Learning to See

by Elise Hooper

  I glanced back toward the “Harvest Gypsies.” My walls displayed the faces of strangers, but I had to dig through my files to find pictures of my own children? I stared at Dan’s image. Who was this child? Who were his friends? What did he like to do? A dizzying sense of uncertainty came over me. Did I even know my children anymore? When was the last time I’d asked the boys a question about who they had sat with at lunch or what they liked about baseball practice and listened to their answers? With a shaky hand, I propped up a few photos of Dan and John playing in the garden with Ross and Margot. I stared at the faces so intensely the images blurred and were no longer children, but shapes and varying shades of black and white.

  DAN DID NOT arrive home when Kathy and Ross returned from the junior high school. There was still no sign of him an hour later when Margot and John returned from elementary school. When Paul returned from his office on campus, I told him the news.

  He shook his head. “If he’s not home in an hour, I’m going to look for him.”

  I nodded and continued to make dinner while helping Kathy with her geometry homework. Just as Margot started setting the table for dinner, Dan sauntered in. At the sight of him, the other children, sensing trouble, scattered.

  “Where have you been?” I demanded.

  He shrugged, a defiant set to his jaw.

  “Your school called hours ago to say that you never arrived.”

  “So?”

  “So?” I repeated, incredulous. “So? I’ve been worried about you all day.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “That’s a first.”

  “What do you mean?” I glanced through the doorway of the living room toward Paul. He sat on his favorite brown leather chair, his head bent over a thick black binder of documents.

  Again, Dan shrugged with practiced teenage nonchalance. “What’s for dinner?”

  “There will be no dinner for you,” I snapped. “You’re grounded for two weeks. Come home right after school. You’re not to go anywhere on weekends.”

  With a bored expression, he opened a cupboard in search of food.

  “Did you hear me? No dinner! Now go to your room.” Ignoring me, he stretched his arms toward the ceiling as if rising from a long night’s sleep. My hands tightened on the counter in front of me, my face growing hotter and hotter. “If you keep this routine up,” I hissed, “I’ll ground you for even longer.”

  “Go ahead,” he said, his expression curling into an ugly contortion. “You’re so busy, you’ll never even notice or even remember since you’ve got so many other important things happening in your life.” He brushed by me. “Stupid cow,” he muttered. When he pulled away, we stared at each other for a moment, both stunned at the venom in his voice.

  And then Paul was between us, clutching Dan’s shirt in both hands, pushing him toward the doorway where there was a step down to my studio. He pushed Dan off the edge and sent him sprawling onto his back. Dan’s glasses flew off and bounced along the floor of the studio before coming to a halt, one lens cracked. Framed in the doorway, looming over Dan, Paul clenched and unclenched his fists, his shoulders heaving in anger. “You will never, never speak like that to your mother again. Do you understand?”

  In the silence that followed, Dan, white-faced, looked up and nodded, his bottom lip trembling. I hurried past Paul to retrieve Dan’s glasses. Astonished, I paused between my husband and son. Never before had I seen such force, such anger from Paul. He stepped back and walked away. I crouched next to Dan to hand him his glasses. “I’ll take you to get these fixed tomorrow after school,” I said, running a hand along the side of his head, smoothing down his hair.

  He flinched under my touch and snatched the glasses from me while scrambling to his feet. His gaze spun around the room wildly and landed on one of the photos I’d placed on my desktop earlier in the day, a photo I’d taken on Mother’s Day, years earlier. In the picture, Dan’s small chubby fingers held a bouquet of lily of the valley he’d given to me. Pointing at it, he spat, “That photo is a lie.”

  I looked at the image, speechless with confusion.

  “I brought you those flowers as a gift and you wouldn’t take them. You made me hold them while you ran off to get your camera. And when you were done photographing them, you just tossed them onto the table. I never saw those flowers again, except in this picture.”

  “But I took the photo to remember the moment.”

  His eyes burned with resentment. “That’s just a dumb photo of my hand, not me. We never had a moment.” And with that, he fled the room. Seconds later, his feet pounded up the stairs to his bedroom.

  I lifted the photo of the bouquet before dropping it to my desk. How could we both interpret the same moment so differently? I wandered out of my studio limp with exhaustion. Everything had gone wrong. I’d wanted so badly to make amends with Dan, yet instead, my temper made the situation even worse. Paul had returned to his chair in the living room to resume his reading. Leaning against the doorway, I watched him for a moment, still stunned by his defense of me.

  “What happened in there?”

  He lifted his head and looked at me. “He had no right to speak so rudely to you.”

  “He certainly did not, but still, he’s a child.”

  “Dorothea, I will never stand for anyone to threaten you. I don’t care who it is.”

  “Well, he’s my son and he’s dreadfully angry because of all the times I’ve left him behind to work. I need to make peace with him, not upset him even more.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt or upset the boy. I’ll do whatever I can to help you mend your relationship with him.” He stood and opened his arms toward me.

  I shivered, pulling my sweater close as I shuffled toward him and then buried my face into his neck, taking a deep inhalation of the lemony smell of starch from his shirt collar. Dan was fine. Paul had just been making a point. The quivering in my hands stilled. For so long, I’d been my own champion. I’d never felt the security of someone who would stand by me, no matter what. My father had left me. Maynard had failed me. But now I had Paul. He wrapped his arms around me, crushing me a little in the tightness of his grasp so I almost couldn’t breathe. Almost. It felt good. I wanted to be crushed a little.

  From my back pocket, a rustling of paper caught my attention. I reached around and pulled out an envelope. Dazed, I stared at it.

  “What’s that?” Paul asked.

  “My job.” I tossed Stryker’s letter onto the floor with a sigh. “I was fired.”

  Chapter 32

  Months passed. I hoped for a call or letter from Stryker but no word came. Meanwhile, Mr. Steinbeck’s articles, along with my photos, were turned into a book, Their Blood Is Strong. It sold well. One of my images featured in the Steinbeck articles, a photo of a mother and her three children, continued to be requested for reproduction from news organizations. That particular photo, it was a funny thing—I hadn’t planned the shot, yet it was the one everyone wanted.

  I’d taken it a couple of years earlier, in the winter of 1936, at the end of a long assignment in Southern California. Rain had been falling steadily. With my foot anchoring the gas pedal to the floor of my station wagon, I sped along Highway 101 figuring I could be back in Berkeley by afternoon if I kept the speedometer at fifty. The roads were slick, the sky leaden, everything felt soggy and cold. I just wanted to be home. Around Nipomo, I passed a handwritten sign indicating a pea-picking camp. At first, I thought nothing of it. Similar signs dotted roadsides all over the state. But after a few miles, the sign started nagging at me. The rain was falling with such ferocity that I feared for anyone stuck outside. Whatever camp was back there couldn’t have been in very good shape. Biting my lip, I drove a few miles more before finding a decent turnaround.

  I backtracked, found the sign again, and veered off the highway onto a potholed muddy trail, my car bucking and spluttering in protest. When I pulled into a clearing, sagging tents and puddles the size of ponds greeted me. To the right of
my car, a woman huddled under a drooping tarp with a mess of children. I pulled my black rain slicker from the passenger seat, and tugging the hood over my head, circled a large puddle to reach her. I introduced myself, but she just stared at me, unmoved. An infant lay in her arms, lethargic at her breast. Nuzzled next to her sat two shivering young children, a girl and boy, both purple-lipped and listless. Neither could have been more than eight years old. “May I take a few photos of you?” I asked. “It might lead to some help for you folks.”

  She gave a resigned heave of her shoulders in response.

  The stormy sky made it a challenge to gauge if there was any direction to the light. Rainy day photography was not my forte. “Mind shifting a little that way?” I asked, trying to arrange the kids so they didn’t block each other. The woman’s exhausted, pensive expression was striking enough; the mournful-looking children added almost too much to the sense of desperation. “How about if you two look away from the camera?” They studied me balefully before burying their faces in the woman’s neck.

  I took several photos. Seven, to be precise.

  Rattled by the hopelessness expressed by the woman and her children, I left as quickly as I came and sped home with a newfound urgency, eager to develop the images. Those people in that Nipomo camp, trapped in the rising waters and without food, were in danger. Once back in Berkeley, I left the car packed, ran to my basement, developed the images, and with the photography paper still damp, I took the ferry across the Bay and drove the photos to George West at the San Francisco News office. Without skipping a beat, he picked up his telephone and called the folks at the United Press. The story got onto the wires and prompted aid workers to descend upon Nipomo to help with food and shelter.

  Each time that photo was reproduced in the weeks, months, and even years that followed, my name rarely appeared as a byline, but I cared little about getting credit for it. The fact that my photo had spurred action was enough. But at the same time, it was frustrating that while my work reached more and more people and fulfilled its purpose, I remained shut out of the RA.

  Stryker’s betrayal stung. Every time I saw that photo, the sting sharpened.

  “WHAT IF WE create a book together?” I proposed to Paul one afternoon that spring. “We could tell the story of the new pioneer. These people no longer travel by covered wagon, but by station wagon and their old, dinged-up trucks.”

  Paul leaned back in his favorite chair in the living room to flip through the photographs I handed him. “These are good. This is a swell idea.”

  “There’s a market for it. Look how well Their Blood Is Strong has done.”

  “I agree. If you come with me this summer to Nebraska, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, you can take photos while I work. You know, I need to go to Washington for the Social Security Board. You could always go visit Stryker at the RA.”

  I didn’t want to think about Stryker, but agreed so we could keep planning our book. Paul and I had been traveling together for the last several years while we each worked on our individual assignments, but we hadn’t collaborated on something since our early reports for SERA. Excitement bubbled within me at the prospect of our new plan.

  As summer neared, Dan continued to skip more and more classes. It wasn’t lost on me that I’d also been a truant during my high school years. I’d been bored by the classroom and curious about the world beyond Wadleigh High School for Girls. But Dan’s defiance felt different. He skipped school to anger us and get attention. Maynard was no help and dodged any serious discussion about the boys. As soon as school let out, Paul and I sent Dan off to work and board on a sheep ranch in Nevada, hoping physical labor could solve his restless spirit. Ross, Paul’s middle child, moved to New York to live with his mother for a spell. Paul’s sister agreed to let Katherine, John, and Margot live with her for the summer. A tentative peace prevailed. Paul and I left to travel around the middle of the country, but before our departure, he insisted I write a letter to Stryker to arrange a meeting for when we were in Washington. We needed my salary from the RA. With a nervous feeling in my stomach, I wrote it. I wanted my job back but feared rejection.

  I ARRIVED AT the Resettlement Administration’s cramped Washington, D.C., offices and wistfully took in the frenetic scene. Stryker, his white hair sticking out in all directions, greeted me stonily from his desk. Three phones sat near his elbow. As one started to ring, followed by a second, he grunted, shook his head, and stood to greet me. We walked around the workroom, observing the photographs resting on light boxes. Gone was the elegant Walker Evans, fired a few months earlier for disappearing for long stretches of time unaccountably and often clashing with Stryker. Unfamiliar men scurried between the warren of desks.

  “Where’s Ben Shahn? Is he off on an assignment?” I asked. Paul had heard a rumor that Ben, one of the staff photographers, planned to quit to pursue his painting. If he and Evans were both gone, I figured my chances for getting hired again improved considerably. Surely, Stryker wanted one of his experienced photographers back.

  Rather than answer, Stryker asked, “How was your trip?”

  “You wouldn’t believe conditions in the center of the country. Barren fields as far as the eye can see. Foreclosures everywhere. And now the corporations have moved in and it’s just tractors that roam through the abandoned farms. The individual farmer is at the mercy of big business. They can’t even vote since poll taxes are too high. It’s like the small guy isn’t even an American anymore.”

  Stryker shook his head and held up a strip of negatives and stared at them. After making a frustrated sound, he pulled a hole punch out of his pocket and clipped through each of the negatives. I grimaced at the thought of the ruined work. He saw my pained expression.

  “Don’t give me that look,” he snapped. “If you had to deal with the flood of negatives and photographs that I’m drowning in, you’d want a quick system for identifying which ones were failures too.”

  “But now it’s unusable,” I protested.

  “That’s the point.”

  We were glaring at each other when a woman’s voice floated through the office. I startled and turned. An attractive brunette headed toward us.

  “Mr. Stryker? There you are. My goodness, you wouldn’t believe those fellas back at the garage. I thought they were gonna keep me there all day while they gave me a detailed accounting of every single thing wrong with my car. As if I care about spark plugs! All I want is for it to be fixed.”

  “They probably just wanted to spend more time with a pretty gal,” said a man reviewing a stack of photographs at a nearby desk.

  “Well then, at least offer me a drink or something,” she said with a wink and a smile. The man reddened and his head sank back down to his work, a goofy grin spreading across his face.

  “Is the car fixed?” Stryker asked, avoiding my gaze.

  “Yes, finally.” By this point, she was standing right in front of us and looking at me curiously.

  “Lange,” I said, pushing my hand out toward her.

  “Ah, yes, Dorothea! I’m Marion Post. I’m new here but I’ve heard all about your work. Why, everyone’s always talking about you.” She put her hand in mine. Up close, I guessed her to be about ten years younger than me. “What brings you all the way out here? You live in California, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” I said, unnerved. What exactly was everyone saying? I pushed the thought from my mind and said, “My husband had some business to attend to here in the capital so I thought I’d stop in to see the latest.”

  We smiled at each other. A string of pearls glistened around her neck and cherry-red lipstick made her look like a film star. How did she look so crisp and peppy in the summer humidity? My sweaty light gray linen trousers stuck to me in awkward places while her fashionable navy-blue poplin dress accented the gentle curves of her slim figure.

  “We were just on our way out,” Stryker said to Marion. “I’ll be back in a few minutes to go over the shot list I’ve prepared for you.”r />
  Marion nodded and wished me well, but I couldn’t hear anything over the rush of blood pounding in my ears. He grasped my elbow to steer me toward the office door. Out in the hallway, I spun toward him. “I thought you were hiring me.”

  Stryker pressed his lips together and gestured toward the opening elevator door. We stepped into the elevator’s stuffy interior without looking at each other. As the lift dropped, I tried to breathe through the fury building inside me. Once the door opened, we spilled out, a packed crowd swarming around us, pushing us through the lobby and outside onto the sidewalk, where the heat felt even more oppressive. Stryker pulled me over to the curb, out of the flow of pedestrians.

  “So, what about my job?” I demanded, wiping a trickle of sweat from my temple.

  “Listen, it’s easier to have another staff photographer who’s local. And now you’re busy with your book,” he said, lighting a cigarette and exhaling while watching me out of the corner of his eye.

  “You heard your new girl: everyone’s talking about my photographs.” I raised my index finger at him. “I’ve been doing this type of work before your group even started; it’s what I do. I’ve given everything I’ve got for this job. You need me back.”

  “The distance makes it impossible.”

  “The distance? How? I’m always responsive to your requests. I never complain when you change my trips. One week I’m preparing to go to the Pacific Northwest and then the day before I’m supposed to leave, you cancel it and tell me to sit tight. Do I ever complain? No. I always go wherever you ask.”