Chapter XVIII. Infinite Sky. #3
Later, after they’d frolicked in the water for a good thirty minutes and the group had somewhat dispersed—the Italians smoking over on the rocks; Rafaella, Katrine, Bas, and Elliot in a cluster a little way down the coast; Marc, Kip, Stu, James, and Hugh lying flat on the sand—Cecilia and Anouk reclined near the shore, gazing up at the star-filled sky.
The light show was extraordinary that night.
The full Milky Way on exhibit. Almost close enough to touch.
“Have you ever seen a sky like this?”
“In Jamaica, in the countryside.”
“Ah.” Anouk smiled. “Yes, in Martinique it’s the same. But the best for me was in France, in the Hautes-Pyrénées. It was … incroyable. Like magic. Like this.”
“It puts everything into perspective, doesn’t it? How tiny we are. How inconsequential. How insignificant my shrimp tacos.” Cecilia laughed, mostly to herself. Anouk did not seem to get the joke.
“For me, it’s comforting. Especially when I’m far from home. Knowing that wherever I am on the planet, I can see the same stars as my parents. That we share the same sky.”
Cecilia looked over to her then. Anouk’s hair was still wet, clinging to her shoulders.
Her bra diaphanous. Gooseflesh on her taut belly.
Cecilia marveled at how unselfconscious she was—whether it was from being a model or being French, she wasn’t certain.
Cecilia just knew she was the opposite. She’d spent years trying to de-emphasize her curves.
To make herself as small and unassuming as possible. Anouk’s insouciance was enviable.
“It’s a gift to have this job. To travel the world to these amazing places, and call it work,” Anouk continued. “I have this way of holding on to the memories. Because I don’t want to ever get so busy I forget to appreciate the beauty around me. I make little still lifes of every place.”
“Still lifes?”
“Like a collage. A sprinkling of things I want to remember. The view, the feel, the atmosphere, the food, the people I’m with…”
“Like a scrapbook?”
“Mmm, maybe. But more abstract. I can’t describe … I’ll have to show you.”
“You have it with you?”
“Back in my room.”
“I’d like to see that.”
Cecilia was quiet then. She wasn’t sure if that had sounded forward. A proposition of sorts. But she had the idea that Anouk wouldn’t mind.
A breeze came up from the water and she bristled, reaching for her shirt.
No one had remarked on her less-than-seductive full-coverage underwire bra.
Not the production assistants from the Upper East Side.
Not even Marc, who ribbed her about everything.
Still, she’d been self-conscious in the water with the group.
She was self-conscious now. Part of it, she thought, was being Black.
The way she stood out physically from the others.
Her darker skin, her curvier shape. She’d always been aware of that difference.
As a teenager trying on clothes in the shared dressing room at the Loehmann’s in White Plains in a sea of suburban Westchester moms. Or at her predominantly white sleepaway camp in upstate New York, changing discreetly into her one-piece in her cabin among a swarm of blonds from Long Island and New Jersey, equipped with feathered Sun In’ed hair and pink areolae. She felt like an anomaly.
If she thought about it, and she did, she hadn’t been exposed to many naked Black bodies growing up.
Her mother, her cousins, Andrew, up to a certain age.
But she didn’t see them often in art, or in fashion, or in magazines, other than National Geographic, which arrived monthly at the Chens’ doorstep.
And where the brown and Black bodies were often unclothed.
With tribal piercings and markings, and breasts that had clearly never been acquainted with bras, Victoria’s Secret or otherwise.
Cecilia hated National Geographic for that reason.
Because while it exoticized and fetishized persons of color, its subjects of European descent always managed to be covered.
And yet each month, as much as she loathed it, she felt compelled to look.
It was equal parts titillating and torture.
“I love your hair like this. You should wear it down more often,” Anouk said, sitting up beside Cecilia, watching as she twisted her unruly curls into a knot.
“It’s a lot. Especially when I’m working.”
“I love that it’s so dark and silky. I have cousins with hair like this. So pretty.” She reached out then, her fingers entwining with a lock of Cecilia’s curls. Delicately, but resolutely, she undid the knot. “You’re not working. Leave it down.”
Cecilia stiffened. What was it about this girl?
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Anouk asked.
“Um, yes.”
“He must love it.”
“Ha.” Cecilia laughed, unsettled. “He’s a little over me right now. We’re kind of fighting.…”
“I’m sorry.”
“Boyfriends can be difficult.”
“Mine was … pffft … the worst. He broke me two years ago.”
“Broke your heart?”
“My heart, my head, my soul, everything. But it’s okay, he’ll pay for it. I can hold a grudge for a really long time.” Anouk smiled and Cecilia smiled with her.
“Remind me not to betray you.”
Anouk reached across the sand then and grabbed her shirt. She buttoned it, slowly.
When she was done, the model turned back toward Cecilia, who was still watching her.
“Don’t betray me,” she said.