DEBORAH BRODSKY: The day we took the BMT to Canarsie was the only time I saw Lilly in the world empty-handed. I was a Long Island girl, and Lilly hadn’t ever crossed the East River, so heading into Brooklyn felt to both of us like traveling to a foreign country. Then we got there, and except for the Virgin Marys on the front lawns instead of mezuzahs beside the front doors, it was exactly like where I’d grown up in Woodmere. Lots of small brick houses, kids playing kick the can. The familiarity made it feel like one of those dreams where you’re back in school and everyone’s staring because you’re in your underwear. Not that anyone was staring, which only added to our paranoia, because we felt conspicuous as hell.

I don’t know what we were expecting to find at the address, but it was a regular house like the rest. There were people in the living room, kids running in and out of the kitchen. I sat on the couch beside someone’s grandma while a middle-aged guy with a paunch and a comb-over escorted Lilly down a hallway. Ten minutes later, she was back, and I’d never seen her so pale. When we got outside, she handed over the cash. Renaldo’s was all there, she told me, but she owed me fifty dollars. I asked was she all right? She was now, she said, and we got back on the BMT. I couldn’t tell if she’d decided to marry Charles after all, or if she wanted to find a different doctor. Then Lilly turned and said, He’s going to be so awfully disappointed in me; and I could tell by the way she said it that she was talking about her father.

JOURNAL ENTRY, SEPTEMBER 1954: I thought his office was connected to the house, and that Deb and I just happened to arrive at the wrong door. I assumed the man was leading me down the hall toward a proper examination room, but instead he brought me to a large walk-in closet in the back of a cluttered bedroom. Inside the closet was a metal table covered in white towels. Stirrups made from rope with loops at the end hung from the ceiling. The man advised me to keep my shoes on. He told me he wouldn’t use anesthesia because it wasn’t safe. I had to promise not to scream or his kids would hear. When he held out his hand for the money, I gave him half and got out of there.

30. Self-portrait (nine weeks), New York, 1954

According to my math, Lillian would have taken this about two weeks after the trip to Canarsie. She’s wearing the same face she wore whenever she’d made up her mind about something. I hated that face except when I loved it: like the day that face came to my rescue after a front-page photo in the Daily News sent me to the principal’s office, or every time that face came between me and a nosy reporter.