Carla-Elaine Johnson

The Year When Everything Went to Hell: 2020 (An Excerpt)

INVISIBLE

My own father worked the blast furnace at the local steel mill, taught as a substitute teacherafter retirement, and raised money for a much needed church elevator. Better yet, he was oneof the few black supervisors or “white hats” at Bethlehem Steel. He smoked, drank, ateanything, and died of pancreatic cancer in 1996.

My father’s grandfather was a fisherman, married three times, and fathered at least 20 children with two of his three wives. He kept the bar open every Saturday night until my father walked in to take his hand and lead him home. He died in the blizzard of 1966 when he slipped on the ice while heading back from the liquor store to his latest girlfriend. He was 96.

Both men were large, strong, and compassionate men. Skin color dictated their career paths.My father wanted to be a lawyer, but he was too dark for the color bar. His grandfather tried tochange by moving states, but he was stuck with the sea.

Strong black men are invisible. They exist for families, friends, lovers, and spouses, but never to the ruling majority. My father helped his black co-workers learn to read by using the newspaper because you could get a good job at the plant even if you didn’t know how to read. Most wore yellow hats, as workers. Crane work led to many heart attacks and strokes. Occupational hazard, they said.

On the steel mill plantation, black men are invisible. I did not understand this until a decadeafter his death. Worse, my cousins still worked there. I don’t make mention of the plantationthought. They just want to support their families. Money runs the plantation.

JUNE 25

In the month since George Floyd’s murder, I wonder if our country transcending into a chaotic demise worse than any imagery of hell. Each day One month since George Floyd’s murder, my soul wallows in a pandemic of grief. My voice rises in protest; sometimes the loss of one does more than affect the loss of all.

I cannot watch the video of his murder. The images are seared into my brain after the first time I saw it play out on the afternoon news. Seeing the life drain out of the eyes of a man I never knew floored me. He looked like so many of my cousins, uncles, and friends. He was the son I never had.

It’s like when someone asks where you were on 9/11. I remember seeing the second plane crash into the towers – live. Now, when someone asks me where I was when George Floyd was murdered, I remember the horror of that video. I cannot sleep. My dreams are chaotic. Who is the next black man, the next Latino man, the next trans person of color to suffer needlessly?

I don’t know the answer. I don’t want to watch the news.

KINDNESS

Self-care begins with being kind to each other, but most importantly to ourselves.

Friday, May 29: After yet another campus town hall session grappling with the COVID-19response, we take turns being open about how we and our students are affected by COVID-19.Then we tackle the big issue: George Floyd’s murder and the reaction.

As a queer black woman, I am not surprised at the eruption. The previous night, I saw the ThirdPrecinct burn on live television with no fire trucks or police presence in sight. Order gave up.Burn baby burn.

Every day since Tuesday morning, someone texts or asks “how are you doing?” During the townhall, the question comes up again. In the mostly white area, I speak in general terms.

I stop counting the times someone says, “how are you doing?” I am just tired of it.

I wallow in grief, yet I say little. I don’t want to be the token person of color who can explain the effects of centuries of slogging through repeated micro-aggressions, literal and metaphorical lynching of black culture with each death. I don’t understand how to be kind to myself when I am hurting in a way that I cannot explain.

This is one time too many and my self-care, my kindness begins with allowing myself space tosay nothing. In the past, I have been the optimist, the happy person with a smile for everyone.

Now I have no smiles for myself. I fight to re-learn kindness and what it means during thispandemic.

I find others who do not need an explanation when I cannot speak.

LOVE

During a pandemic, love is tricky. We can’t see each other or touch one another. Because we don’t know enough about the virus, we play it safe. Date by Zoom, deciding when it is okay to risk meeting in person, and when to actually touch one other is a big decision. Nearly overnight, we have regressed a century, only a chaperone is not needed. Instead of meeting at a restaurant or bar, we attend Zoom happy hours with BYOB. We have drive by or Zoom weddings where the newly married couple drives by the nursing home to wave “hi” to Grandma

who safely views them from the sidewalk or behind the glass barrier. We spend time getting toknow the person we might find attractive. If one-night stands are happening, no one knowsbecause no one wants the shame of admitting that they care less about their own health.

Taking the leap is not eloping; taking the leap is surviving quarantine with a new love. It wasbad before the pandemic.

UNCOUPLING

Before COVID-19, breaking up was fairly easy. Under a pandemic, quarantine makes uncoupling a difficult task. While a few long-married celebrities stress how being so close made their relationship stronger, others headed to divorce court as soon as reasonably possible. The stress of living with someone 24-7 is rough during the best of times.

Friendship matters during the worst of times. One of my co-workers is married to a divorce attorney who started a divorce app during the COVID-19 pandemic. The attorney-spouse figures that living in quarantine will either drive couples closer together or bring out issues that will lead to the desire to divorce.

I think of my last girlfriend/fiancée. She wanted to move in, with the possibility of her adult daughter occasionally living with us whenever she was kicked out of her boyfriend’s place. We never moved in together. We got along great as friends and lovers, but the COVID-19 quarantine would have tested the divorce waters hard. I need space to sleep, to teach, and to dream. She needed the attention of a 9-5 regular job kind of gal.

We nearly broke up over our first tax season together, when I wasn’t around for dinner at six on the dot most evenings or when I worked overtime to put money aside to pay for summer expenses. I wonder what she would think of my current schedule where I attempt to be more flexible to meet my students ’needs? I wonder if she would have quit her job out of fear of catching COVID-19 at the nursing home where she worked. I wonder if we would have become

more strangers than partners. When I see yet another celebrity couple announcing a divorce, Iwonder….

Would that have been us?