“2020 - The View from Suburbia”

by Dorothy Rice

It’s March 2020. A deadly virus grips Italy, Spain and Iran, spreading like kudzu. ICUs fill past capacity. Supplies of ventilators, hand sanitizer and personal protective equipment are exhausted. In the United States, our governments issue advisories—shelter-in-place, wear masks, practice social distancing. Here in Suburbia, the disconnect between these unprecedented precautions, and the unchanged world beyond our sparkling picture windows is surreal. Nonetheless, we comply. Suburbia was designed for social distancing. 

It’s April. The virus is here. New York City’s dead overwhelm morgues, mortuaries and cemeteries. Refrigerator trucks idle at hospital curbs. Yet the nation is vast, diverse, Bronx and Queens worlds removed from our gated communities, sprawling homes and landscaped yards. On our side of the freeway, there’s no hospital, or even an urgent care. We follow Governor Newsom’s directives, keep to our homes and order provisions online. Rumbling delivery trucks mar the quiet. Doorbells ring. Dogs bark. When the coast is clear, we retrieve our weekly boxes of ready-to-cook meals, sacks of pet food, cases of toilet paper. 

It’s May. Daily Covid-19 statistics have become routine as reports of the dead and wounded from some faraway war. Here in Suburbia, schools remain closed, businesses shuttered. We read that ten million Americans have lost their jobs. We sew dozens of masks for local shelters, share toilet paper with needy friends. We slather with hand sanitizer and learn to Zoom. To escape the confines of our homes, we walk. From opposite sides of the street, we greet neighbors we haven’t spoken to in years.

Here in our patch of the left coast, we don’t ascribe to conspiracy theories. Yet no one we know has died, or even gotten sick. Is it possible the experts are over-reacting? Like politics and religion, we keep our Covid doubts to ourselves.

A black man is murdered. Each endless minute with a knee pressed to George Floyd’s neck captured on camera while others watched. We’re glued to our screens as protests supplant Covid. We sew more masks and put up signs. BLACK LIVES MATTER. We google “important books by black authors.” Curtains drawn, lights dimmed, we pull from a new stack of bedside reading. White Fragility, recommended by a black friend. The New Jim Crow and James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, books that have sat, untouched, on our children’s bookshelves since they left for university. 
By the end of June, social distancing requirements have eased. To support beleaguered small businesses, we patronize beauty salons, dog groomers, get mani-pedis. We visit favorite restaurants and bars, gather for barbeques and belated birthday parties. We dust-off cancelled vacation plans, celebrate the 4th of July.

It’s mid-July. In revelry’s aftermath, infection rates skyrocket. As precipitously as they reopened, businesses close. We cancel optimistic airline reservations, lunch dates and root touch-ups. We still walk the dogs on the greenbelt—need to log those daily 10,000 steps; doctor’s orders—but we cross the street at anyone’s approach. They, or we, might be asymptomatic carriers. 

It’s August. America now leads the world in deaths and cases. Masked, advancing from one blue-taped X to the next, we wait our turn at the supermarket and post-office. Most businesses and restaurants are shuttered, many for good. Schools won’t reopen in September. We don’t doubt the charts and graphs—really, we don’t—yet we still don’t know anyone with the virus. We study the data. Vulnerability can be charted by zip code. Across the freeway and around the globe, lower income and communities of color suffer disproportionately. Our homes, amenities and lifestyle, insulate and protect us—from more than this virus. Tree cover and well-tended parks mitigate rising temperatures. By design and ordinance, there’s space to socially distance, breathe freely, jog and play tennis. Gates, security patrols, alarm systems and the police enforce the social contract. 

It’s September. Weeks of triple-digit temperatures. Smoke and ash from converging fires. Blasting the central air, we suspend walks, gardening and responsible social gatherings. Colleagues in wine country are evacuated. Friends in the foothills lose everything. The morning sun smolders on the horizon—a massive red orb, other-worldly. Thank god for insurance. 

It’s October. The virus has spread its tentacles into the heartland and rural north. The CDC’s color-coded charts mirror the nation’s stark political divide. Campaign signs sprout from our evergreen lawns. More blue than red. The polls favor Biden. But can we all be telling the truth? 

It’s November. The election is finally over, yet like earthquake aftershocks, accusations and threats continue. Once-sacrosanct tenets of democracy seem elastic as silly putty. Truth a matter of opinion. Right and wrong changeable as the weather. 

2020, and Covid, linger. We now know friends of friends, elderly relatives and co-workers with the virus. Still, despite the masks, telework, missed hugs and virtual school for the kids, life is good behind the gates.

Winter 2021. Nationwide, deaths reach 500,000—matching those killed in World War II, the Vietnam and Korean Wars combined. We’ve been careful. Yet that likely isn’t why we’ve escaped infection. Risk of exposure, hospitalization, death and recovery rates correlate with more than masks and six-foot perimeters. Inadequate health care. Dense housing. High-exposure, low-paying jobs that can’t be phoned in, wages that keep families fed.

We wait for the vaccine, hope that herd immunity is real and that life will soon return to some version of the before. We don’t say so in mixed company, but 2020 wasn’t half-bad. Zoom lent unexpected intimacy to meetings, literary readings and virtual cocktail parties. The stock market treated us well and our McMansions are worth more than before. 

Here in Suburbia, we’re grateful for what hasn’t changed. Yet a furball of unease sticks in our throats. For the bullets so effortlessly dodged. We add to our bedside reading and contemplate our privilege, tip-toeing up to its edges and boundaries. 

Leaving our homes to run errands in town, we merge onto the freeway, passing the exits to neighborhoods on other side. Systemic, institutionalized racism is real. We know we should advocate, legislate, work for change. Returning home, we pause before the ornate iron gates, waiting as they swing wide to let us pass. As they lock behind us, we exhale, considering what they protect and what they keep out.