What if I don’t fight? I wanted to know. “But Lil, what are the actual chances they’ll lock you up?” Nina interrupted, so I repeated myself louder than before. If I preferred, Marcus Sheer explained, I could plead guilty in exchange for time served. Would that be the end of it? There might be a fine, Marcus Sheer said, but he doubted it: I had a clean record and I’d present well in court. And so long as Nina fights, he’ll still have his pioneering First Amendment case? “It wouldn’t be my case,” Marcus corrected me, his voice gentle. “Nina’s case is Nina’s case, the same way that your case is yours.”

Deb, I know that you would fight; you and Nina are alike that way. I try to imagine what I’d do if I weren’t a mother, but my imagination fails me. I cannot go back to prison. Does that make me a good mother or a coward?

73. Halloween, Brooklyn, 1963

None of the kids in the picture is me. Lillian went her own way with her camera that night while Kaja and I went ours, me as Zorro and she as Godzilla. Kaja explained to anyone who would listen that the real Godzilla movie was Japanese and didn’t star Raymond Burr. I guess because Zorro had been off the air a few seasons, people kept asking how I got the idea for my costume, but I had zero interest in explaining my affinity with a sword-wielding vigilante.

Nina understood right away. Heading over to the Lacuna hadn’t been a conscious plan. Kaja and I simply travelled across and down the Park Slope grid. Before I knew it, we were standing at the gallery door with a cluster of other kids as Nina dropped roasted pumpkin seeds into everyone’s bags, explaining how we’d need the protein to balance out the sugar if we were in it for the long haul.

Sammo, that you? she said, putting down her pumpkin seeds. She grabbed me around the waist and lifted me up like she’d just arrived at my door on one of our usual Thursdays. She should have known I’d be out there fighting injustice, she told me.

When Nina asked who my friend was and Kaja answered, Louise, in a weird Brooklyn accent, we realized that her mask canceled out the usual rules about where she could and couldn’t go. Hence, after Nina’s, we worked the forbidden streets into South Brooklyn’s pale heart, Kaja roaring at random Garfield Boys and Butler Gents from behind her Godzilla mask and giggling like a lunatic. Grete was pissed when we were late getting back, but we were too high on sugar and adrenaline to care. Kaja had returned from enemy territory unscathed, and I’d gone the whole night without worrying about beat cops or squad cars.