“Let’s scope this place out first,” I say. “Maybe we’ll see something obvious.”
“Obvious like what?” Sunny asks.
“I don’t know yet. But there had to be a reason Gilbert Baker chose this place, right?”
We reach the second floor.
Sunny raises her hand. “Well, my dad’s family is from Japan, so I’m taking the Japan wing.”
“I’ll take Korea,” Julia says.
Gabriel points across the hall. “China!”
I look back and forth. “I’ll take Japan with Sunny,” I say with a sigh. “Let’s meet back here in thirty minutes and report, then head up to the third floor together.”
Julia nods and darts into the first gallery room of the Korea wing. Gabriel weaves around the open staircase toward the China wing. Sunny eyes me warily, then walks into a room with the headingTateuchi Japanese Galleries. I walk inside after her.
“What was that?” I ask.
“What was what?” Sunny says, not turning around.
“That look you gave me.”
“I didn’t give you a look.”
“Sunny, please. You’realwaysgiving a look.”
Sunny whirls on me. “Maybe I just don’t understand why you decided thatI’mthe one who needs a babysitter,” she snaps.
I extend both arms. “Okay, you three called out all the wings in, like, two seconds! And Japan’s the largest one on this floor! I’m not babysitting you. I’m trying to help.”
Sunny snorts and turns away from me again. She does a full three-sixty turn around the first room, then crosses into the adjoining gallery. I glance around at the smooth, painted walls before following her. So far everything looks exactly like a standard art museum. I try to fight off the rising dread that whatever was here in Gilbert’s time is now long gone.
I catch up to Sunny. “You’re being weird,” I say. “And not your usual weird either. Is it something about the museum?”
Sunny sighs in front of a giant painting of cranes and trees leaning over a riverbank.
“It’s not the museum,” she says. She pauses a moment. “Well, yeah, it is, but not for the reason you probably think.”
“Okay…”
“Do you remember how we passed the museum on Castro?” Sunny asks. “With Mr.Wong?”
I nod. “The GLBT Historical Society Museum? Yeah.”
“Well, like, this is my other big problem with HarveyMilk’s name on everything in this city. Just seeing all the posters on the outside of the GLBT building with only white people standing in the front felt…shitty. Sometimes the whole San Francisco gay history thing feels so predominantly white. Like all the people of color are footnotes. And then we come here, and it’s traditional Asian art, and that’s great—I really appreciate seeing an entire museum of this—but then it’s like, where are the gay people? They exist, of course, but they’re footnotes again, right? Intersectionalism feels like constantly being a footnote in everyone else’s history. No matter where you go.”
My heart sinks with this realization. Sunny’s completely right.
“And I may or may not be gay—that’s not the point,” she goes on. “But the point is that it feels impossible for gay people of color to have their own spaces and communities. Ask Gabriel about how it feels to be a queer Latino. It’s the same thing.”
“I’m sure it is,” I say.
Sunny prods me. “Butyou’rethe one who was so disappointed when we got here and saw that the library had turned into this.”
I look up, startled. “I’m not disappointed it’s an Asian art museum.”
“It sure felt like that,” Sunny whispers, “when you saw the name on the building.”
