My sister gave birth to a baby boy shortly before the lockdown in Las Vegas began.
We spent the early days apart, isolating on opposite ends of the city. We interacted mostly through supply runs, where I would drop off home-cooked meals and water on a chair at her door. In return, my sister would leave photos of her son in a plastic bag. I would always wait in my car for the front door to open, hoping to catch a glimpse of my sister and her family inside.
Months later we got to see each other face to face, from a safe distance, at her door.
At home, my parents and I have spent time cooking together, fixing small things around the house, and finding new routines. Above, my mother brings back to life a plant I’d left locked away at work for weeks. On the right, she talks me through an entire season of HBO’s Succession while we lie down on my bed. This is the most we’ve seen each other in months.
S and I ventured out to get groceries, only once. Signs and marks on the floor told us where to stand, where to turn. We walked up and down aisles mostly in silence.
G happened to be parking his car as I left the same street. We greeted each other through the windshield, and talked for a while through our masks.
Minutes before, I’d spent some time inside a shop at Ferguson’s Downtown, where two strangers chatted together, a sound I hadn’t heard for quite a while.
Days after the killing of George Floyd, makeshift signs on storefronts on Main Street and Fremont Street show support for Black Lives Matter. Feet away, in trendy brunch spots and stores, people found ways to live a normal life.
On July 13, UNLV students held a vigil for women of color and LGBTQ victims of police brutality. A few miles away, LVMPD sat idle by the Bellagio Fountains, waiting for the day’s protest to begin. The reports of violence incited by police would come a few hours later.
The next day, hundreds of families gathered together at a park in North Las Vegas for a kids’ anti-racism rally organized by 11-year-old activist Kumei Tenorio-Norwood. Children of all ages joined in chants. They said George Floyd’s name. They called for justice for Breonna Taylor.
When Kumei addressed the crowd of mostly kids, they all fell silent. She asked them to march slow, for the smallest in the crowd. “We want everyone to be safe,” she said.
