Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(21)

Jenny and her family had gone into Mexico once, crossing at Laredo. But it had been pretty quick. They hadn’t even needed passports. She shook her head.

“That’s good. Once the bastards get it into their heads that they can build a wall, the idea never really comes down. The minute they try it, you’ve got to fight it. Here. Let’s leave our mark, eh?” Lena pulled a fat marker from her trousers pocket and offered it to Jenny. “Go on. It’s okay. Write whatever you want.”

“Isn’t this vandalism?”

“No. It’s art.”

“Feels like vandalism.”

Lena held out the marker. “Art is transgressive.”

Jenny took the marker. When she’d finished, she and Lena stepped back to admire her shaky scrawl: DALLAS.

Lena shoulder-bumped Jenny. “Super!” she said, pronouncing the s more like a z. “Now you are part of Berlin.”

Lena wrote her own name next to Jenny’s. As she did, she sang softly in her raspy voice. The song was simple but haunting.

“That’s nice. Is that one of your songs?” Jenny asked.

Lena capped the marker. “You are joking. That’s ‘Heroes’? David Bowie?”

Jenny was vaguely aware of David Bowie. He had orange hair and wore space alien suits. He seemed too weird for her so she’d never listened to his music. “I’ve … heard of him?” she said, feeling deeply uncool.

“Mein Gott.” Lena slapped her hand to her forehead and dragged it down her face. “Ach! We have to start your education as soon as possible. Come with me.”

Lena took Jenny by the hand and marched her through the broken, painted streets of weary Kreuzberg until they came at last to K?thener Strasse No. 38—a large, shabby building that seemed like the last opera house in a dystopian science fiction movie. Its bank of large windows faced the bleak open field by the wall and the guards’ tower on the other side.

“This is where some of the greatest music was recorded!” Lena seemed proud of the studio, as if it were hers. “And ‘Heroes’ might be the greatest.”

“Okay. Why?”

“Why? Are you for serious? You probably like ABBA.”

“What’s wrong with ABBA?”

Lena mimed sticking a finger down her throat. “This is terrible. No. It is a tragedy.” Lena cocked her head. “You’ve really never heard the song.”

“No.”

Lena shut her eyes and sang in her cracked-leather voice. The melody was simple and beautiful, but the lyrics were piercing—two lovers standing by the wall, kissing, while guards shot above them, oblivious to their love. Jenny looked straight ahead at that wall, at the guards with their guns.

Lena opened her eyes. “Bowie was recording there.” She pointed to a third-floor window. “But he had no lyrics. He didn’t even know what the song was about.” Lena marched across the eight feet of dirt-churned field and right up to the wall. In the watchtower, the East German guard raised his binoculars. “It’s okay,” Lena said, beckoning Jenny to her. Jenny inched closer, glancing up nervously. “So. Bowie asks everyone to leave. He is in the studio, alone, with no song. He looks out the window and he sees a couple kissing by the wall, just where we are standing now, with the guns above our own heads. And pow! He has the lyric.” Lena stepped up to the wall, which, on this side, bloomed with graffiti and color. Jenny wondered what it looked like on the other side, if it were as gray as she imagined.

Jenny glanced up nervously. “Lena, maybe we should go?”

Lena leaned her head against the concrete, tracing her finger across a pockmarked red heart. “The song is about separation. About pain. About love being more powerful than a gun.” She seemed to be somewhere else now. It was like watching storm clouds move in on a blue-sky day. And then, suddenly, as if shaking off a wet towel, she turned to Jenny, smiling. “Let’s take a picture of us so we always have this moment, ja?”

Jenny placed the camera on a pile of rubble and set the timer for a ten-second countdown. She raced back to Lena’s side. “Ready?”

“Always,” Lena said.

Jenny didn’t doubt it.

“Three, two…”

Just before one, Lena threw her arm around Jenny, pulling her close. The camera clicked, immortalizing them: Lena, the blazing sun, and Jenny, caught in the dazzling pull of her orbit. As they leaped across the broken, rutted field, Lena turned, walking backward and stabbed the air with both middle fingers. “Schweine!”

With a laughing scream, she grabbed Jenny’s hand and the two of them ran away as fast as they could.



* * *



“Hey. How is your friend? The one who writes to the tree? Any luck?” Lena asked. They were walking up Bernauer Strasse sharing a packet of Gummib?r Jenny had bought at a Sp?tkauf, which was like a German Circle K.

“No. Not yet. This girl in my building, Martina, said Frau Hermann might be a witch.”

“Does she boil children in a cauldron in her kitchen?”

Jenny didn’t know why she’d shared that gossip and now she felt slightly guilty for repeating it. “I shouldn’t have said that. She’s really nice. Just kinda lonely, I think. And a little … odd. She has a whole shelf of fairy-tale books! And she did write that letter to the Bridegroom’s Oak…”