JOURNAL ENTRY, NOVEMBER 1963: Marcus Sheer explained that if People v. Lacuna loses its intermediate appeal, as he thinks it will, he’ll ask the highest state court to hear the case. Naturally, this is why he took the case to begin with. Nina was as excited as I’ve ever seen her, which is really saying something. She listed all the newspapers and magazines she planned to contact if the appellate court ruled against us, sounding like a little girl writing out her birthday-invitation list. If it came to that, she wanted to know, was I ready to talk to reporters? Of course, I told her; I want to help any way I can. I admire Nina tremendously for what she’s doing, but I must admit I was relieved when she finally left. Listening to her makes me tired.
Partly, this comes from breaking with my prescription. I knew it had become necessary because my temper was rising at the smallest things: you asking to pet the dogs we passed on the walk to school, or a woman holding up the bus to search her purse for the fare. Other times, I’d be standing perfectly still and suddenly feel my heart pounding as if I were running for my life. While my pill vacation has improved my temper and general health, at night I can manage only an hour or two in the darkroom before I have to stop. Each day I fall a little more behind, and the thought of all those undeveloped rolls of film weighs on me.
Just yesterday you said, “Mommy, don’t be sad,” and petted my arm like I was one of your beloved neighborhood dogs. I guess you’d been talking for a while, because you asked, “Are you sad because of what the kids are saying?” Which kids, I asked, and saying what? “Oh, just stupid Gordy, but he doesn’t count.” You wouldn’t explain, because apparently this was old news. And when I told you I wasn’t sad, only sleepy, this seemed to make things all right.
GRETE WASHINGTON: Lillian was anxious what would become of Nina and the gallery if the appeal did not win. She felt badly because she had settled her case, and so there was only one chance in the courts to make things right. I assured Lillian that she should not feel guilt about this. She had made the decision a mother needs to make. Lillian agreed, but this did not change the troubled look in her eyes.
One Thursday, Lillian invited Kaja and myself to her flat for dinner with Nina. When I saw the way that Nina talked about the case, I laughed. Really, I told Lillian, perhaps you are nervous, but you are the only one. No matter if Nina loses in the court or wins, she is having a very good time.
75. Blind man, Brooklyn, 1964
JOURNAL ENTRY, MARCH 1964: I shouldn’t have been surprised he knew I was there. Sitting against the wall, his paper begging cup pinned to his coat, the whites of his sightless eyes peeking out between his lashes, he sat taller as I passed. “That’s right, lady,” he said. “Take my picture. I know I’m pretty today.” I had seen him plenty of times before and walked on, but on this day he was different, just as he said.
You’re different, too. Now that my court case is over, you don’t look for patrol cars on the way to school, and you’ve finally given up that horrible blue coat you got from who knows where, which was several sizes too big and made you look like an orphan. For the first time since I was arrested, your smile reaches your eyes.
Change is everywhere. After much hand-wringing, Grete has introduced Kaja to Jim. When we came for our own introduction, you joined the two of them in a game of Parcheesi while Grete fussed in the kitchen, looking happier than she has in a while. “Mommy,” you said on our walk home, “why don’t you have a boyfriend?” I laughed and told you I was too busy. “Grete is busy,” you said, “and she has one.” Yes, I agreed, but Grete was lucky enough to meet Jim at the store where she works. Anyway, I told you, it wasn’t something I thought about. Between you and my photography, my life feels full. This either satisfied you or convinced you I was hopeless, because after that you changed the subject.
Grete says that since meeting Jim, she’s slept like a baby, which must be true because the half-completed piece in her loom has been gathering dust. It’s selfish, but listening to Jean Shepherd on the radio isn’t as fun now that I know Grete isn’t listening, too.
GRETE WASHINGTON: I once did try. Usually I do not meddle, but Lillian’s chance to meet people was so small, and Vincent was a friend of Jim’s who seemed interesting. Kaja and Samantha played while the four of us talked and drank wine. Vincent asked Lillian many questions about her camera. We made an especially energetic conversation about whether it is right to photograph someone without asking for permission, after Vincent realized in the moment that Lillian with her camera was doing exactly this! Later he asked Lillian for her telephone number. His question confused her. When poor Vincent explained, Lillian’s face grew quite red.
I know they did have some dates, because Vincent asked several times if Lillian had mentioned him. I would ask Lillian and learn that she and Vincent had met for lunch or dinner. Finally, I asked after her feelings for him. Lillian explained that she felt about men the way she felt about pistachio nuts: she did not mind to have them around, but she did not go out of her way to find them, and she did not miss them when they were gone. Poor Vincent, I thought to myself. After that I decided it was better to let Lillian be.
76. Lost child, Brooklyn, 1964
Maybe Lillian and Grete were sitting on a bench in Prospect Park watching me and Kaja dig with sticks when Lillian took this, or maybe it was during one of Lillian’s photo walks. Either way, here’s the boy, not older than five, alone and crying. Anyone else happening upon a kid like this in a park would stop to ask what was wrong. Once Lillian had gotten that desperate, tear-streaked face on film, she may have tried to help; but first she got the picture.
I’m hoping she took it before the appeals court verdict. I’d like to think that in the month or so after making the papers, even my mother would’ve thought twice before making a kid her photographic quarry. What I do know is that the date and the weather match. That kid is crying in a park lousy with flowers and butterflies, which means it’s spring. Nina had told me that the appeals court date was coming and to keep my fingers crossed, but in my mind the matter had been settled six months ago with my deft handling of the Gordy incident. As far as I was concerned, whatever did or did not happen with the appeal was Nina’s deal, not mine. Meaning that until I got to school that May morning, I’d forgotten all about it.
Somebody’s father must have been a Daily News for breakfast type, because there it was—Judge Rules . . . MOMMY IS SICK—on the newspaper’s front page, slapped across my desk like an invitation to my own funeral.
In a month I’d be done with third grade, and in a week Karen Nichols was having a slumber party to which I was invited. At first I thought a teacher had left the newspaper on my desk by mistake. Then I looked at the picture of the girl standing beside the bed and thought, I know her, which is when I started feeling numb. According to the article, a three-judge panel for New York’s highest court had upheld that the photos popularly known as “The Samantha Series” were obscene. The article stated that defendant Nina Pagano had refused to stop reciting the First Amendment after the verdict was read and had been escorted from the courtroom. Afterward her lawyer informed the press that he planned to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. Farther down the page I saw my mother’s name, but I didn’t want to read that part. I just wanted to hide the paper so no one else would see it, except I wasn’t sure how to do that because I couldn’t move my arms or legs. My body was frozen in my seat, and this bothered me enough that I must not have noticed class starting, or Mrs. Barkley talking to me, because all of a sudden a hand grabbed the newspaper, and there was Mrs. Barkley looking at it like she was looking at a cockroach. I wanted to explain that there’d been a mistake but now, along with not being able to move my arms and legs, I couldn’t talk. So instead John Dunahoe said, She’s a criminal, Mrs. Barkley, it says so right there, and Gordy Cardoza said, No it don’t. It’s like how I said before. Her ma’s a baby killer; she’s just a perv. Then everyone laughed except for Mrs. Barkley, who looked at me like she didn’t know who I wa
s. My arms and legs were tingling like they’d fallen asleep, and I couldn’t catch my breath. Each time I tried to breathe, I made a high-pitched noise like a guinea pig. There was a buzzing sound in my ears. zzzKarenzz, Mrs. Barkley said, zTakezzzZamanthazzzTozzzeeNurze, and Karen Nichols, who until that moment had been my best friend at school, looked at Mrs. Barkley like she’d been asked to touch a turd. The class laughed some more. Mrs. Barkley said something that I couldn’t hear through the buzz, but I could tell it was yelling by the size of her open mouth and the redness of her face, also because Karen got up like she’d been pinched. Karen pulled me from my chair. She dragged me hyperventilating to the nurse’s office, then left me there without a word. And that was the last time I ever did anything with Karen Nichols.
JOURNAL ENTRY, MAY 1964: By the time I arrived at the school, an hour had passed since the principal’s call to the restaurant, and you were falling apart in a way I hadn’t seen since the day you learned that Ken was not your father. I thought you were hurt, so I ran over and started looking for blood. You wouldn’t tell me what had happened, and I didn’t know anything: the principal had said only to come right away. When he showed me the Daily News headline, I flinched to see what the newspaper had done to our portrait.
“Miss Preston,” the principal said in a voice that didn’t hide his opinion. “I’ve seen a lot in my ten years as an elementary school principal, but this, well, I won’t ask you what you were doing taking pictures like this because I suppose it’s your right, but to show them in public . . .”
I knew about the verdict. Nina had called the night before to say they’d be petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court, and to explain when and how they’d learn if the court would hear the case. Possibly she hadn’t mentioned the press because she hadn’t known. As long as I choose to believe this, I remain recognizable to myself. But if Nina was expecting those newspaper headlines and didn’t mention them, that means she stole my only chance to prepare you for what was coming—and if I choose to believe that, then my anger turns me into a stranger. In any case, I was caught completely by surprise. It took me several moments to connect Nina’s latest trial with the headline the principal was holding in his hand.
“Let me ask you one thing,” he said when at first I said nothing. “Did you ever stop to think what this would do to your daughter?” He viewed my stunned silence through the same broken lens he’d held up to everything else. “That’s what I thought,” he said.
You didn’t want to go back to class, and I wasn’t about to make you. We were half a block from home when I saw the man waiting on our stoop. “Miss Preston?” He reached us before I had a chance to think. “Peter Grunloh, Daily News. Do you have anything to say about the outcome of yesterday’s trial? Does the fact that you took a plea bargain rather than face trial yourself mean you agree with the court’s verdict? What were you hoping to accomplish by exhibiting those photos of yourself and your little girl? Is this her? Hey, Samantha, what do you think about—” but by then we’d reached our door. The telephone was ringing. Once I’d locked us inside and closed the curtains I picked up, thinking it was Grete, but it was another reporter. When I hung up, the phone began to ring some more.
“Mommy?” you asked in a small voice. “Why did the newspaper cross me out?” I stroked your hair as we sat on the couch and the telephone rang. I said that you and the picture were both beautiful. I said that laws were sometimes wrong, and that people like Nina went to court to try to fix them. As I said these things, the telephone rang and rang, until I disconnected the handset.
You weren’t hungry, so we skipped dinner. You wouldn’t change into your pajamas, so I put you to bed in your clothes. Then I stood in the dark of our room, and I watched as you flinched in your sleep.
77. Old woman, Brooklyn, 1964
My memories of the rest of that year are fragments: the moldy smell of the coat closet where I hid during recess; the black-and-white tiles of the girls’ bathroom where I hid during lunch; staring at the bedroom wall to avoid seeing my body while Lillian dressed me each morning.
This picture would have come from one of her Saturday walks while I was either at Kaja’s or at home, telepathically begging Nina to visit on weekends now that Thursdays had suddenly stopped. Even if I’d known Nina’s number, calling wasn’t an option, since Lillian had hidden the phone handset. According to Lillian, it wasn’t safe for Nina to visit anyway. Reporters were still coming around, and the last thing we needed was another reason to be in the newspaper. I agreed, but there was something weird about the way she said it. When I asked if she was mad at Nina, I knew I’d asked the right question because instead of answering, she asked me why I thought that. Because she was talking in her angry voice, I explained. She was angry at a lot of people right now, she said. But wasn’t Nina trying to fix things? I said. My mother agreed that she was.
All I can guess is that Lillian rode the subway to the end of the line, to some place with factories and warehouses and not many homes. When I see that old lady sitting on that curb with her thick leggings and her men’s shoes and her layers of skirts and her dark felt hat too big for her head, her cane at an angle like a broken leg, her elbow resting on her thigh, her cheek resting on her fingers like a little girl waiting for her father to come home, I think: No one is coming for you, old woman. You are a used-up horse, waiting to be glue. And then I think: What kind of person thinks that about a picture? And then I think: What kind of person takes that kind of picture?
JOURNAL ENTRY, MAY 1964: When Nina rang the doorbell later that night, I’d been standing in the dark watching you sleep for so long that the hallway light was blinding. I opened the front door, hardly able to tell who was on the other side. Nina told me she’d come to strategize: if we split the interviews between us, we could do twice as many in half the time. For now it was still a regional story, but assuming the Supreme Court decided to hear the case, it’d be national by early next year. How did I feel about radio and television? With a little practice, she thought I could get comfortable being in front of a camera instead of behind one. She blathered like this for several minutes before realizing I hadn’t said a word. “You all right?” she finally asked, at which point I asked why she hadn’t told me about the newspapers. “What, today’s?” She laughed. “The real story comes when we start talking to the press.” I told her they’d printed Sam’s picture. “Of course they did!” she said. I told her that I’d brought Sam home from school and she’d cried herself to sleep. “Sounds rough,” Nina said. I explained that a reporter had been lying in wait for us outside the apartment. “Oh, yeah?” Nina said, her face lighting up. “Which one?”
This morning you wouldn’t get dressed. As I took off yesterday’s shirt and tugged your hands into the arms of a fresh one, you closed your eyes. You were limp as I slid yesterday’s skirt down your legs and traded it for something clean. You wanted me to take your temperature, so I placed the thermometer under your tongue. I could practically hear you wishing the mercury up, but it didn’t budge past normal. You pleaded to come to the restaurant. You’d read in the storeroom; no one would know. Even if I’d let you, there still would have been tomorrow and each day after that, and you can’t spend the rest of third grade in Remming’s dry storage, nibbling stale bread.
“Mommy,” you said as I walked you to school, “Mrs. Mallory just crossed the street with Rusty.” I told you it was nothing, but you shook your head. “She saw us,” you insisted, your voice full of tears. “She saw us, and she crossed the street because she doesn’t want me to pet him anymore.” You wouldn’t let me walk you all the way to the schoolyard, so I hung back as you entered the front gate, where you remained alone and frozen in place, silently waiting for the morning bell. Squirrel, I wish I could take you with me to the restaurant every morning to read books and eat day-old rolls until the verdict is reversed or third grade is done!
78. Couple on Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn, 1964
At first this one seems pretty straightforward:
he’s got his right arm across her shoulders, his hand like one of those arcade claws gripping a prize. He’s put together, but her coat is unbuttoned and her hair is mussed, like he might have just had her up against the brick wall they’re standing in front of. With his tie, pleated slacks, and pomaded hair, he could be on his way to an office. That belted dress could put her on the service side of a department store counter—except that their faces tell you they can’t be more than fourteen years old. And there you have it: two middle-aged children, stuck in your head like a sad song.
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