Mask On, Mask Off, Mask On Again: A Coronavirus Quiz
From "Sunshine/Noir III: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana" (City Works Press, 2025)
by Ella deCastro Baron
[text on my Facebook post with a flyer:]
"How interesting that we spend our lives removing our "masks" and now...we mask up to show our better selves . We're still taking orders/donations to get you, your people, and front-line workers masks. I have some masks ready *today* & I'm placing another order tomorrow (Wednesday 4/14).
See flyer for details. Email: ella.writer@gmail.com. We ship! SO FAR, you/we have donated masks to: an assisted living facility; Children's hospital workers; postal workers; volunteers feeding families & the house less in SD and the Bay Area; other healthcare workers in several states."
____________
Mid-March, 2020
Fill in the blank: How many rolls of toilet paper will we hoard to pad our walls from the unseen virus?
TRUE or FALSE (don't overthink! Quick!)—Wearing a mask is good.
A friend’s cousin posts that their memory care assisted living facility in Southern California desperately needs 100 masks for their elderly patients and nurses.
My sister texts: there are no more masks at our hospital. We all need masks.
I call our friend, Jeff. Does Amar need work? Could he sew face masks that help healthcare workers fill in gaps as they wait [beg/grovel/suffer] without N95s? Can we organize something?
Jeff says matter of fact, “Amar can sew anything.”
I send a group email and post to Facebook. Who needs face masks? Who wants to donate and order? We’ll fundraise and send what you need to protect your people.
The donations bleep and buzz my Venmo and PayPal. I place an order with Amar.
Pre-Shelter-In-Place, Amar had been altering hemlines and replacing broken zippers. In between, he designs vibrant, textured gowns and blouses for events none of us will attend…for a while.
Jeff plus Google plus a linguist neighbor become my translator. I do not speak Arabic or Farsi. Everyone works together to paraphrase and rephrase words, trying to catch meanings between the letters. Elastic? Pleated style? Filter?
Amar sews the first 100 triple-layered masks in three days (97-99 more than I could have done). Greg picks them up at the shuttered alterations storefront and drops them off on our doorstep. Amar’s Syrian family was finally relocated to east San Diego after seeking refuge. Jewish Family Services helped the first few months. Soon, Jeff’s family offered their friendship and care. It became mutual.
This kind of service, of war-time efficiency, uncovers a truth. As a child of immigrants, my “mask” is interwoven with meekness—some genuine, some frayed. Traumatized, colonized minds use this inherited adaptive strategy in diaspora.
In time, it can peel off confidence, resettle into shame. For this second-generation Filipina American, it masquerades as selfless humility. Yes, I am a helper, but I do it so I can also be seen. I want to be counted in the census of Full Human, Full American.
My niece in northern California slides the venti sugar-free latte under the partition. She asks the Starbucks customer, please put on your mask, Miss. The bare-teeth person throws her bubbling, foaming drink and expletives! at the plexiglass—aiming for my niece’s 18-year-old Asian face.
I drive the sinewy Fuerte Drive over Mount Helix, trying to feel the “strong road” bolster me as I leave our “safe” house. In the Costco parking lot, I vibe the other shoppers’ adrenaline-stoked, hyper-focus on the quickest-yet-most-cart-fillingest visit of the warehouse. Each of us will literally stay in our own lane. That can be a good thing. Maybe no one will notice I’m Asian.
I think of my niece. I feel raw, exposed with her. Is there a mask to cover our “almond” eyes and black hair? Is the answer to callous our skin into armor?
My makeshift answer is my “ambiguous brown person uniform” whenever I am out. I tie my long black hair into a bun, pull a blue and white baseball cap over. Our family has been wearing Amar’s face masks. He sizes them for children, teens/small adults, adults, and extra-large (like my bearded husband). I bought one from his second batch that I liked: cream with musical notes and red flowers. I feel my full lips exhale against the plated cloth.
The only thing left to cover are my slanted eyes–easy giveaway that I am, to too many even where we live in California–the enemy, the bringer of Kung Flu. I slip on teal-rimmed sunglasses, the ones I keep in the minivan for beach time.
TRUE or FALSE (ask your skin): Thick skin is a mask we develop to survive. If so, then why are we taught to idolize the ivory, supple, baby's bottom, smooooth, unblemished?
We send several boxes of 50 masks at a time to the Navajo Nation as we lament how the Diné are the hardest hit. Barely 3% of the entire U.S. population is Native—all of the tribes combined. What Amar has on hand though is red, white, and blue Fourth of July printed cloth.
I stand in distanced lines at JoAnn’s fabric to look for forest print cotton. I drop the bulk yards off at Amar’s.
“These are the original people in America. They have not been treated...right...or good...for a long time. We have taken their land and they still suffer.” I try to convey to Amar that I didn’t, we shouldn’t send any of the Stars and Stripes masks.
“Oh, okay. I sew with this for them.” He holds the swirling green-leaf cotton. I think he understands. I find pictures of a Navajo reservation and email them to Amar later.
CHECK ALL THAT APPLY: “Persona” in the original Latin, means “mask.” If so, what is the American persona?
A. Escaping persecution and starting an experiment called “democracy”
B. “Manifest Destiny” AKA settler colonialism
C. “Rugged individualism” i.e. “bootstraps” i.e. you’re on your own unless you’re one of “us.”
D. Exceptionalism i.e. “lone wolf” i.e. capitalism means I and only I will decide when, how, and why I wear a mask.
By July 2020, the market is flooded. If these layers are not complex enough, evangelicals and anti-government make wearing a mask political.
Half of my Christian friends begin accusing me of Weakness, of not trusting God to keep me safe from a “secret cabal” of billionaires and a “hoax” virus manufactured by globalists. A conspiracy that launched in China of course, the nexus of communism–the real pathogen to extinguish.
Suddenly, if I ask our kids to wear masks to school or in public, we’re enabling kidnappers to traffic them, adding to the high rates in San Diego. Plus, masks don’t work. Did you see the mask on the twenty-dollar bill? (turn it upside down, obvs.) This has been in the works for decades. A Plandemic to take away our personal freedoms. The vaccine will implant the microchip to monitor and manipulate us.
Friends and family are suspicious of each other. I’m trying to listen and share. It’s too much. Staying home, off of social media and my phone, become necessary layers.
The borders, now trenches, are lined. One side, “I can’t breathe” in anti-racist marches. Another, “Let our kids breathe” in front of schools. One side, “uncage our children.” On the other, “unmask our children.”
REVIEW QUESTION BEFORE THE TEST: Is it because this country has been wearing masks of white supremacy so long it’s become part of our face? Or is it because it reflects our true nature? Is the American mask a shield? A Mirror, a Window? A smokescreen?
Whenever Amar sews a mask with a new fabric, he puts one on to size it. Then, he lights his Bic several inches in front of his masked mouth. He Blows. If the flame goes out through the mask, he will not use that fabric. Each of the 1300 masks he has sewn for our loved ones has passed the test. Hope against hope, some of these lights are still burning, are still bright.
TRUE or FALSE (ask the tragicomic mask you’re wearing): All of this is who we are.
Ella deCastro Baron (she/siya/we) is a second-generation Filipino American who cultivates kapwa (Filipino ethos of deep interconnection) within communities of learning and unlearning. She is the author of Itchy, Brown Girl Seeks Employment and Subo and Baon: A Memoir in Bites both published on San Diego City Works Press.
To buy Sunshine/Noir III: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana, go here or go to The Book Catapult.