BY CHRISTINA CLARK
Christina Clark spent a decade in the beauty industry before becoming a truth seeker, or community reporter, in southwest Michigan. She enjoys listening to others tell their stories and finding creative ways to relay the information. From time to time, she still writes personal, creative pieces. In her spare time, she enjoys her typewriters, dirty gin martinis, and overanalyzing small social interactions.
Bent over a massage table, I spread warm, blue wax in small sections on the bikini line of a college senior about to fly out of the midwest to Miami or Cancun, or wherever she was off to, in the next couple of days. The coming days would be full of booze and sunshine without the cares of whatever was here.
“Ok, deep breath,” I said to the client, as I grabbed the end of the hardening wax.
The client held her breath and clutched her cellphone to her stomach as I held her skin tight and pulled the strips of wax quickly. I smacked a gloved hand down on the freshly waxed area before applying aloe gel.
“Alright! You’re all done. Be safe, be careful – that virus is in Washington state now,” I said as she hopped off the table, ignoring my warnings and texting her friends to meet up at Urban Outfitters. I was already wiping down the room for the next client.
A phone rang loudly.
I blinked and realized I was sitting at my desk in the newsroom.
The spa room and the wax had been last week. It may as well have been a lifetime ago.
I had retired from a 10-year career as an esthetician and jumped at the chance to get into community reporting at a daily newspaper 30-minutes from home. Now, an invisible, microscopic monster in Washington had traveled to Michigan. Was it a pandemic? An epidemic? A flu? Nothing to worry about? Or just a virus infecting a few unlucky people in America? Nobody seemed to know yet. What it had done in Wuhan, and throughout Italy, was not giving me hope, though.
“The Sun, this is Darci,” I said as I picked up the phone, a little weaker than I had hoped.
“Hi Darci, this is Sam from the childcare center calling you back. We, uh – we aren’t really sure what we’re doing at the moment. I’m waiting to find out from our director if we will be staying open next week,” said “Sam.” “I think we are. But I’ll give you another call when I know for sure.”
I listened into the earpiece as she continued to struggle to clarify what was happening at the center.
Nobody knew what was going on.
That morning, the state had announced schools would be closed for the next two weeks after students left for their spring break week. A State of Emergency had been declared.
The students I had waxed for spring break were still gone. Their belongings and books still waited for them in dorm rooms and apartments.
I had a box of face masks at home, but who would wear those? That seemed excessive.
I had worked for years to become a reporter, a truth-seeker. From student journalist to stringer and now five days into the gig – reality looked to be coming apart at the seams. This was exactly where I wanted to be, even if I felt like I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
I slid open one of the desk drawers, half hoping my predecessor had left a shot of bourbon in a drawer.
Hanging up the receiver, I got up to tell my editor we still didn’t know what was going on.
She was trying to figure out what the schools were doing, and only getting a little further than I was able to.
I sat back down and looked at the cursor blinking on my screen.
A few more calls went out from my desk, and emails. A few frantic, short, replies came back in.
Then – an hour before deadline, everything started to change.
Everything was closing.
The story went from “child care, schools and other centers navigate new precautions” to “everything is shutting down.”
The to-the-point story I had been working on for seven hours changed completely.
This invisible fiend was all around us, for all we knew.
We needed to get the finished stories into the paper layout before it went off to the press.
“What a time to be in the news,” I thought, as I felt more alive than I had in the past few months.
The adrenaline, the fear, the rhythm of the keyboard, the phones ringing with updates. Everything changed in a moment.
We got the Saturday paper put together, somehow. It was in its final edits as I slipped out of the office and joined the herd of slow moving cars driven by uneasy people with shifty eyes.
Over the weekend, things continued to change.
I stayed home. I felt myself ball up under blankets but thinking I needed to be brave.
It was a mood somewhere between a shaky coffee mug in the morning and half-heartedly drank whiskey and beers in the evening.
A buzz in my head, a lock on my jaw. My face hurt from the stress of clenching my jaw in my sleep, as if I was trying to keep a monster at bay.
What was going on?
I tried on a surgical mask and looked in the mirror and shook my head. This seemed excessive. I settled on wearing scarves I could easily pull up over my nose when I spoke with people. Was it too soft? Was it too showy? Was it going to be enough?
If I spoke with people.
“It’s just fashion,” I said to myself in the mirror.
A bottle of hand sanitizer was dug out of a makeup artist kit put together lovingly through the years. I had used a lot of it in my past career just before pulling nitrile gloves tightly up to my wrists or taking a wet cotton pad to their face before painting it with pigments and minerals.
It felt oddly comforting – the cold splash of alcohol on my hands. The will to shake it as it evaporated from my fingertips as it purified whatever sins found there.
I became obsessed with updates. My phone updated with headlines. I bought national newspapers. I listened to the radio and podcasts. I tried not to watch the TV news.
I wanted to be prepared for whatever I was heading out into on Monday morning.
Sleep did not come easily.
A trip to the grocery store felt like an adrenaline inducing trip where I wanted to avoid other carts and their drivers more fervently than usual. We all eyed each other suspiciously in the aisles – daring someone to breathe with a little more passion.
Beans, rice, canned foods, frozen pizzas, beer – it was all stocked up on for the next couple of weeks.
No good came from Washington. The political, hellacious warzone of the past three years would not dissipate through a crisis like this. No unifying message of hope and goodwill and rubber drives came from the top.
This would all go away. Nothing to worry about.
By Monday the drive to work through town was like driving through a war zone or a science fiction movie. The term “essential worker” became a part of the words of the day, as everyone discussed what it even meant to be an essential member of society.
I could not tell if the people were war weary already, or if so many had been abducted by little green men that there were just less cars with drivers.
Massive, sprawling parking lots sat void of vehicles. Only a couple people here and there, and hardly a car on the road.
I thought back to my timing. A week and a half ago I had been waxing bodies to go on vacation. Having conversations that seemed mundane and meaningless. The small talk comforts and tortures.
When things did not make sense, or were stressful, I used to hold court in a dive bar with friends. Drinking gin and tonics, whiskey and Cokes, Rolling Rock beers, and working it out while smoking packs of Marlboros and American Spirits.
But now, we were not supposed to socialize.
I wanted nothing more than to light a cigarette and stand in the chaotic emptiness of this moment.
This invisible, viral mutant attacked your lungs, I thought to myself.
Too bad I don’t smoke anymore.
