Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(134)
She leans her head against his. “You’re hilarious.”
“I try. You good?”
“Nervous. Vomit nervous.”
“That would not go with your outfit.”
She laughs. Miles feels good that he could do some small thing to make her feel more at ease.
“Hi, Chi!” she says, and the two of them wave in greeting. “I’m so glad you could be here.”
She shows them where Miles’s photograph of Chi in her red bandanna from the Black Lives Matter protest in Brooklyn hangs next to one of Mama D’s from the anti-apartheid movement.
“Ayyy,” Chi says, elbowing Miles. “Check you out.”
“Check you out, you mean,” Miles says, pleased that she’s pleased. His phone pings with a text from his new pal Matthias in Germany: I am staying up with my boyfriend to see it live! We know it will be SUPER!
Mama D steps back to look at her work. She’s just hung a last-minute addition—another photo of Richard. There’s the first one where he’s marching in the streets with ACT UP, mouth caught mid-shout, neck muscles straining, right fist punching up like a New York City skyscraper. But now there’s a second contrasting picture, the one that usually hangs in their hallway. In it, a dusty sunbeam spirals through a window at St. Vincent’s, catching Richard’s joy as he cradles a friend’s baby. Though noticeably gaunt, he smiles down at the swaddled newborn, whose eyes have opened, testing out the world. Thirteen months later, in that same hospital, weighing ninety-seven pounds, curled on a gurney in an ER crowded with other dying men, Richard Beverly will take his last breaths.
“Why did you include that one?” Miles asks. He gets the first photo but the second doesn’t seem to fit the theme of the show.
Mama D takes in a sharp breath, releasing the air like it hurts to let it go. “There’s so much love in his eyes. Even though he’s sick. Even though he’s scared,” she says in that Texas drawl that lingers, an aural photograph of her former self. “Love can be resistance; resistance, love.”
Mom Lisa has come up behind them. She slings an arm over Miles’s shoulder and sneaks the other one around Mama D’s waist, pulling them both closer to her.
“This is gonna be one bomb-ass show,” she says.
* * *
At seven o’clock, the doors open. This opening night crowd is appropriately pandemic-small. It’ll mostly be critics, gallery owners, a few famous artists, and press. Most of Mama D’s real friends will come on different nights when the glitterati and scene-makers are gone. There’s also a livestream set up. Miles has been to these things before. Lots of people talking about “taking studio space in Bushwick before it got overrun with rich hipsters,” which is hilarious since they are the rich hipsters who ruined Bushwick for the families who lived there for generations. But Miles isn’t watching the door for these people. Every time it opens, letting in a blast of freezing December air, he inflates, then deflates when it’s just another balding art darling wearing thousand-dollar eyeglasses and an Italian cashmere scarf. And then, at last, it’s the moment he’s been waiting for. Chloe steps inside the loft along with her mom. Miles thought he was prepared but he’s not. It’s like in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy steps into Technicolor.
“Hey,” he says, coming over to greet them.
“Hey.” Chloe waves back with a mittened hand.
Her hair is growing out and pinned back with barrettes. Pandemic hair.
Like magnets, both of his moms are suddenly there.
“Hi, Joyce,” Mom Lisa says, subtly elbowing Miles in the side. “I’m so glad you could make it.”
“Thank you for inviting us. Wowwww! This is so exciting! A real art opening!” Joyce says. “We both tested negative, by the way.”
In his suit pocket, Miles’s phone buzzes with a text. He sneaks a peek.
ChloeintheDark: KILL ME
Miles2Go: The cringe is real Chloe’s phone buzzes with Miles’s text. She looks. Laughs. Nods.
Joyce smiles tightly. “What are you two giggling about?”
“Nothing,” Miles and Chloe say as one.
Across the room, Mama D’s agent waves her over.
“Babe, I think you’re on,” Mom Lisa says. She gives Mama D’s shoulders a quick, reassuring rub followed by a kiss on her cheek through her mask. “You got this.”
Mama D hates to speak in public, Miles knows. He once again tries to imagine her as a teenager onstage playing punk violin. He can’t, especially now as she steps up to the small mic and clears her throat. “Hello. Thank you for being here tonight, both those of you here in the room and those of you watching from home. Before we begin, I’d like to ask for a moment of silence for the lives we’ve lost. For those who have tirelessly cared for the sick.” She darts her eyes at Mom Lisa, who bows her head. In the seconds that tick by, Miles thinks about the dead and the hurting. He thinks about Chloe’s Mormor shivering on the boat sneaking across the Baltic Sea under the same stars still shining outside this bougie-ass Tribeca loft. He thinks about Chloe here now, so close. He’s trying to pay attention to Mama D but his thoughts pinball and so he only catches snippets. “On these walls are the faces of resistance … resistance takes many forms … against oppression and injustice, but love is also resistance, the family you choose, the identity you claim, the bravery to see the world as it is and to love it enough that you will fight to make it the world that it can be, to make it better, fairer, kinder…”