From This Spot in the Line
Thursday morning and I’m at Two Man Bagel House in Holland Village, which is definitely not in Europe, but the part of Singapore where Europeans can be most reliably sighted. In fact, there are a couple across from me now. It’s 8 AM and they’re leaning against the wall in bike shorts, chowing down on a Porchetta and a Lean Jean. You can tell they’re serious bikers because of their shoes. No one goes out in shoes like that if they have a choice. One of the men, peeling back the garlic rye to get at the tomatillo below, rocks backward on his heels, and the studs on his soles wink at me. I imagine, after this, that they’ll trot out of the bagel house, lock their shoes into the pedal, and push off. Side by side, pounding down the pavement - for men in bike shorts this serious do not pedal lazily. Even the way they chew is synchronized. One, two, one, two. Their conversation, which I can only catch the occasional drift of, is staccatoed and thick. They sound good-natured enough; if I went over, I can tell they’d scooch and make space. But I don’t. Before me, the cashier takes an order. I stare at the menu and wait my turn.
I’m here, alone, at this bagel house, which takes me an hour and seventeen minutes to get to by public transport, for some serious chow. This means I have to wake at six, scrub the sleep out of my face, and slap on the necessary SPF, before beginning the long journey across Singapore. Alighting at Holland Village MRT station, I have to wind my way down the hill, past the Starbucks and Crystal Jade and Holland Piazza mall lobby, where expats linger and smoke and make small talk. At the end of Lorong Liput, a graffitied shophouse sits. Within it, the best bagels in Singapore are assembled. There is always a queue, and today is no different.
I am here as a sort of reckoning. It has been exactly a year since I’ve returned to Singapore. A few months ago, when it seemed as if I might lose my apartment back in New York, I found myself crouched over in bed, with an intense craving for a cream cheese bagel. The apartment, which I share with three boys, most of whom have been displaced by the pandemic, sits between two of the best bagel spots on the Upper West Side. The first week I moved in, I was broke, I was hungry. Everything was expensive in America, and rude, plus, on top of that, you had to tip. I learned quickly that purchasing food that could be grasped in both hands, eaten while weaving in and out of crowds, was the best way to stretch your dollar. I could make a toasted sesame bagel last seven hours, I was good at it. I would regularly hand over $2.75 while gazing longingly at the $12.95 lox and cheese bagel on the menu board. It’s not like I’ve never paid twelve bucks for a meal before, but for what was basically a sandwich? I blanched, I joked. Not in this economy.
But that night, negotiating rent and screening potential subtenants over Zoom, all I wanted was that damn bagel. If I ever made it back to New York, I told myself, I would do it. I would stand in that hour-long Sunday morning queue, I would shell out the ransom on a lox and cheese toasted sesame bagel. If I made it back, I thought, it’d be proof that I’d survived. I’d endured. And in return, I’d be able to lock back into place, and pick right back up where I left off. Waiting in line with a couple of dollars in hand. I believed all this, and more.
It took me a long time to accept the reality of the pandemic. It’s not like I don’t understand that it’s happening, I’m not a COVID-denier. But being ripped out of one country and plonked in another at short notice will do that to you. For the last year, I’ve found myself perpetually surprised by the locus of my dreams, my immediate reality. Every time I reach for my pajama top, only to realise it’s at the bottom of my laundry basket, back in Manhattan. Every time I complain about herd behaviour, accidentally spelling it without the u. As a result, I thought that if only I could just get back to New York, my two lives would converge, my mind melding back into one whole.
Of course, that isn’t true. The New York I left exists now only as a nostalgic system of belief. Things have moved, people have left, sentiments have shifted. I stood in a queue once, the week before I came home. It wasn’t for bagels, it was for something else, a gyro food truck maybe. Waiting in line is like being suspended in time; there’s a lazy anticipation, a kind of inertia involved. You just stand there, waiting for something to happen, for it to be your turn. There were three people ahead of me and two behind; I didn’t think any of them might pull out a gun and hold it to my jaw, violence ribboning out of action and speech. Things, they keep changing. Waiting in line, before all of this, was not a source of anxiety, a site of possible danger. It was simply the sweet luxury of boredom, not known till it's lost.
It’s my turn. I’ve known what I want for a while now; I step up to the counter and order. The Zoidberg comprises beet-cured salmon, alfalfa, capers, and dill. A copious amount of cream cheese. It’s massive and costs fifteen dollars, which translates to slightly under twelve USD. It’s going to last me all day. When my number flashes on the screen, they mispronounce my name over the intercom, and I walk past the cyclists, who are almost done chomping through their bagels and are now chugging some blended green concoction with obvious pleasure. I almost expect them to smack their lips and high-five.
Oh, the luxury of predictability. I collect my bagel and locate an empty seat, peel back the brown wax paper, and bite into the warm, dense dough. It’s delicious. In the fall, when the term starts again, I’ll board a plane, spiral back to America, and slip into my old pajama top. I will go from being simply a girl to Chinese Girl. I understand this now. I don’t expect my place in the line to have held exactly the same. It’s moved, so have I. When I finish this bagel, the ground will have altered again, if only slightly. What comes next, we will have to see.
