76. Lost child, Brooklyn, 1964

Maybe Lillian and Grete were sitting on a bench in Prospect Park watching me and Kaja dig with sticks when Lillian took this, or maybe it was during one of Lillian’s photo walks. Either way, here’s the boy, not older than five, alone and crying. Anyone else happening upon a kid like this in a park would stop to ask what was wrong. Once Lillian had gotten that desperate, tear-streaked face on film, she may have tried to help; but first she got the picture.

I’m hoping she took it before the appeals court verdict. I’d like to think that in the month or so after making the papers, even my mother would’ve thought twice before making a kid her photographic quarry. What I do know is that the date and the weather match. That kid is crying in a park lousy with flowers and butterflies, which means it’s spring. Nina had told me that the appeals court date was coming and to keep my fingers crossed, but in my mind the matter had been settled six months ago with my deft handling of the Gordy incident. As far as I was concerned, whatever did or did not happen with the appeal was Nina’s deal, not mine. Meaning that until I got to school that May morning, I’d forgotten all about it.

Somebody’s father must have been a Daily News for breakfast type, because there it was—Judge Rules . . . MOMMY IS SICK—on the newspaper’s front page, slapped across my desk like an invitation to my own funeral.

In a month I’d be done with third grade, and in a week Karen Nichols was having a slumber party to which I was invited. At first I thought a teacher had left the newspaper on my desk by mistake. Then I looked at the picture of the girl standing beside the bed and thought, I know her, which is when I started feeling numb. According to the article, a three-judge panel for New York’s highest court had upheld that the photos popularly known as “The Samantha Series” were obscene. The article stated that defendant Nina Pagano had refused to stop reciting the First Amendment after the verdict was read and had been escorted from the courtroom. Afterward her lawyer informed the press that he planned to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. Farther down the page I saw my mother’s name, but I didn’t want to read that part. I just wanted to hide the paper so no one else would see it, except I wasn’t sure how to do that because I couldn’t move my arms or legs. My body was frozen in my seat, and this bothered me enough that I must not have noticed class starting, or Mrs. Barkley talking to me, because all of a sudden a hand grabbed the newspaper, and there was Mrs. Barkley looking at it like she was looking at a cockroach. I wanted to explain that there’d been a mistake but now, along with not being able to move my arms and legs, I couldn’t talk. So instead John Dunahoe said, She’s a criminal, Mrs. Barkley, it says so right there, and Gordy Cardoza said, No it don’t. It’s like how I said before. Her ma’s a baby killer; she’s just a perv. Then everyone laughed except for Mrs. Barkley, who looked at me like she didn’t know who I was. My arms and legs were tingling like they’d fallen asleep, and I couldn’t catch my breath. Each time I tried to breathe, I made a high-pitched noise like a guinea pig. There was a buzzing sound in my ears. zzzKarenzz, Mrs. Barkley said, zTakezzzZamanthazzzTozzzeeNurze, and Karen Nichols, who until that moment had been my best friend at school, looked at Mrs. Barkley like she’d been asked to touch a turd. The class laughed some more. Mrs. Barkley said something that I couldn’t hear through the buzz, but I could tell it was yelling by the size of her open mouth and the redness of her face, also because Karen got up like she’d been pinched. Karen pulled me from my chair. She dragged me hyperventilating to the nurse’s office, then left me there without a word. And that was the last time I ever did anything with Karen Nichols.