Friday, March 27, 2020

The park that I walk through toward the House of a Hundred Grandmothers is locked. It doesn’t matter, though, since I can’t visit there anyway. Their quarantine has gotten more strict. Even the caregivers can’t leave the grounds. I detour around the park on my way to the supermarket -- not the one below my office, but a much smaller one owned by the same company. It has the same plexiglas shields at the registers and the same decals on the floor. They aren’t limiting the number of the people in the store, though. It is packed with shoppers. In each aisle, I have to squeeze past other customers. I don’t go down the aisle of cleaning supplies, since it is blocked by a man in a mask and gloves, one hand in the air, dancing alone quite well to the Justin Bieber song playing overhead. It would be a shame to interrupt him. I only find a few of the things that I want. They are out of challah, but I’ll make do with what remains from last week’s. I get toilet paper, since I actually am running low. I don’t need a pack of 32 rolls, which would last me close to a year, but that’s all they have. I only notice when I get outside that the paper is bright pink. So be it. Walking home, there is little traffic. An ambulance zooms silently past me, lights flashing. Children cluster close to the ground on a dead-end street, drawing in chalk on the bricks. Their mothers stand a distance away, apart from each other, each with her own baby carriage, talking. My landlord is cleaning up our yard. When I get home, he is standing with a hose on the stairs to my apartment, spraying down the bricks. He steps back as I enter. I see that some of the water from when he washed the door has leaked into my kitchen. It reminds me that I should wash the floor sometime. But I probably won’t get around to it soon.