stand somewhere else.”
It is not a good idea to get my ire up. I have a bad temper when pushed too far, and like most mothers, I am very protective of my child. “You’ve seen me on line, we’ve been here for hours!” I respond in my loud actor’s voice. “We’re trying to keep warm! I am only asking you to retain some social distance. Please step back from my son!”
He freaks out. “I’m fine, I can stand where I want to! Nothing is happening here. I’m fine! You step off. You have no right to tell me what to do. You mind your own damn business!” As if this wasn’t my business, the business of all of us, to end COVID.
I open my mouth to respond, but he is screaming over my voice. I cease talking and cross myself without thinking. I look into his sad eyes and retain eye contact while he carries on about how he is fine, but I am bad. I won’t let the eye contact go, because at this point it is the only way I can communicate with this man. Some others step out of the line to witness the scene, some looking ready to step in if necessary.
His medium brown skin looks red. Is it the cold, or is he really that enraged? In his eyes, I see what he thinks of me: a Park Slope karen. I curse the woman named Karen who made other white women’s voices seem racist, entitled, and easily dismissed.
I stare in his eyes until he loses steam and his diatribe peters out. “You must be having a really bad day,” I say after a pause. “God bless you.” The man gathers energy and turns on me again. “I don’t accept that! I don’t accept anyone telling me ‘God bless you’ when they don’t mean it!”
My staring eyes look sad. I say nothing, finally breaking eye contact to turn forward and act as a barrier between the man and my son. My son and I talk quietly and wait, our feet and hands numb. I comment that I am relieved they are finally letting the woman holding the baby for hours into the clinic. I tell my son it is never a good idea to think you can judge what another person goes through. A neutral statement.
After about five minutes, I hear a small voice behind me. “Excuse me, Ma’am.” I turn around. “I should have never yelled at you like that. I was wrong. I’m really sorry. I should have never done that.” Tears stand in his eyes. I make light of it. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m just trying to protect my child. Anyone standing on this line right now is having a bad day. The only thing that really bothered me was when you said I didn’t mean it when I said ‘God bless you’.” I laugh a little, so does he, and the tension lightens.
After 2+ hours myself, my son, and the man behind us are let into the clinic. I check my son in at the digital registration module while he holds two chairs for us. When I come back to my chair, I notice the man from the line has seated himself across from us. My son and I keep to ourselves while he plays his Nintendo Switch and I leaf through an outdated copy of Brooklyn Parent. When I glance up, I see the man looking right at us with a sweet expression, tears still standing in his eyes.
After thirty more minutes, a medical assistant calls for “George.” The man gets up, but gestures to my son and I, asking the medical assistant if we shouldn’t go first because we were there before him. The medical assistant reassures him that my son and I will be called in next. George waves goodbye to us, apology still wet in his eyes.
The aggression and the contrition. The rage and the remorse. The exhaustion of being inadvertently drawn into someone’s emotional life. My husband says males in this culture are conditioned to hold in their anger, release it on the wrong person, then feel guilty about it. They spend their lives living with regrets.
So many truths laid bare by COVID.