When Nina first came over to discuss a gallery show, she didn’t know about the pictures of Lillian and me. My mother’s street photos covered all the available kitchen surfaces, along with the steamer trunk we used as a coffee table, and our few chairs and the sofa, leaving us to sit on the floor, eating dinner off our laps. Grete and Kaja in Prospect Park was one of ten photos Nina got excited about. If Lillian had known the people in the other nine, she would have asked for their permission, too, but she didn’t, so Grete and Kaja were it.

When Grete declined, Kaja started yelling that she wanted to be in the show. The floors of our apartment were old, and the wood was coming away from whatever subfloor it was supposed to be fastened to, so each time Kaja stomped her foot in protest, the room shook a little, like we were sitting on a parquet trampoline. I was so used to Kaja getting everything—grace, charm, a father on alternate weekends, a mother who knew how to cook, a free ride to the cool Quaker school—that I felt too secretly gratified to act offended on her behalf.

GRETE WASHINGTON: Mainly I feared for Kaja’s safety. Life in that neighborhood was not easy. Below Third Street was not safe for her, and even the blocks along President were not so good. Of course, there was risk wherever Kaja and I were seen together. Our block was mixed, with whites and Puerto Ricans living as neighbors. People were friendly, and because we were quiet, the people with opinions were quiet also, but maybe you can see why I did not want to call extra attention to us with the photograph.

Please do not think, because of this, that I predicted what would happen. After Nina saw the photographs of Samantha, I also thought what a beautiful idea to include them in the show. You must understand, this was not the MoMA or some other big museum. This was only one small gallery on a small street, where people looking for a tailor still came to the door with suit jackets for mending.

I do not think Nina saw the future any more clearly than I did, but following the exhibition, she thought only of herself. I can explain it this way: no matter where a white mother and her black daughter went, people stared. The stares in Washington Square Park might have been kinder than the stares in South Brooklyn, but a person who stared to make a show of their acceptance used Kaja and myself in the same way as a person who stared to make a show of their contempt. True acceptance does not stare, because true acceptance sees nothing to stare at. To both kinds of people, Kaja and I were a symbol.