by T. Greenwood
The first batch was primarily made up of duds, and I was grateful I hadn’t spent the money getting them developed. I quickly moved to the second contact sheet and peered through the magnifying glass.
It looked like these had been taken at some sort of rural county fair. We used to go to the Lancaster fair when I was a kid. I had a hazy memory of being on a Ferris wheel with my father, peering over the edge at my mother holding my baby brother in her arms, waving up at me. But the images in these photos were not of the Ferris wheels and 4-H animals, of cotton candy and rows of shiny candy apples. Instead, these were images of the grizzled-looking carnies and their beaten-up trailers. The freak show tents, and the people lined up to pay a dollar to see The Amazing Lobster Boy or The Headless Lady. Carnival barkers and teenage boys, maybe twelve years old, smoking cigarettes, posturing like men in front of the girlie show stages.
There were three whole rolls of film of the girlie shows.
I vaguely remembered someone telling me about this, about these carnival strippers. In the Depression era, they were traveling burlesque shows. Burlesque had made a comeback in the city in the last few years. Wes actually dated a girl who danced for a burlesque review on the Lower East Side. She’d trained as a dancer at Juilliard, but now she looked like a forties pinup girl, and, according to Wes, could twirl tassels on her boobs in opposite directions. Apparently, this was a highly coveted skill in the burlesque world.
But the images in the negatives were not old-timey burlesque with boas and garter belts. These were strippers. Seedy, raunchy strippers. And the photographer seemed obsessed with them. There were photos of the stages, the backs of the men’s heads as the men peered up at the torn fishnets, and the blank, glazed stares of the women. There were also photos taken from the stage; the photographer must have somehow gotten behind them, in order to peer out at the sea of hungry faces, at the leering, jeering men with their greasy, slicked-back hair and their rotten teeth.
The strippers smiled. Teased. Flirted. Behind them, hand-painted banners read: Exotics from World Famous Show Places, Oriental Dancing Girls, Girl World. And the most straightforward: Girls. Nude.
There were also photos of the tent behind the stage, the place where the men could line up and pay three dollars to see and do a whole hell of a lot more than they could on the midway. One entire strip of negatives was of this striped canvas tent, as if the photographer had circled around to the back. And finally, a hole, probably something cut out by one of those teenage boys to peep through.
In the first photo, the depth of field was shallow, focusing on the tent, the torn canvas; whatever was on the other side of that hole was a blur. But the photographer corrected the aperture in the next one, and so the tent, the foreground, blurred, and the image inside came into focus.
A completely nude woman squatted at the edge of a stage. A man wearing a baseball cap high on his head shoved his face in her crotch while the other men cheered him on. And the woman gazed intently, straight at the camera. Locking eyes with the photographer. And it was a look neither pleading nor accusatory, but rather one of defiance.
Go ahead, she seemed to say. Look at me and what I am allowing this man to do.
Inquiry
“When did you realize he intended to hurt you?”
At first I didn’t resist. Funny, how a woman’s inclination is always to placate rather than to fight. When his hands touched me, reached out and grabbed the back of my shirt, instead of pushing him away or kicking at him like a wild animal caught in a trap, instead I tried to talk to him. “I have to go home,” I said. “I have a lot of homework.”
I have no idea why I thought this logic would appeal to him. Robby Rousseau was notorious for not doing his homework. Every day, the teacher wrote his name on the board in the detention box when he failed to turn in his work. It was clearly not something that concerned him.
When he didn’t let go, but instead pulled harder, and my shirt started to pull off my shoulder, I kept trying. “My mom’s waiting for me. She’s going to wonder where I am.”
Again, nonsense to a boy whose own mother was a mystery, a gaping hole.
It wasn’t until he had not only my shirt but my body in his grip that I started to fight back. I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened had I not been trained my entire life to try to reason with people. If I hadn’t learned to appease rather than argue, to engage rather than enrage.
Even as he shoved me down onto the wet green leaves—God, the whole world smelled like rain—I tried to think of the words that would save me. The syllables, if strung together in the right order, that might sway him. The last time he’d pushed me, the teacher had found him. Had made him apologize. “Please,” I said.
“Miss Davies?”
Depression Glass
I pored over the contact sheets for hours. There was one sheet for each roll of film, and it took me forever to examine the tiny frames with my primitive magnifying glass. There were almost two thousand images. And while there were many rolls that held nothing but missed opportunities—shots taken the moment after something had happened, a missed glance, a turned head, the blur of something just out of the frame—there were other strips of images which were nearly perfect in their composition. I found myself at a loss as to how I would select which ones to print. It was exhausting, culling through these pictures, and as I discovered each incredible, ephemeral moment that had been captured inside these little shells, I felt a strange sense of responsibility. I had somehow become the unofficial curator of this photographer’s work. It was daunting.
By the time I looked up again, my neck was stiff from being hunched over and the sun was coming up. I stood up, stretched my back, listened to the rat-a-tat-tat of my bones cracking.
Normally, Avery would be getting up hungry and talkative, wanting to relay her incomprehensible dreams to me. She would climb up into the kitchen chair, babbling about waterfalls and slides and fairies and giant blocks of chocolate and cats that could talk and all the other fantasies of her four-year-old mind while I made pancakes or waffles or oatmeal. She liked her oatmeal with apples but no raisins, extra cinnamon. And when it was cooked, I used a spoon to make a little pool in the center where I’d pour the fake maple syrup I practically had to buy in bulk. I didn’t eat breakfast until later. And even then, it was never a sit-down affair: a slice of toast with honey, a hard-boiled egg peeled and popped into my mouth almost as an afterthought.
The world felt off-kilter without Avery here. And I still had two weeks to go.
I peered out the window down at the rocky shore below the house, at the sun rising over the watery horizon. And I thought of the person who took the photos. Had they lived here? What might have brought them here? Seamus seemed to know something about the photos. I wished I’d asked him more questions. Maybe even told him about the photos; I wasn’t sure why I’d lied. I guess I wasn’t ready to share them yet. Pilar’s response to the one photo she’d seen was enough to convince me I wasn’t crazy. These were amazing photographs. Moving. Raw. Visceral.
I set the contact sheets aside, feeling weak with hunger. Standing with the refrigerator door open, I stuffed a fistful of sandwich meat into my mouth, then decided to go on a walk.
I climbed down to the beach, my instinct (that habitual, maternal impulse to caution Avery to go slowly, to not get too close to the frigid water crashing against the sand) now connected to nothing. I walked the length of the beach looking for sea glass, but I didn’t find even a single piece. It was as if these little treasures weren’t here without Avery present. Illogical, I know, but the beach seemed more barren, less yielding than it had when she was here with me.
“Hello down there!”
I pressed my hand against my chest, startled. I peered up the cliffs ready to run, my legs poised to flee. But it was only Seamus Ferguson standing at the top of the rocky stairwell, waving.
I lifted my hand away from my chest and waved back.
“Mind if I join you?�
�� he hollered down.
I shook my head.
He climbed down the stairs toward the beach. He was wearing the same outdoor catalog getup he’d had on the other day, and now, with the wind in his hair, he looked every bit the part of the J. Crew “distinguished older guy.”
When he reached me, his face broke into a smile.
“Merry Christmas,” he said. “Did you have a nice holiday?”
I shrugged. “I suppose.”
“Where’s your little one?” he asked, peering down the beach as if I’d just let her wander off.
“With her father.”
“Oh,” he said. But he didn’t ask why he wasn’t here with me. It was amazing to me how everyone so quickly jumped to the conclusion we were simply divorced. As if there were anything simple about what was going on between Gus and me.
I suddenly thought about the swimming pool. The fact that Gus and I had been pressed up against the cold blue tiles of this guy’s pool. How far we might have gone if the baby monitor hadn’t gone off. I was grateful for the bracing wind, which would hopefully explain my bright red cheeks.
“How long are you staying?” I asked.
“I’m just here for the weekend, but we’ll be back for New Year’s Eve. We always have a party at the house,” he said. “We’ve got people flying in from all over the country.”
I knew there was a small private airport on the island. I’d both heard and seen some private jets, biplanes, and helicopters.
“Wow,” I said.
“Would you like to join us?” he asked. Then his face fell. It was barely perceptible, but I noticed. He was thinking about his wife. This was confirmed when he peered back up toward the house, which loomed in the distance like some grand sand castle at the edge of the sea.
“Oh, that’s okay. Pilar’s coming back that day too. We’ll probably just celebrate at home. Get some champagne, watch the ball drop online.”
Back in New York, before Avery was born, New Year’s Eve was one of my favorite holidays. Pilar, Gus, and I would get dressed to the nines, finding gowns at the thrift store around the corner, wearing impossible heels. We didn’t bother with Times Square. We didn’t have to, because somebody somewhere was always throwing a huge party. We’d drink ourselves silly and wait until the clock struck midnight. Then we’d hold onto each other, falling over, kissing. There was such promise in those moments. It’s hokey, but I always loved being at the edge of the New Year. The metaphorical implications of it. The freshness. Like being handed a blank canvas upon which to paint my life. I secretly wrote down my resolutions, curled them up into tiny scrolls, and popped them into the empty champagne bottle. All year long, they’d live there. Most of them, of course, were abandoned. But many were kept. Little promises to myself.
“Pilar is your friend, the one with the pie?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, of course you’re both invited,” he said. “And we won’t take no for an answer.”
I was pretty sure his wife would, indeed, happily take no for an answer, but the truth was, I was curious about what was inside that massive house. How does one even furnish such a place? When Gus and I moved from our studio apartment into the duplex, there were huge empty spaces, like missing teeth in a child’s mouth.
“If she’s not too tired when she gets in, maybe we’ll come by,” I said.
“That would be great! It’s always quite an affair,” he said, and started back across the beach. “Well, look at this!” he said suddenly, bending over to pick something up from the beach.
“What is it?” I hollered after him as a cold gust of wind blew across the beach.
He came over to me and handed me the bright red stone.
“Wow, I’ve never seen a piece this color before,” I said.
It was sea glass, scarlet red, blood red.
“I read somewhere they had to use real gold to make red glass. It was so expensive, it was never mass-produced,” he said.
Mass-produced. I thought about Ikea. About the birches. Bjorkar, the tag might say. Forty-nine dollars.
“Wow.” I studied the perfectly tumbled glass in my palm. “What was the red glass used for?” Certainly not beer and soda bottles.
“Oh, lots of different things: car brake lights, Depression glass. Around here though, it’s most likely from a warning lantern on a boat.”
“Cool,” I said. I started to hand it back to him, but he shook his head.
“Give it to your daughter. She collects them, no?”
How did he know that? Had he watched us on the beach?
“Thanks,” I said. “I will. Most of the pieces she has are blue and green.”
He nodded awkwardly.
“See you on New Year’s Eve then,” he said, and headed back up the stairs.
Inside I put the piece of glass on the shelf by the kitchen sink. And I wondered whose boat had to wreck in order for it to survive. If a mermaid’s tears could be made of blood.
Self-Portrait
Back inside, I returned to the contact sheets. Curious. Looking for clues, though I had no idea what mystery I was trying to solve. The first canister had been dated July 1976, and there were approximately twelve contact sheets for each year, twelve rolls of film, one for each month. But then there was a big gap: 1976, then 1978. Not a single roll from 1977. That was strange. I wondered if it was possible Wes had lost a year. But then I counted the sheets again, and they coincided exactly with the number of rolls I had counted before I sent them off with Gus.
I shuffled to the next contact sheet in the pile. The date marked in grease pencil at the top said 5/1/78. I grabbed the magnifying glass and peered at the first strip of images. It was a house. This house. Taken from a distance, and possibly through the windshield of a car, but it was definitely this house. I could tell from the peak of the roof, from the gray clapboards and paned windows. The next photo was similar, only closer up, and this time I could clearly see the dash of a car in the foreground. Whoever took the picture must have been driving toward the house. At first it was unclear what the next photo was of, the frame filled with what could be a series of brushstrokes. I realized it must be the trees that lined the road on both sides.
And then there was the house again. It reminded me of the photos I had seen of my mother when she was in her twenties, the images both her and not her. The architecture of her face the same, the slant of her grin, the expression of mild amusement in her eyes identical to the same woman who was now approaching seventy. But at the same time, so young. It was impossible to identify what was different except for the vague certainty of youth. A tightness, a tautness, an enthusiasm and curiosity and hopefulness. So too was it with the house in the photo. While it bore a striking resemblance to this house, it also possessed a freshness, an optimism it no longer did. It looked hopeful, this black and white imposter. It was obviously shot before the house began its slow and inevitable decline.
The next sheet was dated 5/14/78. The images in the top strip were completely out of focus, but the shape of a woman standing in a mirror was clear. I peered through the magnifying glass, moving from one frame to the next, finally settling on one image. Also a bit out of focus, it was still this woman, a towel wrapped around her body, leaning forward toward what I assumed was the camera on the counter before her. I felt my throat thicken.
This was her. The photographer. That was her camera.
The next image was the same woman, but this time, the photo was sharp and clear. Now naked from the waist up, she was holding an infant, also naked, in the crook of her left arm. The woman’s nipples were like dark, flat saucers, her breasts swollen and beaded with breast milk. The baby couldn’t be more than a couple weeks old. It still had the black nub of its umbilicus, peeling skin on its feet, and fine, downy hair covering its body. I looked at the woman’s face, which was half in shadows, her long, dark hair like a curtain. The ends of it reaching her waist, which was soft and swollen. The camera was sitting on the count
er, obscuring her pubic area.
I strained my eyes; even with the magnifying glass it was hard to see the details, but it seemed this was the upstairs bathroom, the one off the bedroom where I’d been sleeping. The door was open behind her, and while the background of the photo was out of focus, I could see the soft blur of a bed, rumpled sheets.
The next strip was of the same woman, the same bathroom, perhaps only seconds later. In the first image, the baby had woken, and its eyes were struggling to focus. Its mouth was open and its small chest was constricted and shoulders hunched. I could almost hear the beginnings of a familiar wail, the small sorrows of a newborn. In this photo, the woman was staring at her own reflection. She had captured the exact moment before she was needed, that split second before she was called away, pulled out of herself, removed from this moment of peace. And indeed, in the next picture in the stack she was now attending to the infant, awkwardly cupping her breast into the child’s mouth, her nipple raw and bruised. She was wincing. In this photo, her hair now completely concealed whatever was happening in her eyes.
There were several rows of overexposed photos on the sheet below this. A few shots of the doorway, of the empty bed. Ten photos of the crumpled sheets, of sheer curtains blowing through the open window, my window, which looked out at the turbulent sea.
I went to the scanner and scanned the contact sheet, using Photoshop to zoom in on that one photo. On the infant. I studied the way the light caught each individual rib as her chest contracted prior to the scream. The baby was a girl, the swollen genitals further indication she was very, very newly born. I scrolled up to the woman’s face, the only element of the photo that lacked perfect clarity. Though her hair obscured part of her face, the one eye that was exposed stared back at me, almost as if imploring. Challenging. Like the other women she’d photographed: accusing.
This is my story, she seemed to say. Here is my truth.
