I couldn’t have stared at the note for more than half a second, but that was all it took. Samantha needed a mother. Maybe just for a night, maybe for longer—maybe a lifetime—but that didn’t matter. It wasn’t even a question. And thank goodness, before six the next morning Lilly knocked on my door. She’d woken up at midnight with terrible cramps and bleeding. She hadn’t known what to do, hadn’t been sure she was strong enough to carry the baby up the stairs. So she’d left Samantha sleeping peacefully and stumbled out into the night to find a cab. By the time she’d gotten to Gouverneur, she was terrified by what she’d done, but it was too late.

Luckily, it all went fast. At the hospital, they gave her a shot to stop the bleeding and sent her home, telling her to stay in bed for four days to protect against further hemorrhaging, which was exactly what she did. I’d never seen Lilly stay in one place for so long. Part of it was exhaustion, but part of it was fear. She needed to obey those instructions to the letter because she knew she couldn’t go through anything like that again.

In those four days, Lilly and I examined it from all the angles. If she’d taken Samantha with her that night, she might have fallen or passed out, and who knows what would have happened. If she’d made it safely with Samantha to the hospital and they’d needed to admit her—a young unwed mother—it could have been social workers and the baby’s “best interests,” and (perhaps this seems paranoid now, but remember, this was the 1950s) they might have tried to take Samantha away. Because from the time of Samantha’s birth to the day Lilly and Samantha were discharged, those social workers kept making their little visits. I swear they were like circling hawks, telling Lilly how many “good families” were waiting for a healthy baby like hers, practically carrying Samantha away with their eyes. As it was, Lilly had left the baby sleeping peacefully that night, knowing I would be back for her. Perhaps Sam had woken up and cried herself to sleep before I returned, but she came through it just fine.

Lilly and I agreed that she had done the right thing, but it changed the way we looked at the world. We realized this was what it meant to be a woman alone and without money, a single mother. I think that knowledge stuck with us in different ways, perched on our shoulders like an invisible raven. Whenever there was a big decision to be made, there was that bird.

36. Exhibition announcement, “Lillian Preston, Photographer, Little Gallery, Hudson Park Library, April 10–30,” 1955, with reproduction of Pennsylvania Station