New From Here, page 19
Mom puts the sanitizer down and assures us, “Don’t worry. There are still only twenty or so cases in the US, not a big deal. Hardly a pandemic.”
That’s what she keeps saying, but every day, the number keeps inching up. First it was two, then it was five, now it’s twenty. When will it finally be “a big deal”? And then what are we going to do?
* * *
After breakfast, I bike over to Christopher’s restaurant so we can do our math homework together. As Christopher reads out the problems, I help him pack the take-out containers. Now that the restaurant’s on Nextdoor, there are more orders! It’s fun writing the names of the dishes on the boxes, along with smiley faces and messages like Thanks for supporting our small business!
When the last of the math problems are finished, Christopher and I take a break. We set up a bowling alley on the sidewalk with take-out containers and my soccer ball, and go “bowling.”
“I don’t know why my mom has to go so far away… especially if we’re in a pandemic. What if something happens to her? We won’t even be able to help her,” I tell Christopher as we bowl.
“Can’t she reschedule?” he asks.
I shake my head. “It’s all set. She’s leaving on Tuesday. She even got our auntie Jackie to agree to take care of us.”
“Really?” Christopher asks, rolling the soccer ball. “I’d let you stay at my house, but it’s the size of an Altoids tin. I have to share a room with my grandma.”
I smile, thinking of how fun it would be if Lao Lao came. Then she could make us red bean zongzi wrapped in bamboo leaves after school. I make a note to send her a message when I get home. I hope she gets over her fear of flying soon… although now that we have more cases…
“It’s okay. She should go. I hope she gets the job. If the number of cases keep going up, we’ll definitely need the health insurance,” I tell Christopher. “We don’t even have enough hand sanitizer.”
He stops bowling.
“I can get you some hand sanitizer!” he says.
“How?”
“We can make some!” he suggests.
“Make some?”
“Sure, all you need is rubbing alcohol, aloe vera, and some peppermint oil! My mom’s been doing it for years.”
“Wow, that sounds amazing!” Then my face falls.
“What’s wrong?”
“Rubbing alcohol,” I tell Christopher. “I’ll bet they’re all out of that, too.”
“We get ours from a special supplier,” Christopher says. “Here, I’ll get you his number.”
I wait while he runs inside and scribbles down the number of one Matthew Madison.
I take the piece of paper with Matthew’s number from him and stuff it into my pocket. “Thanks!”
I hop back on my bike and holler to Christopher, “You’re a real friend!”
Chapter 66
We convince Mom to drop us off at the Oakland Public Library, across the street from Matthew’s office, on Sunday.
“Tell me, why are you going to see this Matthew guy again?” Mom asks.
“To get some rubbing alcohol so we can make homemade hand sanitizer!” I say.
Lea claps her hands together. We had her at “homemade.”
“Who is this Matthew?” Mom asks. “Do I need to come with you guys to meet him?”
“It’s fine,” Bowen assures Mom. “I’ll be there. I got this.”
“All right. Well, I’ll pick you up at five p.m. I need to run some errands before my trip to New York on Tuesday,” Mom says, pulling into the library.
At the mention of New York, Lea clutches her seat belt. “Do you have to go so far away for the interview?” she asks.
Gently, Mom switches off the car. She tries to explain to Lea. “Remember in The Lion King when the lionesses have to hunt?” she asks.
Lea nods. It’s her favorite movie!
“Well, Mommy is a lioness. You three are my hungry little cubs. And right now, I’ve got to go and find some food to feed my cubs.”
“I’d love some zebra,” Lea says, putting her paws up, pretending to be Nala.
“Or an antelope!” I add.
Mom chuckles. “That’s why I’m going to New York. There’s a big juicy zebra there. All I have to do is fly over and do one short interview. And I’ll be back before you know it!”
Lea looks down. I can tell she really wants to go along with the Lion King analogy. But still, the thought of Mom being so far away from the rest of her pack… when there might be something dangerous in the air, it cramps my throat.
I put a hand on my sister’s shoulder. Maybe we’ll feel better after making some hand sanitizer. “C’mon, let’s go get some alcohol.”
Mom shoots me an alarmed look.
“Sorry, that came out wrong!”
* * *
We finally find Matthew’s office tucked behind the Safeway supermarket across the street. When we walk inside, we see him in a full hazmat suit, moving boxes. He looks like an astronaut!
“Hello?” I call out, waving my arms. I wonder if he can hear us in the suit. “Are you Matthew? I’m Knox. We spoke on the phone.…”
“Oh yes!” he calls out from under his suit.
He holds up a gloved finger and we wait for him to remove his helmet. When he gets it off, I see he has a surgical mask on underneath. Man, talk about overkill. The guy’s dressed for a nuclear apocalypse!
“Gotta protect myself,” he explains, pointing to his suit and mask.
I furrow my eyebrows. “From the virus? It hasn’t officially been declared a pandemic yet.”
Matthew gives me a look, like, C’mon, as he continues moving boxes. “Eighty-seven thousand cases around the world? You really think it will just skip the US? Why? Because we’re so special?”
“So you think it might actually happen,” I say.
“Oh, I know it will,” he says. “The world’s too globalized. It’s wishful thinking, downright arrogant on our part, to think the virus won’t come here. The question is not if, but when.”
I shiver at my siblings. If what Matthew says is true, neither of our parents should be flying!
As Matthew digs out the bottles of rubbing alcohol for us, I tell him about our dad flying over soon from Hong Kong and our mom flying to New York this week. “You think we can get them hazmat suits?” I ask.
Matthew puts a gloved hand to his chin. “Your mom will be okay, but your dad… a long-haul international flight? He should definitely suit up.”
“Can we buy one from you?” I ask.
“I wish I could help you, but I’ve sold all of mine to local hospitals. Everyone’s stocking up on supplies, trying to brace themselves. Your best bet is to check directly with the hospitals. They might have one or two to spare.”
I doubt the hospitals will have a spare hazmat suit. And if they did, we’d have to hold ten more garage sales just to afford it.
“Is there anything else he could wear that would protect him?” Bowen asks, reading my mind.
Matthew thinks for a minute. “He might be able to get away with one of those full-body costume suits. Ever seen those people in inflatable shark suits at Halloween?”
“That protects you from the virus?”
“It’s insulated. Better than nothing!” he says.
Bowen immediately starts googling.
“Found one!” he announces, showing us his phone. We all crowd around to look. Instead of a shark suit, it’s a dinosaur suit. The idea of Dad running around the airport in a T-rex suit is so ridiculous, I burst out laughing.
“No way Dad’s wearing that on a plane,” I say. “How’s he even gonna sit down? The tail’s like two feet long!”
“Hmmmm… good point,” Matthew says, handing us the rubbing alcohol. We take ten dollars from our garage sale money and hand it to him—luckily, he doesn’t charge like the Taradippin brothers. “Check with the hospitals. Maybe they’ll help you out.”
As we thank Matthew and turn to leave, he throws us a box of surgical face masks.
“For your mom,” he says. “On the house.”
Bowen stares at the box in his hands. “Are you sure? These are worth more than liquid gold.”
“Well, people are worth more than liquid gold in my book,” Matthew calls back.
Bowen’s speechless. He hugs the box in his arms as we walk back to the library. As he sits on the stoop, peering down at the masks, my sister and I try to make a TikTok with Bowen’s phone.
“That guy was so nice,” I say to Bowen, moving my arm up and across.
“Yeah, he really was,” Bowen says.
He gazes at a homeless man picking through the recycling in the corner. He looks down at the box and pulls out a mask. I think he’s taking one for himself, but instead he points to the homeless man. “He probably doesn’t have one of these. You think we should give him one?”
I smile at my brother, never more proud of him.
That day, we distribute masks to the homeless in the library parking lot. It feels so good to give the liquid gold away to those who need it most… especially knowing we were once in their shoes.
Chapter 67
Mom picks us up at five and immediately nixes the idea of going to the hospital so we can ask for a hazmat suit.
“No way,” she says, pointing to the radio as she drives. “Do you know what I just heard?? A man died in Washington State of COVID! We’re not going anywhere near the ER!”
My hands fly to my mouth at the tragic news of the first US death. I immediately open up one of the bottles of rubbing alcohol and start pouring it all over my hands, while Bowen barks at me, “Stop it! You’re wasting it!”
I put the cap back. “Mom, you’re not still going to New York, are you? There’s got to be other interviews you can do here in SF!” You can have my interview with the country club people this week, I almost blurt out.
“I need to put food on our table, bao bao. I’m a lioness, remember?”
Yeah, and she’s about to step into the most dangerous safari ever—SFO!
“I’ll be fine,” she says. “I’ve got my hand sanitizer and my disinfectant wipes.…”
“And surgical masks,” Bowen says, pulling out a few we saved.
Mom glances at the masks. “Where on earth did you get these?? These are N95s!”
“You have to promise not to touch anything !” I say to her, repeating the words she once said to me.
Mom assures me, “Nothing’s going to happen. New York City is perfectly safe, trust me.”
Trust me. They’re the words that got me here. That I’ve been holding close to my chest. Believing in them. Leaving Dad across the ocean for them. And now there are loads of cases. And a man just died. As the tears pool in my eyes, Mom pulls the car over.
“Hey, come here,” she says, reaching for me. She can’t quite hold me but our hands hug. As I hang on to Mom’s hand, she explains what the last few weeks have been like for her. Not the cheery version. The real version. “I’ve been sending out my résumé everywhere. To every company on LinkedIn. I’ve been calling up people I went to college with, people I haven’t seen for years. Begging them to find out if they know of anyone who’s hiring. I’ve been doing everything I humanly can—” Mom’s voice breaks. “And still no one wants to touch me.”
Lea reaches out a hand to Mom. We’ve never seen her like this. So vulnerable. I hold a fistful of Mom’s sweatshirt, clinging to it.
“Okay, you can go,” Lea finally says. “But be careful, Mommy.”
“You’re all we’ve got…,” I add quietly.
Mom dabs a tear from her eye as she squeezes our hands back. She tells us she will and starts up the car again.
Chapter 68
On Monday, Christopher and I walk over to Mrs. Turner and present her with two big bottles of sparkling purple hand sanitizer that we made over the weekend.
“Where did you find these?? They’re sold out everywhere !” Mrs. Turner gasps. “And they’re so pretty!”
I smile at her proudly. “We made them!” As soon as we got back from Matthew’s, we all went over to Christopher’s restaurant, where we stirred up the ingredients in a humongous bucket Christopher’s dad gave us. Lea had the brilliant idea of adding purple glitter.
“Well, we thank you!” Mrs. Turner says as she sets them down and announces to the class that we now have plenty of sanitizer to go around.
Christopher and I walk over to our mat together.
“Did you see your post on Nextdoor?” he asks. Christopher tells me someone’s been replying, saying mean stuff.
I sneak out my iPad and scroll to look. Someone named CJ Axel replied to my post:
Are you kidding me?! Who still has an appetite for Chinese food when there’s a virus from CHINA raging?
“Oh my God!” I shriek. I immediately scroll down to see the replies to his message.
The virus is also in Italy. You see anyone avoiding pizzerias? —Thomas Eastman
THANK YOU, I mouth to Thomas’s response. I keep scrolling.
Are you saying Chinese FOOD is to blame? —Rachel McKinlay
CJ Axel replied:
That’s EXACTLY what I’m saying.
“Uh-oh.” I scroll down and read CJ’s long explanation, going on for paragraphs. He puts up a picture as “evidence” of an ice cream shop in Rome with a sign on its window: DUE TO INTERNATIONAL SECURITY MEASURES ALL PEOPLE COMING FROM CHINA ARE NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE ACCESS IN THIS PLACE. And another picture of a restaurant in Germany with a sign saying, NO CHINESE WANTED!!!
Christopher looks worriedly at me. “A thousand people have probably seen that comment. Now everyone will be too scared to order from us!”
I search for help on Nextdoor and tap on report abuse. “I’ll write another post tonight saying how we need to support small businesses, now more than ever. And if people don’t feel comfortable leaving their houses, we’ll deliver.”
“But how are we going to do that?” Christopher asks. “We don’t have any delivery people, and Uber Eats is so expensive!”
Before I respond, Mrs. Turner announces that there’s been a second case of locally spread COVID, just confirmed in Oregon.
“Oh no!” Jeff says, putting his arms over his head. “We’re all going to get it.”
My classmates start running around the classroom, screaming. Tyler jumps up and pumps twelve pumps of my new homemade sanitizer and rubs it on his head.
“Back in your seats!” Mrs. Turner orders. “Everybody, stay calm!”
“I really have to go to the bathroom!” Simone says, wiggling in her seat. “Are bathrooms safe? Should we stop going to the bathroom??”
The question brings me straight back to the early days in Hong Kong, when we were all fretting over what to do. I raise my hand. Mrs. Turner calls on me.
“You can still go to the bathroom,” I tell my classmates. “COVID-19 is mainly transmitted by people, through coughing and sneezing. That’s why everyone in Asia wears face masks.”
“Should we wear masks too?” Simone asks.
I hesitate before answering, wishing I still had face masks to give to all my classmates. But I gave them all away, except the two that Mom needs for her NYC flight. Christopher stands up next to me and has a suggestion.
“Since we don’t have masks, we should move our desks apart. That’s what my parents did with the tables at the restaurant,” he says.
We look to Mrs. Turner, who nods. That afternoon, we work together to help our teacher clear away all the decorations and clutter from the four corners of our classroom and move our desks far apart.
It’s sad to see our beloved Focus corner, Calm Down corner, and Tablet Reward corner disappear, and to have to sit so far away from my best friend. But I decide the distance is worth it to make our classroom a little safer.
Chapter 69
On Tuesday, the morning Mom is supposed to go to New York City, I’m on Zoom with Dad, telling him all about our homemade sparkly sanitizer and how we spaced out our desks in our classroom, when I overhear Mom talking to Auntie Jackie on the phone. Her voice sounds panicked.
“Dad, I have to call you back,” I tell him.
I click leave meeting and walk outside.
“I’m so sorry, but Maggie’s got pink eye!” Auntie Jackie says on speakerphone downstairs. “She must have somehow gotten it this weekend when we went to Tahoe!”
“Oh my God!” Mom cries.
I walk down the stairs to the kitchen and take a seat next to Mom’s recipe binder. Lately, she’s been printing out more recipes from online. I start flipping through them, until Auntie Jackie says something that makes my head jerk up.
“Anyway, I took her to the doctor and he says it’s highly contagious. I hate to bail on you, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for your kids to stay with us.…”
“We’re not staying with them?” I blurt out, nearly snapping my finger as I close the recipe ring binder.
“Of course, I understand,” Mom says to Jackie. “Poor Maggie. I’m so sorry. We’ll figure something else out.”
As Mom hangs up, my siblings walk into the kitchen. They heard the conversation too. What are we gonna do?
“Maybe we can stay at Christopher’s?” I suggest out loud, then remember what Christopher said about having to bunk with his grandmother. I doubt he’d have the space for us.
“No, it’s okay,” Mom says with a heavy sigh. “I’m just going to have to cancel my interview.”
“Wait!” Bowen says, jumping up. Mom’s flight is in two hours. She’s all packed and ready to go. “Maybe we can get a babysitter?”
I immediately start typing an ad on Nextdoor, but Mom reaches over to stop me. “I don’t know how comfortable I feel letting a complete stranger take care of you three. Especially overnight,” she says. “I’m going to cancel.”
“No, don’t,” Bowen urges. He starts frantically googling on his phone. “Look! It says here there’s no minimum age requirement in California for babysitting. You know what that means?”
