Friday, July 24, 2020

I’m not used to the bus to the mall being this crowded. I have stopped by the House of a Hundred Grandmothers to bring some things to family members who are quarantined inside. I could take my usual bus from near there, but I’m not certain where it stops today. On Fridays and some evenings it has been taking an alternate route. I’m not clear when it does that. This time, I go to a different bus stop, two blocks away. More buses to the mall stop there. On the bus that I catch, given the current rules for distancing, a single seat is available. I take it. It’s very loud in the bus. I hear conversations in what I guess are Tagalog, Hindi, and Chinese. The radio is blasting songs in English, with DJs shouting between the tracks in Hebrew. The person in front of me is scrolling through news on her phone in Spanish. The person across the aisle is texting in some language using the Latin alphabet. She enters words so quickly that her thumbs are a blur. At the mall, the guard takes a cursory glance in my shopping bag, points his thermometer at my forehead, and waves me in. I realize that I’ve never seen a guard stop anyone. His presence is enough. It reminds people to put on their masks before they enter and to be careful about what they bring in. When looking in bags, guards used to ask, jokingly, “Any weapons?” I haven’t heard that since they started checking temperatures, too. A different person than usual takes my order at the cafe. I get through it all in Hebrew. I notice that she does some hand gestures. She acts out the difference between leafy and chopped salad. The usual cashier is behind her, shining the front of a metal cabinet. When I’m done ordering, she asks the current cashier, in Hebrew, “Is everything good?” The cashier says yes. She looks over at me and says, in English, “Very good.” I take my receipt and walk to the counter to wait.