Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(19)
The train moved so slowly. On the platform, the guards stared through the passing windows of the forbidden West. Jenny held her breath. At last, the train began to pick up speed and Jenny exhaled in relief.
Lena was still staring out the window at the moving shadows.
“Bastards,” she said again.
* * *
They exited the station in West Berlin onto a wide boulevard dotted with cheery outdoor café tables. Lena’s hair and clothes drew disapproving glances and some stares from the other patrons. Jenny wished she weren’t so bothered by it. Maybe she was her mother’s daughter after all. Lena led Jenny to an open-air flea market where hordes of shoppers wandered the narrow aisles poking through stalls that held all sorts of collections: Tarnished candelabras. Moroccan lamps. Vintage grandma coats. To Jenny, it looked like a lot of junk, but Lena’s eyes lit up. “Treasure! Come on!”
Lena sorted through a box of glass knobs, choosing one blue-and-white ceramic, one green glass. She positioned them over her eyes. “How do I look?”
“Like an alien bug who might also be a china cabinet?”
“That is exactly the look I was going for!” Lena put the knobs back and picked up a porcelain baby doll with sleepy eyes. “Ma-ma,” she said, moving the doll’s arms.
“Es ist eine Antiquit?t. Vierzig Deutsche Mark,” the vendor said.
“Gerade auf der Suche. Danke sch?n,” Lena said. She smoothed the doll’s hair back lovingly and placed it gently in its box as the vendor turned to another customer. “He wants too much money,” she whispered to Jenny.
“It’s kind of creepy, anyway.”
“No. It’s just sad. It’s been abandoned. And no one’s taking care of it properly.”
Jenny couldn’t tell if Lena was joking or not. But then Lena’s face lit up again. “Come! Let’s go see Markus!”
Markus turned out to be a former circus juggler who now sold vintage clothes at markets around town. A lot of the punks bought from him, Lena said, because he was fair.
“Hallo, Markus!” Lena said, bounding up to a man with long scraggly hair and a walrus-like mustache waxed to points at both ends. Heavy gold earrings weighed down each earlobe.
“Ahhh, Lena. Wie geht’s?”
“Good! You should come hear our band, Sophie Scholl. We are going to be the best punk band in Berlin. In all of Germany,” Lena said, switching to English. The cockiness needed no translation.
Markus’s eyebrows shot up. “Is that so?” he answered in a lilting Irish brogue, and Jenny wondered how many Berliners were outsiders.
“This is my new American friend, Dallas. She’s a famous photographer in Texas.”
Jenny laughed uncomfortably. “Uh … not so much.”
“Ahhh, fáilte! Welcome, Dallas. Take a look around. If you see something you fancy, I’ll make you a deal,” he said with a wink.
Lena picked up a fedora, turning it left and right, inspecting the stitching. “Das ist fantastisch!” She plopped it onto Jenny’s head. “It suits you. Makes you look like a punk detective.”
Jenny could hear her mother’s voice like a squatter occupying her brain: You don’t know where that has been—it could have lice! She lifted it off and hung it from the peg. “I don’t think it’s me.”
Lena picked up the hat again and fitted it on Jenny at an angle. “No, look: It’s pretty on you.” She positioned Jenny before a full-length mirror. Jenny tugged her shirt hem down over the tops of her thighs; she hated mirrors, full-length ones most of all.
“You are very pretty, ja?” Lena said, throwing her arm across Jenny’s shoulder as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Jenny saw their reflection: The hat above her blotched-pink cheeks. Lena’s cheeky pout and her chipped, dark nail polish. “Oh, fer sure, I’m so pretty,” she snorted.
“What is that? Is that sarcasm? Why don’t you like compliments?”
Jenny had been taught that girls should never brag. The girls she knew were always pushing away compliments, always denying the good about themselves. Just like their mothers did. And their mothers before them.
“Say it: I am pretty.”
“I’m so prettyyyyy!” Jenny said, contorting her face and sticking out her tongue.
In the mirror, Lena’s eyes met hers. “Stick with me and you will believe it.”
Jenny blushed and looked away, uncomfortable with how much she wanted this to be true. She raised her camera. “Hey, can we go see the Brandenburg Gate? I want to get some pictures.”
“Oh. You want to be a tourist. Fine. I take you.”
Lena shoved her hands in her jacket pockets and walked faster. Even though Jenny was taller, she had to hustle to keep up. Before long, they came to the open space in front of the walled-off Prussian gate. There was a large white sign with stark black lettering that spelled out a warning: “Achtung! Sie verlassen jetzt West Berlin.” Attention! Now you leave West Berlin. The sign made her jittery, as if she were in danger of falling over into East Berlin and never returning, a Cold War Alice in Wonderland. But Berliners took it in stride, riding past on bicycles without so much as a second glance.
“Come. We get in line for the viewing platform,” Lena said.