Death and vaxxes.
We got to the church right after 3AM. We stood in a loose knot, none of us sure where we were supposed to be. The building takes up a city block, and there was no signage. We had been told to line up early, dress warm, and to be at this church to get vaccinated. We were less than a mile from home but totally lost.
We were all living in the tier of conditions that had just made us eligible and still we weren’t sure we should be there. We weighed our risks and likelihoods. We sat with our worries and our guilt. We leaned against a half-wall for twenty minutes, seeing no one else. We began to suspect we had been given bad information.
Oakland’s streets are poorly lit and the sidewalks are uneven, heaved up by Loma Prieta, pried loose and cracked apart by the ambitious, unstoppable roots of oaks. Dog walkers and joggers routinely walk down the middle of the road; the blacktop is in better shape. The street corners read WPA 1942 with regularity. When we saw a woman in a knitted cap with a wrapped camp chair slung over her shoulder, we knew we hadn’t gotten a bad tip. This had to be the place.
The woman’s wool pom-pom wiggled as she walked around the corner to the back entrance of the church’s parking lot. There, the real line had begun to form. Coming around to four in the morning, we stood tenth through fourteenth in line.
We knew it would be cold. I layered in the most unflattering way possible: dress over leggings over knee socks and shearling boots. Sweater and coat and sunglasses, because dawn was going to find us one way or another. None of us own camp chairs; we sat on folded towels to try and avoid the cold ache of the pavement. We did not believe we’d get the shot.
“It’s like waiting in line for a concert,” my younger friend said as we refused to drink water and the night wore on. “Two weeks til Aerosmith.” There wasn’t a restroom nearby and we didn’t want to spell one another in line hunting for a dark enough section of the park. Too easy to seem as though we had held spots and let someone jump in.
“It’s just like tailgating,” our Georgia transplant said, “Except that there’s no grill and no music, and the game is about survival.”
It was a little like both. People talked quietly and took selfies. Others wrapped themselves in blankets and tried to sleep, slumped in the nylon sling of a camp chair and passing the miserable hours.
Dawn came up pink and colder than the night. We who had barely slept were punchy, too energetic for the hour. The cold had sunk its teeth into us and individuals in the crowd started to move around to warm themselves. Walking the length of the block, I could see five hundred people, maybe more. Ranged out across eight blocks, some glimpsed through chainlink and across the broad intersections. Sunrise had some of us up and lunging, squatting, trying to feel warm blood while waiting for a chance to stay alive.
The same chatter all over-- no, we didn’t know which vaccine we’d get. Whichever one they had, we would take. Yes, they said they had 500 doses. But there was a priority system for registered 1A folks. No, there were no signs. Someone in charge, some person who was guarding the head of the line, gently moved people so that the line did not double back on itself and confuse the order. Obvious plainclothes policemen strolled around with air pods in, pretending to just be regular dads, keeping an eye out.
The FEMA truck arrived around 8 and found that someone had parked their car across the church’s main driveway. No one could be found to move it, and no crowd of Oaklanders was ever going to cheer for a tow truck. Desperate to get started, the FEMA folks maneuvered the truck to the back driveway, making the turn by inches. The truck’s logos had been taped off and covered-- we assumed to dissuade people from breaking in to steal vaccines.
Those arrived half an hour later, carried in a handled cardboard box by an armed OPD officer. The tables were set and the tents were pitched. The bathroom trailer rolled up and got plugged in. The energy in the snake made of people shifted, and I half-expected us to become jubilant, to applaud when the gate was opened or when shots began.
But none of us believed it was really happening. We each expected to be turned away, to be told they’d run out, that we’d come to the wrong place, that we were not eligible. I didn’t believe it as I got my wristband, as I gave my ID and my name to the FEMA worker who sat painstakingly two-finger typing each person’s info into an iPad. I didn’t believe it was happening when I answered the battery of questions about other shots, about allergies, about my willingness to sit for fifteen minutes to wait out anaphylaxis.
The shot hurt and I got a card to carry in my wallet. I met up with my housemates and we tried to sum it up; the long year, the long night. We all had a day of being sick in bed with the reaction fauxvid, we all came through it and started to count the days until immunity is real. It was over and it wasn’t over. It isn’t over yet.
In the days since, I’ve felt the dawning of an optimism that isn’t so much cautious as it is furtive. Each thing I plan, each friend I say yes to, each trip I contemplate booking over the summer evokes a long-dormant sense that I am Not Allowed, that I will end up In Trouble. It’s tough to get past the low ceiling and barred doors of this last year. It feels impossible to believe that we’re safer, even in this small needle-dosed measure.
I’ve been bawling at the door like a cat in heat for 385 days. Now that the door is open, I shiver like I’ve been shaved and declawed, like every can of tuna is sitting inside a trap.
I hope your door opens soon. I hope you kept your claws.. I hope we all experience the world opening up and becoming… not like it was before, but like something new. Something better and smarter and kinder after a year with time to think. More likely, I think, that summer will be reckless and autumn will fall like a hammer on hot metal, folding us together tighter than ever before.
Love like a shot in the arm,
Meg