Peopling Again After COVID

Photo by Samuel Silitonga from Pexels

I remember the moment I checked my voicemail at 12:30 p.m.on June 20, 2006. I’d just gone grocery shopping at the Marina Safeway in San Francisco. I was about to call for a cab to take me home because there was no way I could carry 10 bags home on foot. I laughed at myself for only going in for five things and ending up with twenty-five. Staring at my phone for the first time that day I felt my eyes grow wider. “ Fifteen missed calls? From who? Wait, it’s a Vegas number. Is Lys ok? She hasn’t called me back in a few days. Oh god, please let her be ok.” I began bargaining with god on that spot of concrete slightly out of the way from other shoppers. My breathing was getting shallower, but I forced myself to listen to the first message. Words like “Coroner office” and “Call us right away” came bleating through the phone. My fingers seemed to have a life of their own, because seconds later the woman who’d left the messages was on the other end. She asked me if Alyssa Martin was my sister. I shook my head, but managed to mumble yes. She asked where my mother was and I told her she was on a trip to NYC. She told me someone would need to fly to Vegas because my twin sister, Alyssa, was dead and it looked like a suicide. I don’t remember what I said to her to get her off the phone, to get her to stop saying what felt like horrible and impossible things. But I do…