Chapter Thirteen: Written by Gina Chen

Name: Gina Chen
Age: 29
Ethnicity: Chinese American
Occupation: Content Strategist
Location: New York City
@trundlings on Twitter & Instagram

I don’t remember which of the three of us sent the first snapshot, but it became a regular occurrence sometime in the late summer or early fall to share pictures of subway poems in the group text I had with my manager S and close colleague J. We were working for the 2020 Census, and whether we were going to the office, going to conduct interviews, or going to relay equipment, it always seemed like the universe was giving us a lyrical token, a beatific touch, anytime we happened upon a train car with a poem on a poster.

We needed it—counting became one of many things that the pandemic complicated in 2020. The presumably easy and interesting temp job I’d signed up for was none of the former and all connotations of the latter by the time it started in July, four months after it’d been scheduled pre-COVID. Just as I’d gotten a training date in March, New York City came to a standstill but for ambulances and essential workers. By July, the Census Bureau emailed: they’d figured it out, ordered PPE, and made process adjustments for the hundreds of thousands of us responsible for the door-knocking part of the Census. What soon became apparent was that they hadn’t.

As with all my work projects, I soon became over-invested in fixing everything I could: I wrote manuals on how to use the proprietary apps we were forced to use when the training turned out to be insufficient; I trained dozens of fellow staffers and made countless spreadsheets; I reached out to my local assemblywoman for help in connecting with nonresponsive landlords. Some point in the first month, J and I were told either one of us needed to always be in the office to manage communications; we were part lynchpin, part whipping boy, with nominal title changes as we took on responsibilities well above our station. Both of us began spending upwards of ten hours a day in the office or out in the field with our teams; we would pass the limit for overtime but continue to work anyway, eating the extra hours.

Unlike any of my previous work, the ramifications of not doing my best, of not cajoling or supporting others to do their best, though, would have real material consequence that was all the more magnified with the pandemic. In training, it was drilled into us endlessly: the Census impacts not only apportionment—the division of US Representatives across 50 states—but also the distribution of over $1 trillion. To miss a single person would mean a loss of tens of thousands of dollars for the next decade for our city, and in walking and talking along the streets of Lower Manhattan, I felt an acute desperation to do as much as I could for the place I live, for my neighbors. 2020 was fucked, and the Census was fucked, but whatever I could manage to unfuck a little, I would try to do.

Also unlike any of my previous work, going to work didn’t necessarily mean putting myself in mortal peril. Even pre-Covid 19, the job had been positioned as one you could do largely from home. It became an oddly rote habit to make my way past armed security guards, flash a federal badge, go through a metal detector, and go into an office setting, albeit an office setting stuffed to the gills with hand sanitizer and masked co-workers and would-be-Dwight Schutes enforcing a 6-foot distance and proper mask-wearing at every turn. The vigilance in the office was all the more jarring, though, when respondents would open their doors maskless; very few people balked at putting one on, but the interaction was a strange, intense reminder of the dangerous absurdity of 2020.

I lived close enough to the office that most days I could walk; I’d catch up on emails and text messages and share the latest process updates, utilizing my working-while-walking skills I’ve developed as one of those always-on-the-go New Yorkers. But there were times that simply necessitated taking public transit, like going from Battery Park City to the Lower East Side, or from Tribeca to the Bronx, and in the moments where all I could do was sit in a metal tube, going from dark tunnels to rattling bridges with dirty platforms and audacious rats, I found peace and hope and renewal. With no service to connect me to the outside world, spotting the swirling curlicues of the logo for “Poetry in Motion,” the public arts program responsible for placing poetry in transit systems, and reading lines from Audre Lorde (or Marie Howe, or Alberto Ríos), I felt renewed connection to what it means to be in this town, to live in this town.

I think of everyone sitting near me, and if they’re reading the poem too. I think of everyone who’s ridden before and riding after us and where they’re going; I wonder if the next subway car has the same poem. I wonder if S and J might like this poem, that they might feel a similar catharsis; I snap a photo to share with them later. I hold the poem with me, and then I disembark, walking back into the rhythm of the city.