So there I stood, detained near the door of a chartered Boeing 747 that looked fit for cargo. Meanwhile, my husband and children took their seats on the aircraft destined for China. I wondered if I’d be on the plane too. Or would we be separated?
Before the pandemic, we’d lived in Beijing. We’d been on vacation in the States when the coronavirus pandemic had begun in China and had cancelled our plans to return home. Now half a year later, as we were finally on our way back to Beijing, it seemed like my life was about to be upended again.
The attendant who’d detained me continued to take everyone’s temperature and waved through all but two others, who also happened to be mothers. They looked as helpless and worried as I did. I rifled through a carry-on and took out a clipboard that the kids used for drawing. I fanned myself. I found a can of cold apple juice I’d saved for the kids. I held it to my forehead. I opened it and downed the drink in a few giant gulps.
And yes, I’d thought about that issue. When I’d started planning for the journey days before, I’d made a vow to myself that I’d try to drink as little as possible. The media stories about aerosolized droplets spinning out of flushed toilets had traumatized me. (I’d even contemplated putting on an adult diaper, like that jilted astronaut on a rampage to wound her lover and his mistress.) But as is always true on airplane journeys, I’d already had to go to the bathroom a bunch of times, even though I’d tried to minimize my liquids.
So at this point, I didn’t care how many times I’d have to go to the bathroom. I just wanted to be on the plane when it took off. After the attendant waved everyone through, he turned to the three of us. He took readings of the other two and waved them through. He inserted the thermometer in my ear. Then the other. He then said something to a person next to him who was taking down the readings. Then, thankfully, he waved me through.
I had no idea what my temperature was, and whether it would be too high when we landed in China, where there would be another temperature check, along with a COVID-19 test.
As I settled into my seat, I fretted about my possible temperature. My husband shrugged it off. “So you were a little hot.” He was being rather nonchalant, I thought, especially given the prospect that he could have been on his own — possibly for months — with two young children.
Before we took off, someone in charge made some announcements. It was important for us to remain in our seats as much as possible. We should only get up if we needed to go to the bathroom. And once we landed, we had to remain seated, for the Chinese contact tracers to do their jobs. “And if anyone tests positive in China, you’ll be brought back to this plane and placed in here,” he pointed to the pressured medical cabin with the biohazard sign on it. Before the flight took off, he disappeared into the room and shut the door behind him.
The flight to Guam had been long but comfortable, but this flight was the opposite: only five hours but dreadful. The seats had about an inch of leg room and made United economy seem luxurious. We were fed cold sandwiches, potato chips, and bottles of water. The whirr of the plane’s engines was deafening. And my mental state didn’t make things any better.
With no entertainment screens on the back of the seats, my son fell asleep and my daughter read on her Kindle. I looked at my phone, on airplane mode. It told me it was 4:34 Thursday July 30 but I had no idea if that was am or pm or what time zone it was referring to or how much time had elapsed on the flight. Even though we were only supposed to be in the air for five hours, it felt like somehow time had warped and lengthened as we crossed the international date line into the next day.
Finally, the windowless plane seemed to dip and descend. With an abrupt thud, we landed. Even as we came to a full stop and the engines went quiet, we continued to sit. The back door opened. About a half dozen people wearing white suits and plastic face shields bounded down the aisles, looking like invading space aliens. One of them went row to row, asking, “Is anyone experiencing COVID-19 symptoms? Is anyone feeling unwell?” Other inspectors examined forms we’d filled out before landing. After the white-uniformed Stormtrooper-like figures took the necessary documentation they needed and conferred, they allowed us to disembark.
In the terminal, we approached the hurdle that I’d been dreading the entire flight to Guam: the inspection area where our temperatures would be taken. I slowed as we walked through the hallway with a bunch of sensors. I waited for an alarm to go off. But all that happened was a white-clad worker waved us along, smiling under his or her face shield, and indicating that we could continue. I could breath again.
But not for long – the next nerve-wracking challenge was just ahead: our second COVID-19 test. We were directed to an area with tables and desk lamps that reminded me of a nail salon. We sat down across from another inspector who interviewed us one by one. In the last 14 days, had we gone to a restaurant? A movie theater? Had we been to a social gathering? Had we eaten wildlife? After he checked off a row of no’s, he gave each of us the form to sign. My children carefully printed their names, taking the matter as seriously as the health worker who’d questioned us.
The worker directed us to a testing booth, where one swab went up one nostril and another swab went down my throat. It took just a few minutes and my children didn’t look scathed in the least. But the nose swabbing produced a minor reaction in my tear ducts, and I emerged like a wounded, sobbing mess.
You’d think after all these hoops and hurdles we would finally feel relieved but then came the toughest part: the wait. Our test results would come back in “four to twelve hours,” we were told. (At this point, more than 30 hours had elapsed since our journey had begun.) And if we were positive, the plane’s pressurized biohazard cabin was waiting for us, to take us back to the United States.
The authorities had cordoned off a section of the waiting area at departures for us. It wasn’t quite the “lounge” we’d hoped for, though there were instant noodles and unlimited Sprite and Coca-Cola. It was bright and sunny and about four in the afternoon when we settled in. Like on the airplane, we were assigned seats and told not only to remain seated as much as possible, but to “face forward” to limit our exposure to others.
Our kids had pushed well beyond their second wind and played with the iPad until the batteries ran out. My daughter went back to reading her Kindle, while my son watched a movie on my computer. At some point, my daughter put her head down and fell asleep. I dozed off and when I woke up, it was dark. I made instant noodles for the kids and instant coffee for my husband and myself. Six hours had gone by.
Then there was some stirring among the passengers. And an announcement: we were all negative! Everyone cheered. I sat down for a moment to reflect. For the last six months, our lives, like everyone else’s in the world, had been upended. But COVID-19 had caught us while we were on vacation. We’d stayed in the States, wiping our brow that we’d narrowly escaped the threat of an epidemic, only for our lives to be upended again when COVID-19 descended upon the rest of the world. We started and stopped new schools and routines and moved several times along the way. With all the uncertainty that the coronavirus had brought, we’d been unsure if we’d ever return to our home and the lives we’d built in China. With our lives suspended, we’d grasped for every silver lining. And now, finally, we were going home.
We boarded one of a long line of buses flanked by police cars with flashing sirens. The motorcade went about 30 miles an hour on the highway, as if we were in slow motion, like the last half year of our life. We arrived in front of the complex of our house around three in the morning. We were allowed to walk to our homes while attendants carried our bags. Our quiet cul-de-sac, lined with single-family houses, green shrubs, and Chinese lanterns seemed at once familiar but foreign. I was grateful for those moments of fresh air, even if it might have been polluted Beijing air.
And then before us was our home. The houses on our street were modeled off of southern California tract homes plunked down in the middle of modern, downtown Beijing. We’d lived there for two and a half years before the pandemic struck, and it was the only home my younger child really remembered. As we entered the house, we re-familiarized ourselves with every room. Counters seemed shorter that I remembered, the ceiling seemed higher, and the house seemed smaller and more cluttered. We showered. We ate, unsure of whether this counted as breakfast or dinner or what.
As I tucked in the kids and finally flopped into bed, at close to five o’clock in the morning, the sun started to rise. It was a fitting, topsy-turvy end to our long journey.
