I love to look at pictures.

My grandmother and her family lived in a flat on Fillmore Street during the Great Depression. When I first saw this photograph, I was surprised to see them all smiling because I had heard so many stories of hardship and worry. But on that day, at that moment, they were happy.

My grandmother says that her mother used to get angry at the children--there were eight in all--and lock them out of the house so she could have some peace and quiet. My great-grandmother was very stern and remote. She had come all the way from a small village in the south of France when she was eighteen, all by herself. My grandmother was shy. She has always been a strong woman, but at the same time she has spent much of her life afraid.

Looking at this picture reminds me of how much I don't know. Who was on the other side of the camera, beckoning them to smile? Where was my great-grandfather? Was he working in his flower shop, or had he disappeared on another drunk? What about my grandmother's sisters? Who was jealous of whom? Who had the newest dress, and who else was waiting to get it when her older sister outgrew it?

All of the sisters are old now. Each will have her own story, different from what the others remember. I look at this picture, and I make up stories of my own.

My mother and her sister were born just moments apart at the very end of winter in 1944. On the outside they look alike. On the inside, they couldn't be more different. When I look at pictures of them, I realize that the way someone appears says nothing about who they are inside. My mother tells a story about my Aunt Gail: when they were little, Gail got angry at a neighbor boy named Nano and threw a rock at him. The rock hit Nano's sister Mary by mistake, and Mary had to have stitches.

Gail was the wild one, but sometimes my mom got into trouble too. Danny Silva lived just a few doors away on Arlington Street. He was a bully. One time, he threw a roller skate at my mother, and it hit her right between the eyes. She still has a little scar there. My mom and my aunt plotted their revenge.

One afternoon they tied up Danny Silva with ropes and nailed him to a telephone pole. Then they threw water balloons at him until Danny's father heard the screaming and came outside. He threw spaghetti at the twins as they ran away giggling. Who knows what he was thinking when he did that.

When you look at this image of my sister and me, what sort of story comes to mind? I will tell you what I remember. Just before this was taken, our parents were fighting terribly. I did not like their fighting, their yelling and screaming. It made me feel afraid. So I said to my sister, "let's paint ourselves."

My sister thought that sounded like fun, so we pulled out a pan of watercolors, and painted ourselves. I thought that by doing something outrageous and unexpected, we could distract our parents from fighting. I suppose it worked, because they did stop fighting, and my father took this picture. This photograph reminds me of many other memories as well. But my sister remembers hardly anything at all from this time.

Perhaps one day we will have children, and they will look at this image and make up stories of their own.