What the Dead Want(21)

“What my mother did was fine art,” Gretchen said gently. “Not reporting. You really think the dead can be photographed?”

Esther laughed sharply. “I know the dead can be photographed. I’ve been photographing the dead my whole life! It’s not about the dead, sweets. It’s about the soul. The things we don’t know.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Gretchen asked, in spite of herself. She’d wanted to bring the conversation back down to the rational, not just for Esther, but for her own sake, but she was remembering her mother giving her that first camera so long ago, telling her about cultures in which it was forbidden to take a photograph. Telling her to be careful.

“Of course it’s dangerous,” Esther said.

Gretchen tried to focus on what Janine would do. “Aunt Esther,” she said. “It’s very late. I’m going to go to my room and make a few phone calls, then go to sleep. We can deal with all this in the morning.” She said it calmly but inside she was still stunned and frightened, her stomach growling from hunger.

This woman who she’d just met today was living with animals in her falling-down house, and had spent her life photographing some of the worst atrocities in human history, and was now telling her that she—Gretchen—had to stay there and finish her work. That her mother’s ghost was there, trapped with all the others. The photograph was some kind of shocking proof not even Gretchen felt able to deny at that moment. Mona’s face was so clear and beautiful and familiar, she struggled to keep the tears from her eyes. Esther was amazing and admirable, but she was also crazy and exhausting and was messing with Gretchen’s head by showing her pictures of her mother standing beside a long-dead little boy.

As much as Gretchen wanted to be brave and cool and document all of this, like Mona would have, she wanted—no, she needed—help. And she needed it now. She quickly pushed the door open and headed for the stairs, realizing that this was her second attempt at escape.

Aunt Esther leaped at her. “But you haven’t seen the darkroom!” she said, clutching Gretchen’s arm in a startlingly strong grip. “Come see the darkroom first and then you can run along to your room.”

Esther pulled her into the dark creaky hallway. The floor sloped downward and she could still hear the breeze blowing the weather vane on the roof. At the next corner, Gretchen nearly jumped out of her skin. Something with glowing eyes, much bigger than a squirrel, looked up at them from a crouched position, hunching just outside the darkroom door in the darkness. Gretchen gave a short startled scream, and it cowered, then cantered past quickly with little clicks that sounded more like hooves than paws on the floor. Gretchen could smell whatever it was, like dirt and metal and smoke. She shuddered. There’s no way that was real, she thought. It must be the hunger and the alcohol, and being up so late. Her aunt snapped on a wall light and shouted “Shoo!” but whatever it was had completely vanished.

“Don’t worry,” Esther said, looking straight into her eyes. “Our bit of time together will be over very soon.”



Dear James,

I don’t know how to thank you for your last letter! It was a tonic! No one has ever encouraged me so. People have only said I would be abandoning my family—or that I should be concerned with starting a family of my own. You letter made going to college seem like a simple thing, something anyone can do. It made it seem well within the realm of possibilities.

When I think about how we have lived, all the girls in town, expected to do nothing more than have babies and cook and care for men, how none of my friends finished school, how we are all expected to sit idle, not conversing in any way on anything meaningful, how we cannot earn a proper living or be given a proper job, how there is no matter in politics or even the running of domestic life on which we are allowed to comment . . . When I think about those things I am adrift in sorrow. And know I cannot live like that.

I have never ever met any man who understood this as clearly as you or was so compassionate toward those who have less freedom than you. I am amazed by how you confront the brutality you see in the world with your eloquent words and essays, and again I say, preach! Preach it to everyone.

In answer to your question. Yes! I am happy to help you in any way possible and honored to be a part of such a righteous and important mission. I’m not afraid to join you. The only thing I’m afraid of is living in a world where people are enslaved.

Your friend,

Fidelia





ELEVEN


GRETCHEN WAS SO FILLED WITH DREAD ENTERING THE darkroom she was shaking, but the real shock was how orderly and put together it was. The walls painted black, the long porcelain sink full of developing trays that had been drained and turned over to dry. A red bulb bathed the place in strange light. Photos were hanging on a line stretching from one end of the room to the other. The enlarger—state of the art—was not some relic from the sixties. And there was a small refrigerator full of film canisters. She was beginning to get used to these extremes and contradictions.

It was a fully functioning professional darkroom. And like the Nikon in her aunt’s studio, one of the best she’d ever seen. Despite her fear and anxiety, and her brush with whatever weird animal was in the hall, Gretchen put her new Nikon to her eye and took a photograph of her aunt standing in the room where she had so long worked. The sound the camera made was amazing, a fast powerful slide and click, as if it were snatching something from the world in front of her and pulling it into another. She could not believe this camera had shot the things it had and now it was in her hands.