The Sisters by Nancy Jensen

ever run from me like that again!” Mother’s hand came down hard across Alma’s cheek and she grabbed Alma roughly by the arm. “You want us to miss that truck?”
    Alma’s face stung and she could feel it growing red and hot and wet with tears she couldn’t stop. She looked at Daddy. He looked upset with her too. “Go on, now,” he said, swatting her bottom. “Go on.”
    A big man picked her up and carried her off toward the rumbling truck. She twisted in the man’s arms, first trying to get away and then struggling to look over his shoulder so she could at least wave good-bye to Daddy, but he was lost again in the crowd of dark-coated men. Other arms grabbed her as she was lifted onto the truck, and soon she couldn’t see anything except the bodies pressed against her. On the street, someone was shouting for them to push in tighter, make more room. There were so many people that no one could fall, even when the truck jostled away. Around her, everybody chattered, everyone except Mother, who stared up at the gray sky, but no one seemed to know where they were headed.

F IVE
    The Pose
     
    April 1943
    Chicago, Illinois
     
    MABEL
     
    I T WAS OBVIOUS TO MABEL that the girl wanted to keep her coppery hair pinned up in a twist—that she probably really wanted to cut it short like all the other girls—but her father insisted that she let it fall around her shoulders. “Hair is a woman’s glory, Daisy,” he said. “Yours especially.” Lock after lock, he lifted her glory at the ends, as if picking up water, each fine strand draining from his fingers to settle like a gleaming waterfall, from which she, the river’s nymph, peered out.
    If you could discount the girl’s expression, she was as lovely and untroubled as a Renoir child, but Mabel could not discount it. She knew what it meant—the mouth and cheeks soft in calculated placidity, eyes outwardly shimmering with naïveté but focused on something deep inside—something knowing, solid, and true. Mabel had worn it herself. The girl, Daisy, was perhaps twelve, a little younger than Mabel was when she had mastered the pose.
    “See there,” said Daisy’s father, Emerson Harker, who stepped back to admire his work. “Ask Miss Fischer if you don’t believe me. This makes a better picture. Miss Fischer?”
    Mabel started at his question and looked away from Daisy toward him. “There’s no formula for a good photograph, Mr. Harker.” The smooth dark gloss of Daisy’s hair against the nubbly white lace bodice, the contrasts heightened in developing, would certainly enrich the portrait, but she wasn’t going to tell Harker that.
    Mabel stepped behind the camera, looking up occasionally to ask Daisy to tilt her head or resettle her hand. For each change, the girl had to be asked only once, for she struck every new position exactly right the first time.
    When she was finished, Mabel said, “I’d like to get some unposed shots of Daisy, too. Maybe at home?” Harker stared hard at her. Trying to read her, Mabel thought, size her up. “At your convenience, of course,” she said, offering her best professional smile. “It’s a specialty of mine.” She swept her hand around to direct his attention to the photographs on the studio walls, subject groupings, mostly of soldiers and their families, mixing formal portraits with more natural moments. “No extra charge,” Mabel said. “The session fee covers an hour or two in a more informal setting.” That was a lie. “Anywhere you feel most yourself—your house, the park, a church—” Mabel pretended not to notice the sharpness in Harker’s eyes. “Your choice.”
    When Harker turned his look to Daisy, Mabel watched her too, but she was a careful girl, so cooperative, her expression as serene as before.
    Arms crossed, Harker took floor-pounding steps from one group of photos to the next, staring at them as though they had given offense. “You’re not going to hang her on your walls,” he said.