From Isolation
By Lille Allen
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 spend 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–our masks on the whole time.
Minutes before, I spent some time inside a shop at Ferguson’s Downtown, where two strangers chat, a sound I haven’t heard in quite a while.
Days after the killing of George Floyd, makeshift signs are displayed in storefronts on Main Street and Fremont Street, showing support for Black Lives Matter. Feet away, in trendy brunch spots and stores, people find a way 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 idly 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 gather 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 join in chants. They say George Floyd’s name. They call for justice for Breonna Taylor.
The crowd falls silent when Kumei addresses them. She asks them to march at a slow pace, for the smallest in the crowd. “We want everyone to be safe,” she says.
Lille Allen is a designer and photographer based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She manages marketing and communications for the Black Mountain Institute, the publishing home of The Believer.
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