Nougat Candy Aimee Yu ‘23

NOUGAT CANDY

Aimee Yu

February: Major shutdown of over 48 cities in China.

e bell rang. “Merci les lles!” My French teacher ended her class as always. Calling me aside, she reached into a metal box and placed a small cube in my hands, “ is is only for my Chinese students.” She winked at me. I stared at my palm—nougat candy with almonds—my favorite. Pray for your family.

June: Death toll passed 100,000 in the US.

Mother and I had been quarantining with my jiujiu (uncle) and jiuma (aunt) in their house in North Carolina. I’d just facetimed with my grandma, who was still reeling from a break up with her college friend over a petty political di erence. Of course, now it seems to go without saying, we cannot be friends with even one disagreement. Grandma told me the news in China: the exact location of each infected person was released to the public in order to keep track of positive cases, down to which car of the subway they were on. e deeper I thought, the scarier it became, knowing that my grandma’s phone had been with her all day. A policy made for the sake of security was creating paranoia among the people it was trying to protect; a social dilemma, with no absolute right or wrong, was forcing us to isolate and have polarized opinions. So it was with my family and everyone else. I heard the adults talking downstairs. My uncle’s words like “essential” and “protection” overwhelmed my mother’s “privacy” and “rights” while I wondered whether their argument was even necessary at all. Uncle’s voice sounded like a stranger to me, more pompous than patient, more combative than comforting. In my memory, he was tall enough for me to swing on his arm and had smile lines clearly visible on his face. I remembered the temperature of his hands over mine when he held my shing rod with a spotted bass hanging by the hook, and sunshine bouncing up and down on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. Hold on to your loved ones.

October: Last month of quarantine before I return home.

Mother asked me a question after we booked our ight back to Beijing: “Which is more valuable, security or freedom?” I did not think anyone was sure, yet they all acted like they did. When I was packing, I searched for the nougat candy in my bag. Families and friends could sometimes fall into con ict when the world was already in chaos, but a piece of candy o ered by a kind-hearted soul, a special sweetness lingering in my mouth, would be enough to hold me together. Find your way back home.