I didn’t know I was shaking my head until Mr. Wythe stopped talking. Was something wrong? No, I told him, unless he honestly thought he could tell me who I should or shouldn’t talk to about my pictures. I wasn’t going to waste time with strangers if I could show my work with him—but only if I alone chose the images to exhibit at his gallery, and only if those select images could be viewed or purchased. My new work had to succeed or fail on its own merits: nothing more, nothing less.

We were still surrounded by voices, but as Mr. Wythe stared at me, I didn’t hear them. “You’re carrying a heavy burden,” he finally said. “You want to be taken seriously, but you’re afraid of being taken advantage of. I showed your work before because I saw its strength, and that’s why I want to show it now.”

Squirrel, you know how shy I am, but when I realized what he was saying, I hugged him like a friend. The rest of the evening was easier to endure, knowing that my new work had a new home.

91. Downey Street, San Francisco, 1967

Of all the pictures Lillian took when she visited Deb in San Francisco—featuring the city, the hippies, Deb and her four-month-old son—this is the only one she included in The Box. Logic would dictate that the barefoot boy sitting against the fire hydrant and weaving a yarn God’s-eye around two broken twigs belongs to the bearded flute player beside him, but it being the Summer of Love, all bets are off. Though my mother arrived too late for the Be-In or the music festival, during the four days she spent in the Haight before needing to start the three-day bus trip back east, Deb showed her a good time. The letter that reached me in Ohio was written in green ink on the back of a poster for a band called the Purple Clam Bake and described sunny weather, spontaneous concerts, painted people in the park, late-night picnics, and the developmental milestones of Yuma, the weirdest boy name I’d ever heard.

That was a strange summer. With the Supreme Court case over and my name out of the news, the Quakers had informed my mother that my free ride to Prospect Friends was over. Come September, I’d be back in public school for seventh grade at JHS 23. Lillian was surprised by how well I took the news, but that was only because I had a foolproof plan to stay hitched to the Quaker wagon. At this juncture in my young narcissistic life, I had no reason to believe my grandparents would deny me anything, and—considering the house they lived in—they were obviously rich. I figured I’d spend the first five weeks of my summer visit talking up Prospect Friends and then, in the last week, explain how I’d be able to keep attending only if they covered tuition, thus securing my happy Quaker future.