Two Pictures of Ellen

In the first picture Ellen’s self-sufficient, alone – one of only two new members, she’s younger than the rest and where they’re close, shoulders touching, she’s sitting apart, legs crossed, hands intertwined over one knee. The girl behind her, the Leader, is sitting on the old chair that’s always on the porch of the Craft Center, her leg sticking out so that there’s literally a foot between Ellen and the person next to her. Even though she’s at the far end of the bottom row, she steals the scene like she always does, and even with Annie Cutter leaning toward the camera, smiling with real Annie Cutter joy, your eye goes straight to Ellen with her sly grin, bare shoulders above a yellow sun dress, and brown feet in wooden Dr. Scholl’s sandals.

When the picture was taken, she must have already known she’d be the new Leader, but you can also see her sadness, lightly masked, to be so soon losing so many of the friends around her to graduation.

In the second picture what she’d imagined has become concrete – she’s physically and metaphysically at the center. Even though she’s the shortest, she dominates the photo, again in a sun dress and Dr. Scholl’s, her violet faced watch calling attention to the flawless skin of her arm and from there to the flawless skin all over her, the great gift of her smile at once warm and the most deadly deadpan, her short, fine black hair parted precisely in the middle of her forehead, shadowing her high, round cheekbones and those (half) Japanese eyes, her face almost that of a conventional American brunette beauty, but edged with the delicacy and exotic scale of the Japanese. Everyone around her looks so comfortable – there’s something about Ellen that makes the people she’s with feel like they’re part of a group, and not just any group but the right group – maybe that’s why she’s always surrounded by so many friends.