Repeat After Me

Chapter 54

Thirty-one of Melbourne's northern suburbs were locked down. Three tower blocks of community housing residents were placed under police surveillance for five days and couldn't go out their door. They were mostly migrants, mostly poor. Things felt like they were turning bad again.

A news reporter showed us a temporary hospital set up at the Melbourne Showgrounds on the Channel 7 news. 'What's happening?' I asked mum, catching a glimpse of the news as I was walking through the loungeroom. 'Why are they getting that ready? What's happening?'

'I don't know, darling. Maybe they're worried about those people in the housing blocks. Maybe they're getting things ready, just in case.'

The news reporter continued to show the audience through the makeshift cubicles, 'here's the resuscitation bays, as you can see, there's minimal equipment in here. It's all kept in the centre of the facility to prevent cross contamination.'

The facility looked cold and sparse, with bay numbers printed on white A4 sheets of paper, sticky taped to the outside wall of each cubicle, like they'd had 24 hours to assemble such an operation.

'Don't watch this, darling, if it's worrying you. You don't have to watch this.'

I was in the kitchen, drinking a cup of tea with Grandma, when I heard the news of the second lockdown. It was school holidays and I was feeling like a hermit, like I wanted to stay home, with the heater on, wearing Ugg boots and a baggy hoodie, nursing my aching heart like an orphaned baby possum. Josh came into the kitchen.

'We're being locked down again,' he said, holding his phone up in the air. 'See you later year 12.'

'What?' I asked.

'I just heard it from Hunter, we're being locked down.'

'Who?'

'All of metropolitan Melbourne. All of it.'

Mum walked in. She'd just heard the news too.

'Hold your horses,' she said. 'Apparently VCE students are still going to school. Don't get your hopes up too early.'

Grandma took a sip of her tea. 'I can still remember when schools were shut because of polio. Now that's an awful disease. All those anti-vaxxers can go to hell, in my book.'

I blinked. It was all confusing and alarming. This announcement had come out of nowhere. I'd thought things were getting back on track. And now this.

'You'll have an extra week of school holidays, apparently,' mum said. 'To give time for the teachers to prepare for online learning again. Dan Andrews said VCE students will still go to school.'

Lockdown 2.0 lacked any of the excitement or novelty of the first lockdown. The second lockdown had an undercurrent of racism and blame. There was a rumour that a security guard at a hotel quarantine slept with a returned traveller and got COVID. He passed it on to his family members at a big 'ethnic' gathering. Over the phone, dad told me that he'd read that at least three of the new cases could also be traced back to the black lives matter protest. It was his big I-told-you-so moment that he'd been waiting for, to prove that he hadn't overreacted, that I was a naive virtue signaler.

Dad and 'The boys' were in their 'quarantine bubble' in Western Australia and there was talk of them moving to Queensland. Dad seemed tired and restless whenever we spoke. The support staff was half of what it should have been, so he was overworked and underpaid and had become a slave to the football team. Mum told us over dinner one night that we might have to accept that we wouldn't see him until after the football season was over.

'This is bullshit,' I said. 'That's months away.'

'Macy, it's his job, it's the sacrifice he has to make.'

'Yeah, well it's not fair,' I said. 'And what if one of them gets COVID and then all of them gets it?'

'They're safer over there than they are here at the moment,' mum said. 'There were 400 cases in Victoria on Friday.'

'We're the loser state,' Josh said. 'The joke of the country. That bloody horny security guard.'

'How come they shut us down for so long the first time and then they let that happen in hotel quarantine?' I wanted to know. 'It was all for nothing.'

Mum rubbed her eyes. 'That's what we all want to know,' she said. 'It was hopeless. But this virus is going to be around for a long time. So we're all going to have to get used to it. As much as we want it to go away.'

'They should just let the pandemic run its course,' Grandma said from the other end of the table. 'There's been other pandemics and they've all had to run their course. If you watch the news it's just old people dying in aged care facilities. Big deal if another 80 year old or 90 year old gets it and dies. They've lived their lives already. I feel sorry for you two kids, I really do. I'd rather that you get to live your life, than I do.'

I reached over and squeezed Grandma's hand.

Our lives had capsized. Nothing was the same. Now we had to wear face masks everywhere we went. It was the latest most hopeful weapon in the government's amoury against the virus. The facemask flooded our TikTok and Instagram feeds with different patterns, from different makers. It became the latest fashion accessory. Except no one looked good in it.

Walking in to our half empty school the first day back after school holidays, wearing our facemasks, felt like arriving at school as armed robbers. We'd reached a new level of bizarre.