We were dancing in the streets; I mean literally. Moms with babies in their arms and a glass of Bacardi and Coke in their hands, laughing and dancing to a car’s CD player. The teenage girls dancing over to the side, where the boys leaned on cars and cracked jokes, watching the girls. Little kids throwing footballs and running up and down
the street after each other in the hot sun. We had poured out of our apartment buildings, all races, black, Mexican, white and Arab. Four families, six families, pairs of families who were doubled up in one three-bedroom unit. There were houses on our street too, but those folks more just wandered out to watch. There was nothing so sure as being poor, and we were poor, oh yes.
Those fools in their houses with their brown front yards thought they were rich--and I guess they were, compared to us—so they were scared, because it was the rich folks who were dying from the virus this time. We all were just getting over the old virus that had kept us in our living rooms, blinds drawn, watching TV, yelling at the kids, feeling like we were going to explode if one more thing got on our nerves. Some moms tried to get their kids to do the zoom lessons that the schools set up for us, or finish the worksheets they got on the last day of school, but after a while we just lost the will, and let them play King of the Jungle on the living room furniture, or took them over to their cousins’. Grandmas and grandpas missed feeling those little arms around their necks and seeing their smiling faces, so sometimes we broke the rules and let them go over there. Those of us who had a man in the house tried to get him to go hang with his friends in some single guy’s crib or in their car, because when they were at home they hogged the TV with their PlayStation games, and we had to look at Instagram on our phones, and that was one less screen to keep the kids quiet. It wasn’t until some grandpas died, and a whole family got sick, that we finally took it seriously. It was a bad time.
And then it was over and the kids went back to school, and the Depression started to get real. Evictions, whole streets you couldn’t drive down because people took them over; homeless men, yes, but also whole families living in tents. Trying to remember your grandma’s recipes for soup from a ham bone, and growing greens back behind the building. Powdered milk. We swore to each other: when this was over we would never drink powdered milk again.
We didn’t even know how down we were, until we got the news. It was our favorite dream, a better-than-sex fantasy: free money. We knew the money was out there: rich people were giving away money like they were running the Powerball lottery and there were a hundred winners every day. Passing out hundred-dollar bills to strangers, throwing stock certificates out windows, because it was the rich people getting sick this time, and they thought it was just because they were rich. Rich people we’d heard of died, like Jeff Bezos and Tiger Woods and a few of the Kardashians, and a lot we didn’t know, like CEOs and bankers. A lady on the news said, “Corporate organizational charts are changing faster than the betting odds at a racetrack, as vice presidents ascend, glimmer, and are snuffed out.” I loved that, it was a cool image, and it reminded me of the times my daddy took me to the racetrack, and I got to pick out a horse, and he would bet on it for me. My horse usually lost, but I loved cheering for it, and once mine won and I had twenty dollars I didn’t have before. Now all we had was bingo, those few times we had a little extra money.
We were sad for some of the people. I mean, who’s so low they would wish death on someone? But we found we couldn’t stop thinking that this time, it really was the Lord’s will. Because it was rich people, but not all rich people. The scientists studied it, trying to figure out who was vulnerable to it. Bill Gates was spared, and his wife, although he lost one of his kids. It got a lot of people in Congress, mostly Republicans, but some Democrats, too. Like Diane Feinstein, I voted for her ass every time, just because of the “D” by her name. She got it, almost died, but pulled through. Most of the major athletes made it through, but not all of them. Tom Brady, for instance, was one of the first to go.
But they found out it wasn’t that the virus thrived in home theaters, yachts and private jets like what we saw in the TV shows and the magazines we used to buy at the checkout line. It was about the money itself. But not just that, either. It was something in the brains some of the rich people, a sort of blindness, that attracted the virus. The ones who lived in their mansions without it ever crossing their minds that somewhere there were five, six, eight families living in that exact same number of square feet where they and their two kids kicked back in front of the fire or whatever. The ones whose imaginations were so small, they thought food stamps were for lazy mf’s who didn’t deserve them, didn’t deserve to eat. Some knew, but forgot. Like, it surprised some of us when OJ went down. Most of the black people knew, deep down, he was guilty af, but no one thought he’d forget where he came from. Turns out a person can forget a lot, if they’re of a mind to.
Some called it the needle virus because of the Bible verse about how it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. People really got into the Bible with that quote. You just knew the folks who were chosen by the virus weren’t headed for heaven. It was like the Rapture in reverse.
We didn’t start dancing right away, because what were the chances we’d be in the right place at the right time when some scared-shitless billionaire started emptying out his savings account? No, we didn’t start rejoicing till we found out there would be cash in our personal pockets. We had a new President, not that the old one would’ve survived. He passed even before Tom Brady, before anyone knew what was happening.
Anyway, the President and the Congress people finally took care of us. Now that they knew their lives depended not on making money, but on understanding us and our lives, the politicians started passing laws for us. People at the bottom, people in the middle, people who had risen up but never forgot their roots. Us. They were giving us fifteen hundred dollars for every person, every month, plus five hundred for each kid, no questions asked. Enough to pay the rent and keep the lights on, and still have some left for a trip to Chuck E Cheese for the kids, or even a vacation somewhere nice: Hawaii maybe, if you had a little help from a job. Might even make it worth it to have a man; job or no job, he could help out. Not if they were just going to drink it up, but maybe a little more money would give them a little more hope; motivation to get some training, or keep applying for jobs, or get a better one. They said now people had money in their pockets, they’d be spending--oh, yeah--and there’d be jobs, and, who knew how high we’d go?
Then came the vaccine. You going to get it? we’d ask each other. Nah, I’ll never forget where I came from. I’ll still remember y’all when I finish college and have a Lexus SUV, and a house in the hills with a pool in the back. You don’t know what that vaccine’s going to do to you, government puts all kind of shit in there.
But you never know. Maybe I will get rich. Maybe I’ll have new friends who go out to good restaurants and drink the expensive stuff. And maybe I’ll forget my mom’s drunk boyfriends and the times my kids begged me for something to eat and I had nothing. The bums sleeping between the litter on the streets. My dad cursing at us because he had to pay back the welfare money they gave my mom.
There’s a lot you can forget, if you want to. I went right down and got the vaccine. Who ever knows how things are going to work out?
Writing prompt: "she couldn't believe it…"