The Vaccine (Part 2) ***Please Read the First Part First***

 While futilely setting up my classroom in October, I found a book called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. A kid I don't know had written her name all over it, and I wondered what Jazmine had thought about the book. I took it home. 

Henrietta Lacks was born in an old slave cabin in rural Virginia, but she was living in Baltimore when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins. She was 31 years old and had just given birth to her fifth child who had grown alongside the cells that would kill her. She liked to dance. She was buried within the year. 

The small piece of her that wasn't, a small scraping of her cancer, had begun dividing and multiplying months before her death, but she didn't know it. None of her family members did, and they wouldn't find out until many years later. At that point, if we collected all of Henrietta Lacks' nearly weightless, microscopic pieces, they would weigh more than 50 million metric tons. She was 5ft. tall. 

When I was in college, my gynecologist who had patted my knees and told me to keep my legs together called and told me I had HPV. I was devastated not because I was worried I'd develop cervical cancer but because I thought that was the end of my sex life that was just beginning. That same year, I learned that everyone has HPV and received the Gardasil vaccine. I will never get the strain of HPV that killed Henrietta Lacks, and it's because of her. 

My mother's smallpox vaccination scar is on her left arm. It's circular, and I like looking at it. She doesn't remember getting it. 

I asked my friend if she was planning to get the Covid vaccine. She said she was really nervous about it. I said I wasn't nervous at all and that I'd applied to be in the trials. It's easy to be brave when nothing bad has ever happened to you. 

Then she told me this: 

The smallpox vaccine predates Henrietta Lacks. She may have gotten it herself and been immune. It's impossible to know what she was exposed to in life, but every single day of her afterlife, she battles something: polio, cancers, HIV and AIDS, zero gravity in space, radiation from nuclear explosions, cosmetics, tuberculosis, experimental treatments, Covid 19, etc. in Petri dishes and test tubes.  

Henrietta Lacks would have turned 100 years old in 2020. She probably wouldn't still be alive, but she could be. She might have been one of the very first people to receive the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. Or maybe if she were still alive those vaccines wouldn't exist? 

I don't know how many big decisions she got to make in her life. She certainly didn't get to decide the circumstances that caused her cancer, how her cancer would be treated or if her cells could be used in scientific research. She also didn't get to decide who would capitalize off her miraculous cells. It wasn't her family. It was mostly White people, including myself, who would use them and her story to their benefit. 

If she could have known that the study of that small piece of her would eradicate polio in the US within a few years and worldwide within decades, save millions of children from developing the cancer and receiving the treatment that left her in agony in the last months of her life, help people have the babies they want but can't make on their own and provide hope to billions during a global pandemic, would she have felt scared or proud? Or would she have just wanted her life to be saved? 

The woman who stood in front of me in line for the vaccine was very small, and I noticed the sweatpants we were both wearing were the exact same color. The man who'd given me directions to the building would have said we were wearing red pants, but we were wearing maroon.

The only time I saw her face was when she looked back while the hospital employee was explaining to me that I couldn't get it that day. Through the shine of her visor, I could tell that she was very old and had a very beautiful face. I have no idea exactly how old, but she certainly would have shared some living years with Henrietta Lacks, and I wonder if they would have had more in common than their pants. 

I'm sure the small woman got the vaccine on Wednesday. Her second dose was probably scheduled that day, too, and I really hope she can see her family and friends soon. 

Henrietta Lacks, on the other hand, is still multiplying because she's infinite as long as we let her be. 

https://www.npr.org/2010/02/02/123232331/henrietta-lacks-a-donors-immortal-legacy

https://www.statnews.com/2017/04/14/henrietta-lacks-hela-cells-science/

http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2020/vessels-for-collective-progress-the-use-of-hela-cells-in-covid-19-research/

Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Crown Publishers, 2010.

The Vaccine (Part 1)

 The email saying I could register for the Covid vaccine hit my inbox while I was teaching 8th Grade American Government. 

But at the same time, and for the very first time, my students had meaningful questions about their assignment. 

The website kept crashing as I frantically tried to enter my information in between hearing my name called from black, faceless squares on Zoom. One attempt went through. I had an appointment for Wednesday, January 27th at 9:10am. 

The morning of my appointment, I felt elated. I had absolutely no concerns or fears. It was just pure relief. I put up independent work for my students, kissed Jaime and said, "Bye. I'm going to get a life changing vaccine now." 

I got to the hospital right on time despite the ice and snow from the night before and put two quarters in the parking meter hoping I'd bought myself enough time. Then I got lost twice. A nice man gave me directions to the building where they were administering the vaccine. "It has a big purple sign in front of it. Can't miss it." 

The sign was more of a taupey mauve, but I trusted that I was in the right place. 

By then, I was no longer on time so I too excitedly said "yes" when a women inside the entrance asked me if I had an appointment. She told me where to stand, and I got a clipboard. An employee came to collect my paperwork and check me in before skeptically asking if I had any conditions that allowed me to get the vaccine today. I said I didn't but that I'm a teacher and we'd been given the go ahead to register. 

She acted exasperated and explained that they'd realized they didn't have enough of the vaccine the previous afternoon to vaccinate teachers unless they had conditions that put them at a higher risk. 

Okay. Well, I was clearly not at that fucking meeting and quite frankly would have appreciated an email. 

She asked me...and it's very important to me that you know that she asked me...if I wanted to speak to the supervisor. 

This Karen did, so I parked my ass aside to wait for the supervisor. It was during this time that I could finally look down the line I had been standing in. Not only was I the youngest person, I was the youngest by decades, maybe centuries? I was clearly also the healthiest and among the wealthiest despite my sweatpants and serious split ends. But you can get away with those things in your youth. 

Jesus Christ, Karen. 

I got information from the supervisor detailing the list of conditions I thankfully do not have and an explanation that teachers are in Phase 1B- Tier 3: Critical Infrastructure not Phase 1B- Tier 2: High-Risk Individuals and that they only had enough for them...hopefully. 

I spoke to my HR director and sent her a photo of my hard copy, another list in history that might actually decide who lives and who dies, because I didn't want my colleagues to be surprised if they were lucky enough to be turned away, but I also didn't want to discourage them from trying if they weren't so fortunate. 

I wasn't disappointed anymore. I just wanted to get home, but I couldn't find my car. 

When I finally got back to it, I had one minute left on the meter. Fuck yes. I'd timed it perfectly. 

The Things We Don't Want Back

Disclaimer: This post has been edited to delete the name of an abuser, rapist and racist. We don't want him back. 

For the first time in our lives, Jaime and I have really started to plan for the future, and the only reason we're doing this is because 2020-2021 won't allow it. 

Q: Should we sell the house after we pay it off or rent it to traveling nurses? 

A: Well, if it weren't for this doggone virus, we could convert a church in the Basque Country into a vacation home with a paella oven and skate park.  

Q: Should we have a kid? 

A: Well, why not? The community could help us raise it to be anti-racist, and they'd be at least trilingual. We'd dress it in non-binary clothing until it teaches us who they are, but alas, Covid. 

After 10 months of this, we're annoying even ourselves, so we've switched to planning what we will not return to even when it's safe, and that's much more fun. 

Concerts are pretty high on our list.

We came to this understanding after I told Jaime about my experience at a goth rock show when I was 16 having no way of knowing then that my future spouse was simultaneously performing trash metal concerts shirtless in Spain.

Still want us to have kids? 

I'd gone with my high school boyfriend who was imposing and a pretty good creep block, but realistically, what chance does an 18-year-old boy have at a concert that catered to Incels? 

That spooky rapist put on a fucking fabulous show, and I was really into it until the first time the crowd broke the front barricade. The barrier was fixed, but the crowd broke through again. After the third time, we saw a helicopter take off from behind the stage, and assuming their abusive nymph king was in it, the concert-goers started to riot. 

Being at the level of most every one else's armpit was suffocating and scary. My boyfriend was trying to block me from the worst of it, but he was also looking for a way out of the crowd. It was really the person behind me who was protecting me from the crushing sea of goth Midwesterners. 

In a quick letup of the chaos, I glanced back to see who'd been so thoughtful. 

It was Charles Manson. 

I am not kidding. Between his two crazy eyes was a swastika. Thank goodness it was Halloween. 

Anyway, I repeated versions of this experience for years getting drinks spilled on me, strangers' penises pressed against my back and even crowd surfing close enough to Billie Jo Armstrong to realize it was not worth it before doing it for another decade or so. But this time I swear I'm done. 

Jaime says this shirt-on photo is from one of 

his rock concerts and not from his trash metal days. 

Teenage Emma would not have had a chance in hell.