The night of the opening, Diya wore the same dress she’d worn that night in the photojournalist’s room. He’d left the city— drawn off on an extended assignment in another state, which he’d relayed to her in a curt text. Part of her wished he’d been able to come, wanted him to see this exact part of her, wanted to talk shop with him about what she’d created. Part of her was grateful he hadn’t, that she could leave him on her life’s periphery. Just a memory to surface unexpectedly: when she saw his name, saw his dimples on another face, ate sad food off a paper plate in a hotel room.
Midway through the night a woman walked into the gallery alone. She was perhaps a generation older than Diya, smartly dressed, her demeanor self-assured. Her face looked strikingly similar to Diya’s own, like someone who could play Diya’s mother in a movie. The woman made a loop around the gallery, pausing at each photograph to look carefully at what was depicted, a twinkle of recognition in her eyes. When the woman reached The Helping Hand, 2022, gelatin silver print on paper, Diya joined her.
Your mother, right? She really saved me that day.
Yeah, the woman said, she told me about it after. I couldn’t believe she opened the door. Really, that any of them agreed to do this.
It took time, Diya said. But of course you’d know that.
The woman gestured at the gallery, eyes wide. Anyway, look at all this. Your own mother must be so proud of you.
Well— Diya said. Yes.
The woman nodded, smiled.
Actually, Diya said, no. Or really, I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen her in decades. But what I really want to ask is, what was it like for you there?
Oh, the woman said. Her face had dropped at Diya’s revelation, but she allowed the conversation to shift. Let me tell you.
Amrita’s daughter spoke transparently of her yearning, above all else, to leave that place, how it had felt calcified in fear and shame, that she worried for her mother but didn’t visit enough, had trouble bringing herself to go back. She’d been in the city since her college years, studying to become an actuary and now spending her days immersed in statistics about death, quantifying risk and harm in actual, tangible ways. She had her own family here, daughters, a partner, an apartment with nosy neighbors who took every opportunity to drop by unannounced.
Diya sensed Amrita’s daughter had at last found the right listener, someone with a degree of context. She let the unbroken stream continue uninterrupted, ignoring the other attendees who tried to pull her attention away. When Amrita’s daughter finished, she told Diya she had to run, but hoped to see her again. Diya watched her leave, returned the genuine smile and wave she received as Amrita’s daughter turned back at the door. As if it really were that simple: to fill silence with a stranger, to finally say all the unsaid things out loud.