“Mommy?” you asked in a small voice. “Why did the newspaper cross me out?” I stroked your hair as we sat on the couch and the telephone rang. I said that you and the picture were both beautiful. I said that laws were sometimes wrong, and that people like Nina went to court to try to fix them. As I said these things, the telephone rang and rang, until I disconnected the handset.

You weren’t hungry, so we skipped dinner. You wouldn’t change into your pajamas, so I put you to bed in your clothes. Then I stood in the dark of our room, and I watched as you flinched in your sleep.

77. Old woman, Brooklyn, 1964

My memories of the rest of that year are fragments: the moldy smell of the coat closet where I hid during recess; the black-and-white tiles of the girls’ bathroom where I hid during lunch; staring at the bedroom wall to avoid seeing my body while Lillian dressed me each morning.

This picture would have come from one of her Saturday walks while I was either at Kaja’s or at home, telepathically begging Nina to visit on weekends now that Thursdays had suddenly stopped. Even if I’d known Nina’s number, calling wasn’t an option, since Lillian had hidden the phone handset. According to Lillian, it wasn’t safe for Nina to visit anyway. Reporters were still coming around, and the last thing we needed was another reason to be in the newspaper. I agreed, but there was something weird about the way she said it. When I asked if she was mad at Nina, I knew I’d asked the right question because instead of answering, she asked me why I thought that. Because she was talking in her angry voice, I explained. She was angry at a lot of people right now, she said. But wasn’t Nina trying to fix things? I said. My mother agreed that she was.

All I can guess is that Lillian rode the subway to the end of the line, to some place with factories and warehouses and not many homes. When I see that old lady sitting on that curb with her thick leggings and her men’s shoes and her layers of skirts and her dark felt hat too big for her head, her cane at an angle like a broken leg, her elbow resting on her thigh, her cheek resting on her fingers like a little girl waiting for her father to come home, I think: No one is coming for you, old woman. You are a used-up horse, waiting to be glue. And then I think: What kind of person thinks that about a picture? And then I think: What kind of person takes that kind of picture?