Camilo José Vergara

At Sylvia’s, a landmark Harlem restaurant, I stopped and ordered fried chicken and macaroni and cheese. That was a mistake, because the place was crowded, the space facing the counter was narrow, and the service slow. Waiting there for my food could have gotten me infected. I decided to wait outside, where a panhandler without a mask approached me. I tried to avoid him, whereupon he pointed at me as if I were a hostile person unworthy to walk the streets of Harlem. After going inside a couple of times to get my order but finding that it was not ready, I considered leaving and not picking up the food I had already paid for. Half an hour later I left with my order. That night I thought I had the virus.

“Se murió la mama por ir a comprar una libra de azúcar.” (“Mother died because she went to buy a pound of sugar.”) Man talking on a cellphone, Southern Boulevard, Bronx, April 12.

In Penn Station, a policeman asked an elderly black man in a wheelchair: “The question is, what are you going to do in this place?” To which the man answered: “I am OK, I got Medicare and Medicaid.” The policemen responded, “Ready,” and wheeled him out of the main AMTRAK waiting room. New York, April 16.

On April 17, a young West Indian man danced on Fulton Street in Bedford Stuyvesant. A woman, thinking him crazy, encouraged me to photograph him. A man told her that he was a good dancer. I found his performance excellent, as if he was dancing to placate the coronavirus.

On April 27, I saw an elderly Latino man on Southern Boulevard in the Bronx struggling to breathe. He was hugging a lamppost while a woman held his arm. “Let’s help him, he’s dizzy. Let him sit, he can’t breathe,” she said. People placed a plastic garbage can upside down for him to sit on, but he didn’t want to. “The ambulance is coming,” someone said. Seeing me taking pictures of this situation, a young man, holding a package of rubber gloves, asked, “What are you going to do with the information?”

On April 28, an old Chinese woman trying to cross Broadway in Brooklyn asked me for help. She was not wearing a mask, and she wanted for me to hold her bare hand. Afraid of getting coronavirus, I tried to help her by holding her arm. She didn’t like this and insisted I hold her hand. I left her struggling. A minute later I saw a young woman helping her. She gave me an accusing look.

“Open up the showers, open up the gym with the showers. The homeless, we don’t have outside or inside, we are in it. You don’t give second chances to people who need second chances. Free showers. We need free, free working, free, free, free showers.” Homeless man, 149th Street at Grand Concourse, April 30.

On May 11, I visited the Free Food distribution site at the Corona Seventh Day Adventist Church, 35-30 103rd St., Queens. On that day, Mary and Edna were distributing food bags to people who showed a form (el papelito). Mary asked the people waiting in line to please come to the front if they were older than 75. Some of them didn’t have the form and were told to return with it on early on Monday—or, if they were in a rush, to go to the Catholic church around the corner on Wednesday. The bags of food being distributed included a chicken, meat, fruit, cabbage, carrots, onions, frozen blueberries, cereal, popcorn, and milk donated and delivered by the food bank. Mary told me that a family of three gets enough food to last them for three days.

I photographed Leila, a contract worker wearing inferior PPE, disinfecting the L Train at the 8th Avenue station. She proudly told me: “We are disinfecting the trains for the first time in history.” May 12.

One woman telling another on the #60 bus: “Hay que acostumbrarse a corona por ahora. Va a ser un invierno bien malo. Hay una novela amores de primavera, que linda, que romantica, los protagonistas no se pelean, que linda.” (“We have to get used to corona for now. This winter is going to be very bad. There is a novel spring loves, it is so beautiful, so romantic, the main characters don’t fight.” Harlem, May 14.

Surprised to find several beauty shops open, I asked about it to a woman waiting in line outside Feel Beauty on Southern Boulevard in the Bronx. She explained that she was waiting to buy toothpaste, shampoo, soap, and hair straightener. A sign on the door read: “We are selling essential products ONLY. No wigs, cosmetics, or jewelry.” May 15.

On the 2 Train in the Bronx, a young man with a cardboard box full of M&M’s candy made a loud sales pitch in front of me, forcing me to move to the opposite end of the car. The man came over to me, screaming, “Corona!” Nobody bought his candy. May 16.

The corona virus cough that stays in my memory is that of an old man sitting alone in a corner seat of a subway car in the Bronx. Hunched over, he was wearing a baseball hat with an American flag motif and was coughing nonstop. Bronx, May 20.

“I salute you, Black man. I salute you.” Man passing through Broadway Junction, Brooklyn, May 21.

May 24, in Corona, Queens, I saw a banner that said, “Naming the Lost,” and then, in Spanish, “Nombrando a los Fallecidos.” That same day, the New York Times printed on its front page a thousand names of people who died from the virus.

On May 26, on the median strip of East 149th Street in the Bronx Hub, Maria, holding a shiny white-and-red megaphone, was preaching to passersby, to street vendors, to people waiting for the bus, to those lined up for coffee at the reopened Starbucks. When I asked her if she was affiliated with a church, she mentioned “the green church” on Prospect Avenue. I had been waiting to meet the New York version of Savonarola, but so far had encountered only old-fashioned street evangelists. I expected her to mention Hell, the Devil, and the virus that had killed so many people in this neighborhood. She explained that she was evangelizing because “the Lord is the only one that saves.” She told me that she had been a sinner, “used to rob people, to break into houses.” I asked her if God cures people infected with corona. Maria didn’t answer. She seemed afraid, covering her nose and mouth with her mask, and left. Perhaps she was afraid I had corona.

On June 6, Maria was preaching again on East 149th Street. She told the people waiting in line: “One day Christ entered my life to make me laugh. One day Christ entered my life to make me happy.”

And on June 15, Maria was preaching again on East 149th. “The enemy came to kill and destroy. Thank God we are still breathing,” she said.

On May 26, I saw a sign at Brooklyn’s Rhema Pentecostal Church stating, “The Church has been Deployed.” I first took this statement as boasting, but later realized that among the minimum-wage contract workers disinfecting the subway at the New Lots Station, there might be Rhema church members.

I photographed Ronald, a 67-year-old building contractor, born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, as he was taking a break from work; his head came up to my knees as he stood in the basement of a row house. When I asked him about the pandemic, he replied, “There is nothing to be afraid of,” saying that he believed that things “are better now because of the governor.”