I made my first post-newspaper-headline visit to the Lacuna on a Saturday when Kaja was with her dad and Lillian was out shooting. I really wanted to see Nina, and my telepathic invitations weren’t working. As much as I hated the idea of going outside, being home alone felt worse, so I put on sunglasses and a hat and skulked my way toward St. John’s Place, braced for reporters at each corner. On Nina’s block, someone had spray-painted an arrow next to a gaping pothole and the words “This Way to China.” There was trash up and down the sidewalks, but in front of the gallery, it was clean. I didn’t remember the door being silver when I’d come trick-or-treating back in October.
Nothing happened after I knocked, so I rang the buzzer until a voice inside yelled for me to stop. The door opened a crack. Nina must have been surprised to see me, because for a few seconds she was actually speechless. When she finally did talk, she asked how I was doing in a quiet voice that didn’t sound like her. Her face was puffy and creased, and her hair stood up all over, and she had black makeup under her eyes. I asked if she was still sleeping. Not anymore, she told me. What time was it, anyway? Next time I needed to check the clock before I headed over and give her at least until eleven. Then she invited me in. Did I like the new door? Every now and then some neighborhood genius spray-painted something clever, and she did a little repainting. But it looked good silver, didn’t it?
The walls of the gallery were covered in paintings of naked men lying on couches or leaning against walls or doing handstands, their penises dangling at funny angles. From behind the closed door at the back of the gallery, a man’s voice called Nina’s name. She called back did he want coffee for the train. Then she turned to me and asked if it was true they were giving me a hard time at school. I nodded. She said she wished she could tell me she was surprised, but the truth was most kids were dopes. I shouldn’t tell her niece and nephew this, but I, Sammo, was the undopiest, coolest kid Nina had ever met. Did I play pinochle? Did I want a hangover sandwich?
That was how the card games started. Some Saturdays Nina wasn’t around, but if I knocked and she was there, she’d invite me in, even if she had company. She never offered to teach her company how to play, as she’d taught me that first time, but if he already knew, we’d play pinochle three-handed. If he didn’t know, he’d watch us until he realized Nina was serious, and then he’d leave. I’d tell Nina about school and she’d tell me about a painter she was working with, or someone in the neighborhood who was giving her a hard time, or the man she’d just shown the door. We’d crack jokes and eat peanut-butter-and-potato-chip sandwiches on wheat bread as we played, me using a rack Nina made from a broken picture frame because my hands were too small to hold the cards, until it was time for me to put on my hat and sunglasses and walk back home.
LETTER TO DEBORAH BRODSKY, MAY 1964: Ever since the photographs made headlines, Nina has been flooded with offers for them, and at prices that would make life comfortable for a long time. Of course, none of the people who want to buy the photos have actually seen them. They’ve only seen the censored versions on television and in the newspapers. Even Nina thinks that selling to these people would be wrong: none of them are interested in art. It’s all we’ve agreed on since this whole thing began—that and Sam’s Saturday visits, which are one of the few things that can still make her happy.
In what might be the last conversation Nina and I will ever have, she insisted she didn’t understand why I’d stopped fighting for the cause, but regardless of anything that might happen between us, her friendship with Sam was “a separate deal.” Next she said something about all great artists suffering hardships of some sort as children, and joked about Sam’s fine artistic prospects if I wanted to change my mind about talking to the press now that the case was “hitting the big time.” At which point I became so angry that I hung up.
Deb, you’re absolutely right: if you’d asked me first, I would have said no. It would be ungrateful not to send my thanks—to you and the Poeticals for adding my name to the benefit, and to all the musicians who played. The money is a help. What was left after covering my own legal expenses, I passed on to the gallery. It’s nice of you to say I’m a hero in San Francisco, but the truth is that nothing—not your friendship, or the funds from the Freedom Concert, or Kyle dedicating his reading to me, or even your beautiful poem—can erase the misery I have brought upon my daughter.
79. Samantha’s last portrait, Brooklyn, 1964
Before Lillian and I became popular with the media, one of the best things about our ground-floor apartment was its windows. Not until the end of third grade, when the view became a liability, did I learn the curtains didn’t quite close all the way. The gap between them was skinny, just enough to let in a long splinter of sun. One way I liked to pass the time as an eight-year-old shut-in was to stand so that the stripe of light from the crack in the curtains ran from my shoulder to my elbow, creating a glowing bone emanating from deep inside my arm, which I told myself was the beginning of my larger transformation into something better.
Growing up with my mother’s camera, I’d stopped noticing or caring what she did with it, only that day she surprised me, or maybe I just surprised myself. I don’t know how long she’d been there, but when I heard the click of the shutter, I discovered that my glowing arm bone and I weren’t alone. I don’t know how to describe what happened next except to say that as I stared at the camera, I concentrated on steering the sunlight up from my arm and into my shoulder, up my neck and into my skull. That’s why my face looks the way it does: it is a face willing the light that I am guiding up my arm and into my head to shoot out through my eyeballs and into the camera lens, exploding it into a mess of twisted metal and shattered glass that will never take a picture again.
GRETE WASHINGTON: Ordinarily, if the girls were playing in the bedroom when Lillian arrived, she needed to tell Samantha just a few times to come out, but this time there was only whispering. From the other side of the door, Samantha said, Samantha isn’t here. Well, Lillian said, whoever is there, will you please come out? And then the door did open.
Even after twenty-five years, this moment has stayed in my mind.
Samantha was holding a pair of scissors. When you are used to someone’s hair hanging past her shoulders, it is quite surprising when it suddenly ends at her chin. I’m Jane, the short-haired girl said. I must admit she looked so different that this new name seemed almost correct.
I do not blame Lillian for what she did next. You cannot blame a person for being herself, but Lillian’s reflex was unfortunate, because when Samantha saw her mother reaching for the camera, she stepped back inside the bedroom and closed the door. Samantha? Lillian called.
I’m Jane, answered the small angry voice.
Jane, please come out, Lillian said because Jane is Samantha’s middle name. Please, Squirrel. It’s time to go.
Don’t take my picture, said the voice. Lillian tried the door, but it was locked. Don’t take my picture, the voice repeated.
Please come out, Lillian said. I’ve put the camera away.
But the voice insisted, Don’t take my picture ever again.
Lillian stood quite frozen, staring at the closed door. Squirrel? she said, sounding as if she were no longer certain who stood on the other side.
Promise! cried the voice.
Please . . . Jane, Lillian said. From behind the door, there was a sound. Scissors are quiet, but the sound they make is their own.
Samantha—Jane, stop! Lillian said. She was pounding at the door.
No more pictures! cried the voice.
Lillian was pale now as she leaned against the door. Sweetheart? she tried. Why don’t we—
No! shrieked the voice from the other side, followed again by the soft scissors sound.
Please! Lillian said. Okay, I promise!
Now at last there was silence.
No more? asked the voice.
No more, Lillian answered.
The door opened. Out came a girl
with hair cut to her ears and a face that did not know if it had lost or won. And this girl was Jane.
80. Window, Brooklyn, 1964
The boy on the right knows how to behave around an open window. He’s got to be six or seven, old enough to have seen grown-ups toss keys out to friends on the street, and he’s happy with the view from the inside. But not his brothers. The youngest is sitting on the windowsill, his chubby little toddler legs dangling off it like wet laundry. This would win the prize for Most Disturbing Thing if his slightly older brother—already a fuckup at age four—weren’t standing on a narrow molding several feet beneath the window, holding the leftmost window jamb with one hand to keep from falling. And yeah, it’s possible the sidewalk is just below, seeing as none of them looks too upset about this, but Lillian framed it so that the photo cuts off right at the four-year-old’s feet on that narrow ledge. I can tell myself it’s a ground-floor window all I want, if that’s the world I’d like to live in. But the truth is, I’ll never know.
I have no memory of the day I changed my name. I just remember not answering when Mrs. Barkley took attendance, or when someone sneered, Samantha, in the hallway, because I knew that wasn’t me anymore. Not that I told anyone what to call me instead or that anyone asked, which meant to my gigantic relief that people at school stopped calling me anything at all.
GRETE WASHINGTON: Samantha was not eating or sleeping well. Her skin was full of rashes, and she scratched these rashes into scabs. Lillian tried to talk with the teacher, but the teacher blamed Lillian, and so the trouble continued. Tacks were left on Samantha’s chair. Red ink was spilled across her desk. Cruel notes were left inside her backpack. Girls pulled up her shirt in the hallways. Samantha suffered nightmares and began to wet the bed. Lillian did not have money to move to a neighborhood with a different public school, but also she had no reason to believe that a different public school would be an improvement.
I spoke with the director at Prospect Friends, and he invited Lillian to see him. After she described her unique situation, he offered a scholarship for Samantha to attend the school starting in September.
Nina continued to speak to journalists about the gallery and the photographs. She also described the inhumane treatment that she and Lillian had received inside the jail. This was the first time that the conditions inside the Women’s House of Detention were exposed to the public. An official inquiry was made. Seven years later, that cruel place was shut down and then demolished. A garden now grows where the building once stood, so at least some good thing has come of all this.
JOURNAL ENTRY, JUNE 1964: When I see “Jane” written in black ink across your school notebooks, I still think at first that you’ve brought home another girl’s work by mistake. I named you Jane for your grandmother’s sister, a bright-eyed girl who climbed trees and wasn’t afraid of snakes and who died of appendicitis before I was born. I wanted that fearlessness for you in case you ever needed it, but I didn’t think you would need it so soon.
Your grandmother was frantic when she finally reached me. I’d been dreading her call since the trial made headlines. For the four weeks I kept our phone off the hook, I’d told myself that the news from New York wouldn’t travel too far, a delusion that ended the instant I heard your grandmother’s voice. She never mentioned the photographs, but from the first, she only asked after you: Were you all right? Could you fly unaccompanied both ways instead of just one? This was how I learned I was no longer welcome to join you this summer. To be honest, I’m glad I won’t be going. I haven’t got the stomach for your grandfather’s disapproval, which I think only his high blood pressure prevented him from sharing over the phone. After spending so much time dreading his judgment, it’s almost a relief simply to know for certain that the good graces I’d reclaimed have been revoked.
Part of me wanted to argue: no, you wouldn’t fly alone, not there or back. You would not visit Cleveland at all. Your summer plans fill me with mistrust. What will your grandparents say when they have you to themselves? Eight weeks is a long time. Of course, I can’t refuse. You’d sleep with your plane ticket if you could, walk the 460 miles if you had to. So I told your grandmother what she wanted to hear, which also happened to be the truth: that you’d be happy to come to Cleveland any way at all.
81. Construction site, Brooklyn, 1964
On the street, Lillian almost never violated her ten-foot fixed-focus rule, so it’s weird to see a photo of people at a greater distance. Two girls, around twelve or thirteen, wearing identical cotton smocks that make them look younger, trek across piles of debris in a lot where a building once stood. Because Lillian’s lens was set to grab the girls, the rest of the picture is fuzzy in a way that makes it resemble a dream. But a dream of what? Are these girls so charged to get wherever they’re going that they refuse to let a field of rubble stand in their way? Or are they ghosting a path through demolished rooms they can picture when they close their eyes?
The day that school let out for summer, I convinced Kaja to meet me at the corner of Sixth and St. John’s. Between my new haircut, my regular Saturday-morning disguise, and Kaja acting as my lookout, I felt as safe as possible under the circumstances. Grete wouldn’t have endorsed Kaja’s presence in that part of the neighborhood, but it was the middle of the afternoon so we figured it would be okay. Last night’s rain had washed the sidewalks clean and taken the stickiness and stink out of the air. No photographers were waiting in ambush, and no one gave Kaja a hard time. It was like the city knew I was leaving for the summer and was doing its best to convince me to stay.
When Kaja and I got to the gallery, Nina was on the phone. I was so used to the dangly-penis paintings that I’d stopped noticing them, but Kaja started giggling right away. I rolled my eyes. I told her that the male as an object of female desire was massively underrepresented in art, an historical oversight that the Lacuna was trying to fix. Luckily, Kaja didn’t ask me what I meant, because I hadn’t memorized that part of Nina’s speech. When Nina hung up, she didn’t recognize me with short hair. Then she asked when I’d become the It Girl of South Brooklyn.
In the wake of our scissors standoff, my mother had found a hairdresser who said she’d turn me into Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, but it wasn’t until Nina’s compliment that I realized my hair might look half-decent. Nina was puzzled when Kaja kept calling me by my new name. Who was Jane? Nina wanted to know. After I explained, I couldn’t tell if Nina was disappointed or just sad. Going underground, huh? she said. She knew it might not feel like luck to me, but most artists spent their whole careers trying to get as famous as I was right now.
Kaja laughed. Nina was right, she told me. I was famous, and I wasn’t even an artist!
Nina said that some people were artists whether they wanted to be or not.
My stomach twisted around on itself. Nina was smiling like she’d done me a favor, like my life was a present that she’d special ordered. I told Kaja we had to go, but Kaja was in no hurry. She walked to the nearest penis painting and went into a headstand. Now it was like his legs were arms and his ding-dong was a tiny head on a long tiny neck, she shrieked, and fell over. I knew Kaja was gunning for a hangover sandwich and to learn pinochle, like I’d promised, but once she stood back up I grabbed her hand and led her out the door so fast she had no choice but to leave.
LETTER TO DEBORAH BRODSKY, JUNE 1964: I guess it was decent of Mr. Remming to give me any notice, though he let me know it wasn’t for my sake but for Jane. (Will I ever get used to that name?) At first the landlady was less accommodating. When the headlines appeared, she said we had to clear out by the end of the week, but I begged on Jane’s behalf (there it is again), and the landlady agreed to wait until the school year was over. As payment for this small victory, I’m sure I have her to thank for the social worker who inspected our untidy rooms while marking his clipboard and asking unconvincingly after my well-being. Did I sometimes find it hard to cope as a single mother? Was I ever lonely or depressed? He reminded me of th
ose vultures in the wool skirts at the maternity ward, hungry for a fatherless newborn to cart off to a “good home.” I didn’t let go of Sam’s hand the whole time he was there, afraid he’d take her with him!
Tonight she told me that the same clipboard man had questioned her at school: Had she been forced to pose naked? How many people had been watching? Had she been asked to do other things, not in front of the camera? She told me she didn’t mind his questions because it meant getting out of class. Not only had he not seen the photographs, she boasted, but she bet he’d never even been to an art gallery! If I closed my eyes, that voice belonged to someone confident and happy, but when I opened them again, it belonged to a girl trying to comfort her mother even as she wore a ruffled one-piece bathing suit to avoid the sight of her own body in the bath.
Her plane leaves in three days. While I can sense her excitement even in the way she eats her morning cereal, there isn’t much difference in my mind between that plane and the clipboard man. Her grandmother has told her that I can’t come to Cleveland because her grandfather’s high blood pressure limits them to one houseguest at a time. I won’t malign her grandparents by expanding upon that answer, and I can only hope that they’ll be equally kind to me. But Deb, I do not trust them!
82. Girl, Brooklyn, 1964
The eight weeks I was in Cleveland, Lillian took more pictures than during the rest of that year combined. Most have kids in them, kids who are never by themselves but always alone: take this girl, standing beside the back fender of a parked car as she cries her eyes out, her left hand pressed to her heart like it’s falling to pieces. The two kids on either side of her seem unfazed. The one to her left even looks like he’s laughing. The girl’s dress hangs limp on her skinny body. She’s wearing a paper bracelet. Her hair is done up in a braid that’s been pinned to her head, revealing one delicate ear.
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