Her Mother's Daughter (75 page)

In the picture, we can make out a low wooden table, yellow with blue trim, at which three children sit on low matching benches, eating. It is not possible precisely to discern
what
they are eating, although they seem to be eating
on
paper plates. One child, a boy of about two, is holding up his face for the camera, grinning in delight with what appears to be chocolate smeared clear across his chin and mouth; a sight which has a girl, aged perhaps eight, with her legs drawn up on the bench as if she were about to kick something, laughing uncontrollably, with one hand hiding her mouth and the other grasping firmly a large leg, probably from a turkey or large chicken; while a boy of about seven rolls his eyes at the table just in front of him, on which there is a large spreading purple stain, apparently spilled grape juice. The baby who was earlier part of this group is no longer visible, having been placed upstairs in a crib in a small hot bedroom, in clean diapers with a bottle in her mouth. She is well out of it, for this is an extremely poor photograph, with blurring that suggests the photographer's body or arms were moving uncontrollably up and down.

Beside the table of children is a group of adults. The youngest adult female sits on a kind of Adirondack love seat next to the man with the putty face, her head lying on his shoulder; she is smiling and holding up her glass toasting the picture taker. The putty-faced man is smiling in uncertain, puttylike pleasure. His expression is open to complex interpretation: he looks as if he is feeling himself to be utterly depraved, something of which he is deeply ashamed and yet at the same time, proud. He has his arm around the female, whose simple happy smile betrays no recognition whatever of her companion's state of mind. A man in uniform sits stiffly in an aluminum outdoor chair placed to the right of the Adirondack love seat, glaring at something outside the picture. On the other side of the love seat, a woman in her early fifties, unaware of the camera, is glancing around her with a look of panic, wildly, as if she had suddenly realized that she has lost, is missing, something terribly important. Her mouth is open in what looks like a cry of alarm, there is an anxious line between her eyes, and there is panic in her bodily position as if she were preparing to leap to her feet. And bending toward her from his chair, his face caught only in profile, is a man who looks five to seven years younger than this woman, with a look of concern on his face, or rather, concern blended with anger, outrage even. Perhaps what is lost was something precious, and the man blames the woman for its loss, but does not wish to express reproach. Or perhaps the woman is blaming the man for the loss of whatever was lost. It is difficult to tell from this poor photo precisely what was occurring. There is a problem of haze, and the picture is too dark, although there is a brilliance on the right side, which suggests a setting or near-setting sun, a huge red flame on the verge of the horizon, just outside the frame, that causes glare and seems to threaten to burn the film, and even, if the sociologist-historian were to abandon her professionally objective posture for a moment, to threaten to set fire to the picture even as I hold it in my hand.

R
EADING THESE OLD JOURNALS OF
mine is like reading a graph—sharp ups, swift downs, predictable: the ups come when I'm on an assignment, the downs when I'm home. On assignment I am full of excitement, I write tens of pages, odd accounts because often I pay less attention to the thing I'm photographing, the thing I'm there for, like the dam or—years later—the Berlin Wall—than to the feeling of a place, its ambience, or to people I meet—not important people necessarily, just interesting or odd people. I spend whole paragraphs on small details like the graffiti on some statues in Pittsburgh, or the meaning of the fact that a pigeon perched on my shoulder in front of the Baptistry in Florence—God dwells in the details, someone said. I spend a whole page of outrage on a young Algerian boy who tried to pick me up in the Métro, and screamed at me that I was a lesbian when I rejected him.

My returns home are not so much excited, as exercised—page after page lamenting the behavior of the children, and detailed accounts of my attempts to deal with the latest crisis, paragraphs heavy with tiredness and patience. They read as if I were trying to prove to a blank book or to myself that I was a good mother even if I spent time away from home. Or maybe I wasn't trying to prove anything, maybe I found being a mother a difficult and thankless occupation.

As the kids settle down again and life returns to what we called normal, as things begin to perk along without serious distress in a contented way, the mood sinks down, the entries grow briefer and further apart and eventually dwindle into a single bored paragraph once or twice a week. For example:

S
ATURDAY,
F
EBRUARY
9. Lynbrook.

Nothing new today. The kids are both out tonight, Arden at a pajama party at Lily's, Billy at David's. Mom home alone. Spent the day photographing a new tract-housing development out on the island, a place that used to be a potato farm, maybe one of the farms my mother and grandmother walked through to reach the orphanage. There is something so terrible about these tracts, although I'm not sure what it is, why I feel as I do. Certainly the people who sold the land are having an easier life than they did before—almost anything is easier than farming. And what's wrong with these houses? Why am I such a snob? I wouldn't mind having a decent kitchen with a dishwasher, a laundry room, a dining room, a fireplace, a little yard of my own, a garage to keep the car in. Last week somebody smashed in the side of my car while I had it parked in front of the house—not badly, but I don't know who did it, it must have happened in the middle of the night, and I'm worried about what it will cost to repair, maybe it will be over a hundred dollars, well, maybe I can afford that now. Meantime, I have to get in and out on the passenger's side, since my door can't be opened. Still, there's something awful and ugly about those tract houses. Maybe it has to do with the intentions of those who made them. Like the dam.

Anyway, here I am alone and quiet, no TV set blaring, no squabbling kids, so bored I could cry. I've been working on my pictures tonight, but after two hours of that I've had it. Maybe I'll go to a movie. I haven't been anywhere in ages.

Thank god Monday I go out on another assignment.

By the time of my next entry, on the following Friday night, I was hyper again.

F
RIDAY,
F
EBRUARY
15. Lynbrook.

What an absolute bitch of a week! I'm exhausted and beside myself, so furious I've broken out in hives, I could kill, I'd love to put my hands around something's neck and wring it. Oh, for the old days when you killed your own chickens for supper! I'll bet those farm women got their rocks off just preparing meals. Whereas I have to carry my rocks around. Luckily, I stayed in the city while I was shooting, so the kids didn't have to put up with me those four nights, but I was so exasperated, I went out and bought a bottle of rye and kept it in my hotel room. And I drank nearly the whole thing, so much that I didn't bother to bring the remains home. I look horrible, my face is all puffy and I swear I gained five pounds. I'm going to have to buy a scale. The only good thing I can say is at least I can afford it now. This is a terrific job—it enables me to afford to buy whiskey so I can drink myself into something resembling sleep and a scale to weigh the damage the drink did to my body because of upset about the job. Thank god I'll be home now for at least a month before they send me out again. Russ promised. Except once they see the pictures I took, they may never call me again.

The assignment was New York, the unseen side. I loved the idea. I had visions of shooting quiet tree-lined blocks in Queens, ethnic neighborhoods in Brooklyn with Chinese, Italian, Jewish, Russian and Syrian or Armenian restaurants and shops all jumbled together. I imagined stopping for lunch where you can get grape leaves stuffed with rice and nuts, lamb cooked with artichokes in a lemon sauce, umm, I'm hungry, all I had for dinner tonight was a little bit of meat loaf that was left over—Pani wasn't expecting me for dinner and the kids are greedy pigs—and some mashed potatoes and peas, an old-fashioned dinner, the kind Momma used to make, but there was only a tablespoon of each left….Yes, and gorgeous old houses in Harlem, facing the park—carved moldings along the ceilings, beautiful windows, paneling, fireplaces in half the rooms, and staircases with curved wood banisters. And little dockside streets in Brooklyn or Queens, with the masts of sailboats standing like the spears in Uccello's bedstead for Lorenzo de Medici or whoever it was, and shacks where you can buy bait, and an old fisherman, resonant of Maine or Gloucester, sitting on a keg…. Oh, I was seeing it in a romantic, clichéd way, I suppose, but I thought the assignment would be fun. I asked
World
to do research for me, and they sent me a long list of suggestions.
World
wanted to call it “The Real Naked City,” as a commentary on some television program that shows mainly murders.

But this time I was supposed to work with a writer, a well-known writer, well he wrote some famous books, and he is the darling of critics who like manly, virile prose. He comes from Chicago and he is supposed to write well about cities and underworld people, to be tough, like Hemingway; he's praised for his realism. I've never read him, but I was very excited, here I was going to work with Orson Sonders and it was only my second assignment!

I was to meet him at eleven at the Oyster Bar in Penn Station. I knew I'd be walking miles and clambering over barriers and climbing up on things, all the while lugging my fifty pounds of equipment, so I wore pants and a sweater and a heavy jacket and a wool cap to keep my ears warm—we are having a cold February—and wool socks and lined boots against the snow that is still piled up along the curbs and buildings.

So I walk into the Oyster Bar at eleven
A.M.
, clutching my camera case and my mental picture of this man. The place was empty except for one guy standing at the long polished mahogany bar, everything shiny and clean on it and behind it, except this guy who looks as if he has been standing there all night. He is medium high and medium fat, with a flabby unused body and rumpled clothes. You can see he was good-looking once except his face is as rumpled as his clothes and he hasn't shaved in a while. I just stand there: this couldn't be Orson Sonders. He looks at me with a surly expression, but he doesn't say anything. He leans back against a barstool; his thick hand is around a glass of beer.

It feels strange to me to be in a place like this at all, but especially when it is empty and I am alone. I don't know what to do, I know I have to wait for Sonders, but I don't want a drink at this hour of the morning and I'm too embarrassed to order coffee. So I sort of sidle toward the bar, and get up on a stool and sit on it facing the door. This is an unsuccessful ploy: the bartender immediately approaches me and asks what I want. I stutter, I blush, I can feel the hot pulse of blood in my cheeks, I explain I am waiting for someone and don't want anything at the moment, thank you.

A gravelly voice blasts me: “Who you waiting for?”

I turn with hauteur. What the hell business is it of his? “Someone I have an appointment with,” I say coldly. Is he going to try to pick me up, this bum? How dare he! (Damn it! Why am I frightened?)

“What's all that stuff you're carrying,” he continues, unperturbed by my haughtiness.

“My camera equipment.” Cold as an ice cube in the hand, proud as an empress.

“Your camera equipment,” he echoes in a mincing little-girl voice. (I don't sound like that!) “Your camera equipment! Don't tell me you're a photographer!”

I turn and give him my worst glare, a look that says I am preparing to do murder, a look that has reduced shopkeepers, waiters, Brad, and men who whistle at me or make propositions on the streets to paralysis followed by expostulation—“Okay, lady, okay! I'm sorry, okay?”

He lays his flabby face in his thick paws, resting his elbows on the bar. He cries out “Don't tell me you work for
World
! Don't, please don't! A girl photographer! A baby girl dyke yet, they send me! No. No!” The sobbing is loud and it takes me a few seconds to realize it is fake. Now he is pounding the bar, sobbing, “No, no, no, no, no!”

The bartender has a shit-eating grin on his face as he watches the man; he glances over at me to see how I am taking this. I do not know how I am taking it. I am filled with dread, horror, hatred, and embarrassment, and I do not know what to do. I can't help staring at the sobbing drinker, who pounds the bar rhythmically now and the bartender swiftly goes into action, pouring a double of bourbon into a pony, and replacing the empty glass with a fresh beer. The sobber raises his head and tosses the shot down his throat, then grabs the beer and drinks deeply, getting foam on his upper lip. He does not look at me at all. He puts his head back down in his hands.

“Oh, the little girls, how I hate the little girls!” He raises his head a little, like a bull about to charge, and looks at me. “Always running home to Mommy, always crying, ‘I've been raped! I've been raped!' If you have to have women, give me a whore any day!”

He sobs, pours half the glass of beer down his throat, then glares at me furiously. “But worst of all are the dykes, my god, girl, didn't your mother teach you how to dress, or was it your father, did daddy give his ittoo dirw his fly to play with, or are you trying to convince the idiots at
World
that you're a man, is that why they hired you? they must be blinder than even I thought, you don't even have on lipstick, for Jesus' sake!” This outrage reduces him to tears again and he knocks on the bar for another drink, which is promptly supplied.

Deep in my stomach there is a sharp throb of dread. This guy is crazed with woman hatred. What am I going to do? I have to work with him, I can't blow this, I know that.
World
is the kind of place that hates trouble and gets rid of troublemakers, and if things go wrong with Sonders, I will automatically be considered the one at fault. He's famous, I'm not. Russ reveres him, I heard the tone of his voice when he told me of my great good fortune in working with him. But I can't stand this, I can't stand his insults….