The scam of one’s well-being.
I hear my phone ring and I think that I won’t pick up — I’ve been arguing with my mother online and am in no mood to argue with her over the phone. But it’s an unknown number, so I do pick up; it could be something about, or someone from, work. I’m off work for a few days, or two weeks, depending on the results of the Covid test I am about to take. Several days have passed and I still feel unwell, like a bad flu has taken hold, like my body has finally given in, like my mind has given up.
Gathering my things — my health card and mask, my car keys and hand sanitizer — I answer the phone and know right away who the call is from. That silent second before an automated voice recording sets in gives it away. Someone is warning me, trying to scare me, or rattle me, as though I were not already sufficiently rattled, that my social insurance number has been…something, I can’t remember the word they use…tampered with?…and that I need to press one to speak with an agent, immediately.
I’ve been back in Toronto for more than a year, so I have become somewhat familiar with these kinds of scams. When I first moved back and was looking for housing, I was almost taken in by one of them. It wasn’t until I was actually face-to-face with a bitcoin ATM that I finally paid heed to the voice inside me that had been screaming the disappointment of truth. I wanted to find housing so badly, and I wanted to believe it could be affordable, that I almost sent three months of rent — through a bitcoin machine — on a rental unit that didn’t actually exist. How stupid one can be made to feel.
When I get back from the assessment centre I check my email and there is an email from a “Tanya Peddler”. She is congratulating me, in poor English, on a job that I have apparently just been given. But she needs to hear back from me, immediately.
A few months ago, I was moved by a story of a man from Brampton who had immigrated to Canada and who had been working nights at Walmart and was waiting to get his “papers”. He, too, had received calls and emails, and was instructed to send money via bitcoin; otherwise, “they” said, his immigration status would be in jeopardy. He did send the money, his savings were drained and he was left with little else but his feelings of shame.
The housing market is out of control. We read this every day in our random scrolling. Maybe it’s a bubble, or maybe it’s not — maybe people are wealthier than we ever knew. Apparently those who have been affected the least by Covid lockdowns are precisely the one’s who can afford it, whose work they can do from home. Amid low interest rates, and housing sales above and beyond what a seller is asking, is the poverty of ‘Others’ — which remains utterly astounding.
I don’t know what bitcoin is, really, and I don’t know much about Elon. I get news about him in my google feeds, though I’m not so sure as to why. I’m trying to do my taxes, and to fill in the gaps of at least ten years of living a life abroad. I have no passive income, as a gen-xer with a gen-xer mentality I never invested my part-time earnings (from all the jobs I did when I was younger) and so today there is no payment in dividends.
At the assessment centre they took my blood pressure and asked me why it was so high. They asked me if I had run there. I looked down at my scrawny body and said that it was usually low. Was I nervous, they asked, and I fought back the tears and said yes, that perhaps I was. In a whisper I said I had had an argument that morning and maybe that was why it was so high. With an understanding nod, the swab was stuck up my nose.
In a rich person’s world the argument might be chalked up to one about capital gains. But this is a concept that does not apply to those without capital, never mind capital gains. Instead, it was an argument about loss and lack and about feeling truly unwell. The fear that comes with precarious work is a fear that is entirely consuming. If I’m unwell and unable to work who will cover the loss of income? Who will cover the loss, not the gain?
The sun is out but I pull down the blinds, today’s spring has too much of a glare. My results will be available in a day or two and I quietly hope they are positive. I need a reason why I feel so unwell.
But the reasons are there, Covid or not, yet we don’t seem to want to believe them. Our lives are better materially, we live longer than we did before. What could possibly be upsetting the science of our statistically structured lives? What could possibly be happening that might make one argue, during lockdown, with their mom?
