By Trinity Hollis

COVID Diaries: Honorable Mention

A highlight of the pandemic was my seasonal position at Party City. I assisted customers in selecting Halloween costumes as they grasped for some sense of normalcy. I was a fairy godmother of sorts: I spent shifts fluttering my wings up and down aisle one, transforming customers into princesses, wizards, superheroes, nurses, spies and whatever else they wished to become. My domain was referred to as the Halloween aisle, save for the election gear in the very front facing the automatic doors. Cardboard cutouts of the two presidential candidates greeted customers as they entered the store, reminding them of what’s to come when they reach the bottom of their bags of candy.

In fact, there was a plethora of merchandise of the then-president, not merchandise from his actual campaign but nonetheless merchandise. There was the aforementioned cardboard cutout, masks of his face hanging beside the scariest of monsters, and squishy keychains of him as a centaur-unicorn creature that released a shrill honk when you squeezed it. I couldn’t decipher who the target market was. These items were of his likeness, so certainly his supporters would purchase them, but they were distorted enough to attract the kind of person who would buy them ironically, to make fun of him and his appearance.

One day on fairy godmother duty, a daughter and a father sought my assistance. They were looking for an accessory to the daughter’s costume. Once I granted the accessory, the father began surveying the costume wall.

“Maybe I should get a costume for myself,” he suggested as he raked the different hats and masks.

“I think I want to be something funny, like a Jewish person or a Chinese person. You got a Jewish or a Chinese person costume?”

My wings drained themselves of their psychedelic colors, shriveled onto themselves, detached from my back and fell to the ground like autumn leaves would from a tree. My dark skin felt browner than it did before.

I didn’t have to be Jewish or Chinese to know why that was so violently racist. All it took was to know what it feels like to be mistaken for a costume.

I didn’t find the incompetence of the president at the time to be funny at all. He was dangerously portrayed as one silly man who fell into the presidency, but there are millions of Americans who amplify his ideas. So many well-meaning progressives had large-scale conversations that oversaturated the media about how he emphasized a “broken system.” Those like me –– Black women who understand that this system works the way it’s intended – knew we were not being aggressed by accident.

His failure to be a leader has exaggerated the pandemic in a way that could’ve been avoided. Maybe I wouldn’t have needed to console my lamenting boyfriend over the phone when his grandmother passed from it. I wouldn’t have heard him talk about the ventilator in between his fits of sobbing. I would’ve been able to hold him with more than just my words. She would’ve been okay. He wouldn’t have ever seen a ventilator. I was powerless. He was helpless. The former president couldn’t have cared less about how the pandemic devastated Black Americans.

As the winds of October transitioned from playful to harsh, every so often I traveled to the front of the aisle to observe the two cardboard cutouts. It was the first election I was eligible to vote in. Every millennial I’ve ever spoken to enthused about their first vote. I await my impending choice joylessly. I was implored to vote for a closeted racist who looked significantly less ignorant in contrast to the incumbent. I absorbed the cutouts knowing I would spend election day like other Black folks, relinquishing my magic and cleaning up the mess of white supremacists. I sublet my skin to the Democratic party. My body is a vessel for their success without so much as a promise of my safety or happiness. The system works; the machine breathes.