Hindsight 2020

HINDSIGHT 2020 – TONI JAY

Don’t forget your mask! Your mask! You cant go outside without your mask! My mothers shrill voice tore through the haze of daydreams floating around my head. I snapped back into reality. Lowered my hand into my right back pocket and pulled out a thin slice of plastic that was intended to resemble a bunny rabbit, looped the cheap elastic strings over my ears and eased myself onto the sidewalk. HALLOWEEN was supposed to be a time when kids dressed up like their childhood nightmares, favourite comic book heroes or unrealistic Disney characters. But that’s all over now. When the Great Plague came it took away all that. Now I’m stuck holding my little sister’s hand while she shuffles along quietly six feet behind the other kids waiting to grab a hermetic ziploc bag of peanut free mars bars from the laminated and well polished kiosk in the lobby of our apartment building.

When the leaves started turning different colours last week the Korean variety store already had masks on display featuring the bright fall themes. Its still a little bit weird buying a Redbull from an 82 year old woman wearing a candy coloured Looney Tunes face mask and surgical gloves. Its raining somewhere. I know because I can hear the raindrops. Ever since the Government started putting up the one-day-use polystyrene corridors most people don’t go outside anymore. My mom still has an umbrella propped up in the front door closet but I’m pretty sure that’s only because she forgot about it.

The daydreams fog over my brain again as I’m leaving the bodega. , letting my sneakers follow their own familiar path back home through the sleek charcoal corridor. Somewhere a chime goes off signaling my exit and the old lady says something at my back in muffled tone but I’m already past the turnstile and don’t care. I pop gum in my mouth and turn up the volume of my headphones, silently thanking the engineer or marketing rep that finally realized that Right and Left after all need to wired together.

Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, turn left, keep moving, stay apart. The little red LED lights embedded in the concrete block cheerfully under my Keds, turning the shabby white canvas blood red every three steps. On your mark…get set…go. Turning another corner I have to stop and wait for my neighbor to dissapear through the turnstile before I show my wrist at the scanner. She flashes me a Colgate smile at me and presses the button for the UV light. They used to use liquid sanitizers but that stopped years ago. Eyes closed against the halogen-bright brilliance of the UV cleanser I see neon colours.

Gold and blue Energizer bunnies dance the polka in my daydreams all the way up to the seventeenth floor. Up here nothing really changed that much. Same shag carpet, same walls, same doors. None of the modern sleek and shine of the outside anymore. Inside apartment 1701 my little sister is sitting cross legged on the floor watching her schoolteacher’s virtual lecture on photosynthesis, one hand on the keyboard, the other absentmindedly rifling g through a bowl of orange and black M&Ms.

Mary is in the kitchen softly singing along to the radio and laying out brittle sheets of uncooked lasagna noodles in a pristine casserole pan. I can smell fresh basil and crushed tomatoes; the bunnies in my head are now slowly gliding in a gondola wearing pirate hats.

My sneakers lead the way past the kitchen, through another open doorway and stop on front of the big wooden dresser with an antique mirror propped up at the top. Slow strips of blue and red lights lick the soles of my feet from somewhere outside and behind me. Looking forward, my thin wrinkled hands barely shake as I replace the plastic earbuds in their glowing coffins. Gently picking up my comb I smile a small secret smile meant only for me and begging pulling long silver strands of hope from between the ivory teeth.