I asked among the women where I worked. The first phone number Lillian tried was no good, and I think also the second, but she located an appointment with the third for the end of that week. It was bad timing, but concerning this there is only bad timing. I knew of a woman who did not see someone until she was pregnant for sixteen weeks; after some very frightening things, she entered the hospital, where a doctor removed her uterus. Even if an abortion was performed much sooner, there were many risks. If the hospital became involved, the police would come. The policeman would interrogate you in your hospital bed, and he would demand names. Sometimes in the newspaper there were articles. A mother arrested for finding help for her daughter. A doctor suspended for assisting a young girl. If an heiress or a fashion designer died from an abortion, the newspapers would report this, but not an ordinary woman. Such a plain death was not interesting or important.

The night before her appointment, Lillian gave me a piece of paper with the telephone number of her parents in Cleveland. Before now she never spoke to me of her parents, so I thought they had died. I was to call this number in case something happened, in which case I would also need to tell them about Samantha.

Tell them yourself when you are ready, I told her. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next year; you will have time.

Promise me you will call, she said. Yes, I told her. If it comes to that, of course I will. Then we stared at one another—very silently, very seriously—and that was how we became sisters: not by pricking our fingers and sharing our blood but by sharing our fear.

JOURNAL ENTRY, MARCH 1961: Ken was calling every night. First he would ask if I’d done it yet, and then he’d ask to talk to you. I tried to coax you to the phone every time, but you said you’d only talk to your “real” daddy. “What’s a real daddy?” I asked. “The daddy who makes you,” you said. “The daddy who makes you breakfast?” I asked. “The daddy who makes you laugh?” Each time, Ken said I’d turned you against him. Then he’d cry into the phone before getting angry again, and then cry some more. Each time I apologized—for you and for me and for everything—until one evening Ken called and I told him the date of the appointment. “That is two days before Sam’s sixth birthday,” he said, and hung up.

57. Self-portrait, Brooklyn, 1961

The location is the same, but the composition is different: all we get is the shadow of Lillian’s decapitated body. Her torso fills the frame, the rail slicing across the base of her neck along the photo’s top edge.