Now that I was back from Cleveland, Lillian’s 35mm wasn’t part of her body anymore, at least not when I was around. I’d see it attached to her hand when she was coming home from work or heading out on weekends, but my mother was a woman of her word: no more 35mm and no more Ro-Ro. I’d like to say this made me feel special, or that it brought us closer, except that without her camera, my mother was twitchy and uncomfortable, like she had an itch she was trying not to scratch. Though she did her best to pretend, she looked lopsided, like her right arm was shorter than it was supposed to be. Of course, just imagining Lillian taking pictures of me made me want to dig a hole and jump in. Between me jumping or my mother jumpy the choice was clear, but that doesn’t mean it was fun.

One day as we passed a woman at a pay phone, Lillian made a shape with her hands. I asked what she was doing. She said, What?, like I’d woken her up, but whenever we were together, it was like that: her thumbs and pointer fingers would form a square that she’d hold four inches from her stomach. We were at home and I was sitting on the couch when I looked across the room, and she was doing it again. I ran over and grabbed her hands as they were making the shape. Stop doing that, I told her.

September came. I started fourth grade at Prospect Friends as a scholarship kid named Jane. I wasn’t more or less infamous than anybody else. I had a desk next to the only other fourth-grade scholarship kid, the girl who’d been my best friend since before I could eat with a fork. I had a teacher who sang songs on her guitar and who asked to be called Beth as if last names didn’t exist. I was still avoiding my reflection but could change clothes without closing my eyes. I’d even stopped wearing a bathing suit in the tub. Things were looking up.

LETTER TO DEBORAH BRODSKY, NOVEMBER 1964: While I’ve gone off my prescription in the past, this is the first time I’ve broken with it completely. I don’t think Jane notices anything, and I’m sure that Grete does. I was working too intensely this summer to remember what I said or did, but those weeks changed things between us. Grete insists in her new distant way with me that nothing “too serious” happened. If it had been you, you’d have recited a list of my failings, but at least then I’d know! Grete safeguards her wounds.