One December morning, my mother’s phone rang. She pulled her iPhone out of the holster she kept on the waistband of her blue jeans and wondered who might be calling. Maybe someone from the church was checking on her recovery from the coronavirus. “Hello?” she said.
The voice that greeted her was male. The caller seemed concerned and he told her that something was wrong with her Amazon account. “Someone has access to your bank accounts through Amazon and can take all your money. I am calling for help.” Her mind was racing. Oh Lordshe prayed quietly Lord, give me strength. The voice was warm and soothing and my mother tried to focus intently on his words. My father was driving his truck to work and she was home alone. She was housebound for weeks with Covid, isolated from her community and missing the balm of a friendly voice.
She tried to hold back. The man said he needed information to make sure the money was safe. He transferred her to a different male voice—again soothing, soothing, calm. She promised not to hang up. A brain injury decades ago made it difficult for her to follow his instructions, but she stuck to them. His voice slowly and carefully explained how to swipe and tap her phone as she installed an app that allowed him to see what was happening on her screen. Now he was following her every move.
After a few hours she mentioned that she needed to relieve herself. “It’s okay, I’ll stay on the line,” he said. She parked the phone outside the bathroom and took it back when she was done. As noon approached, she told him, “I have to eat.” “I’ll wait, it’s all right. Don’t close, we’ll lose all our progress. She put the phone down on the counter to make a sandwich, then took some chips out of a cupboard and walked over to the kitchen table.
The phone rang with a text—it was my father, coming in. She wrote back that there was a problem but she was fixing it, took care of everything. She tapped the little white arrow next to the message box to send her reply, and then she heard the voice at an increased volume. He sounded angry. She frowned and put the phone to her ear. “Why would you do that? You can’t tell anyone! What if he’s involved?” She felt confused. That didn’t make sense. But she didn’t fully believe herself either. She was exhausted from her slow recovery and the steroids she was taking as treatment gave her a hollow buzz of energy.
A 20-minute drive away, my father sat at his bare desk under a harsh LED light in the office of a car manufacturing plant. Reading her message, he felt a pang of anxiety. But he too was recovering from Covid and his mind went cloudy. He had recently started a new job as a factory manager and was still getting to know his co-workers and their processes. He received another message, this one from a colleague, and forgot about his wife’s message. He adjusted his mask and moved on to writing an email he intended to send.
