TE20 Migrant Mosaics

A Girl’s Story

As I sit with this page before me, those years are not the past for me but, on some deep level, if not literally, my future.

It is a black-and-white photo with serrated edges, two inches square. From right to left, aligned against a partition wall with vertical slats, is a bed with metal bars, a small wooden table pushed against it (rectangular with a drawer), and a closed door with a high window, through which the room’s interior can be viewed from the hall. In the very center of the photo, above the table, a sleeveless summer dress hangs against the partition wall, its armholes looped over two white enamel balls used as clothes hooks. It is a dress with a busy, bright print, flowers or arabesques, and gathered at the waist with a multitude of small tucks, indicating a very full skirt. The light falls on the dress, whose hem brushes against the table, where two books—or notebooks—lie open next to sheets of loose-leaf paper and a pen case. The glaring light is bright enough to bleach the door a dazzling white, emphasizing the smudges of grime above the handle and a mark left by the removal of what appears to have been a lock. In shadow, at the head of the bed, only half of which appears in the frame, is a pale mound of tangled clothes, probably pajamas or a nightgown, and over the headboard, tacked or glued to the partition, is a little picture, out of focus but most certainly religious in nature. The empty dress stretched over the balls of the clothes hooks, which make one think of the white eyes of a blind person, but enlarged, is eerie-looking—a kind of headless creature dangling from a dubious backdrop. At the same time, there is something luxurious about thedress in its stark environment. (For amoment 139