Rochelle

New York state on Tuesday created a “containment zone” around the town of New Rochelle, the epicenter of the outbreak in the state.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky recently called the current U.S. surge in cases “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” because nearly all current patients and those who have recently died from the coronavirus are unvaccinated.

In the morning of the 27th of February of 2022, on my way out of my Lulu Island house, I saw my neighbours the redhead Rochelle of Russian-Mennonite ancestry and the grey-haired moustached Al from the Anglophone section of Montreal; he was from many generations of Canadians. He said that he did not know French, when he lived in Montreal. I ate a slice of pesto cheese pizza at the pizzeria. The vendor was from Mumbai. Through the window, I could see a young brown-blond-haired man in a dark-grey hooded jacket and blue shorts, which made him look like a "big boy." At the cafe, there was an under-age-30 crowd of ten outside, of whom one looked like a handsome Jew. Inside was a table of five or six over-age-30 people, of whom one was a handsome tomboy in a dark-green jacket and army-green pants. I drank my iced black tea. Heading out of the cafe, I saw the "big boy" smoking in the wooded park. I took the long route home, through the grassy school field littered with goose poop, the northern snowcapped mountains obscured by clouds, an Animistic-Buddhistic view seemingly of a different planet. Near my house, parked in a truck were Olivia and Daniel. Olivia was studying Biochemistry. In the back seat of the truck was a fully black German Shepherd.

She was a modern woman. "Rochelle!" I hear my grandma's taunt. "Imagine Rochelle!" And then in Yiddish: "Rachel is not good enough for her."