You placed your hand on the pawn shop’s window and leaned closer, as if the camera had released a signal. It was nestled in what looked like a blanket. Above it hung a poster. “$145! PRACTICALLY NEW!”

You’d been there before to sell a gold bracelet your mom had given you. The money had gone to a Foo Fighters concert. Thoughts of your mother’s arthritic hands squeezing a dirty mop had interrupted the melody of every song, and you could have almost heard — over the strumming guitars — water dripping into a bucket.

With your knuckles barely tapping the glass door, you knocked. But the shop was closed for the day. You had begged your mother for a camera. You wanted to submit your work to contests, shoot and curate a portfolio, apply to art school. You had an eye for story; Mr. Tehran had said so. Black-and-white prints of your work were displayed throughout the school: Classmates huddled shoulder to shoulder with their heads bowed in prayer and teachers mid-walk, balancing cups of coffee and stacks of papers. People didn’t have to pose for you to capture them at their best.

But your mother, a Dominican immigrant who’d grown up on a sugar cane plantation, who treated Bounty paper towels like coveted possessions, had made it clear that photography was not a real career. She had come to the United States by boat, trekking from one Caribbean island to the next. This meant you owed her excellence. At the very least, a career in medicine or a law degree. Girls like you were not supposed to take to the arts.

But you couldn’t imagine anything else. In photography class, you had learned to control your breathing, to narrow your focus and attention and direct it at one external object outside of you. To take pictures was to bear witness, to preserve something special, like an ant trapped in the dripping resin of a tree, crystallized in amber. Behind the lens, you were at your most centered. You didn’t have to think about your mother and how much you argued over your Americanness and your lack of God. When you held the lens, you were enough, and what you found attractive or intriguing needn’t be explained.

You turned the corner and passed the neighborhood’s cluster of old Portuguese men who’d spilled onto the sidewalk to chew on their toothpicks and smoke their cigarettes. You wedged between their booming conversations and lingering eyes. What a neat postcard they would make. At the light, breathing into your cold hands and wiggling your toes inside of ripped-up Chuck Taylors, you mulled over the camera. Truth was you couldn’t afford it. You hadn’t sold a single mix CD in months, and it had yet to snow, which meant you hadn’t shoveled, scraped, or salted any driveways for the octogenarians down the street. With Myspace and Facebook growing in popularity, the camera wouldn’t stay in that window long, which meant you’d have to ask your mother for money.

The way to your mother’s heart was a home-cooked dinner, so you placed two chicken breasts, still wrapped in plastic, under the warm stream of the faucet. You’d wanted to stop eating meat, but that, too, had become a point of contention between you and your mother.

Last year, on a trip to the Dominican Republic to visit your grandmother, your mother had dragged a goat through the family’s shotgun house. Waiting in the yard, your grandmother had stood, legs spread, as if ready to mount the animal. She’d held it by its horns, closed her legs, bent her knees, and clamped her hands around the goat’s mouth. She’d yanked its head back until the animal had found it impossible to wrangle its way out of her grip. Then your mother had taken over. In awe, you’d watched as she’d kneeled and traced her hand below the goat’s neck, feeling for the soft spot right above its sternum. She’d stabbed the goat, then dropped the knife and held a bowl under the wound, collecting the goat’s blood before turning it onto its side. You couldn’t forget the muffled cry, the bleat, the grunt, the howl through gritted teeth, the resting animal, its blood pooling on a bed of banana leaves before getting butchered and stewed. Tender chunks that had been seared before simmering all day. Tender chunks that you’d had to eat, though they’d sat heavy in your mouth.

Yet, in that small kitchen of your mother’s apartment, you pounded the chicken breasts. With every hit, the loose countertop inched closer to you. The rhythmic pounding of the mallet drove you into a trance, and you managed to forget that the chicken had once been alive. You seasoned the meat with a blend of minced garlic, onion, and Dominican oregano, because if you used any other kind, your mom would be able to tell. You sautéed the breasts, then grabbed a plantain and felt along the edge of its skin where you poked it with a knife, drawing the blade along the spine and peeling it the way you had been taught. You sliced the plantain, threw it in a pot of bubbling oil, pulled it out, smashed it with the bottom of a cup, and threw it back in, frying it a second time. Sometimes life with your mother felt like a rote homework assignment. If you followed the instructions, you got a passing grade.

As you set the table, you heard your mother twist and turn the key in the front door. It always jammed. You imagined her leaning her shoulder into the door, forcing it open, feeling the after-work frustration of another-thing-that-needs-fixing. You sat there, nervous and insecure about her impending disapproval of the meal.

When she walked into the kitchen, the scent of Pine-Sol trailed behind her. The first words out of her mouth were complaints. It was too hot. You should’ve turned the thermostat down. You should have cracked open the window above the sink. She walked to the table, kissed you on the cheek, and paused as if waiting for something. You had forgotten to greet her with the reverence Dominican children are taught to greet their parents with, an exchange that includes a kiss on the cheek and a request for a blessing; or the proverbial “bendición,” in Spanish.

You gave in to please her but couldn’t help but wonder if all those blessings were just lost in the ether. Would there ever be a time when she would embrace you as you were — a little different, a little American?

Across from you, your mother sliced through the chicken breast, scooping up the sauce with the tostones. “So good, Nina.” She winked at you and gave you a chef’s kiss. An approving gesture that felt foreign. She walked to the stove, lifted the pot’s lid where the leftover sautéed chicken simmered, and took the remaining chicken breast. She smiled a tired smile. Eyes half-mast and an expression that seemed pained with effort. The face of someone who had spent all day on her feet. It gave you pause. You couldn’t bear the thought of ruining dinner with a request, so instead, you stared at her soft curls spilling from her bun. You needed a camera for moments such as this.

Your mother placed her empty dish inside the sink, then walked back to the table and pulled at the brown leather strap of her purse hanging on the back of the chair. She removed a manila envelope and a booklet of stamps, then ran her hand over the table to make sure it was dry before placing the envelope and stamps down. “For Rutgers,” she said, struggling through the syllables of the college’s name.

“I can just apply online,” you said.

She wrinkled her mouth. “Paper is more better. More serious.” She dug inside her purse once again and pulled a money order — the exact amount of Rutgers’s application fee. You hadn’t shared the information with her, but evidently she had taken it upon herself to look it up.

But you didn’t want to go to Rutgers, since that meant you would have to live at home. The dream was to move to New York, have your photos showcased in galleries across boroughs. Had she taken any interest in your work, she would have known that you were better than the tacky print of The Last Supper hanging on the wall; White Jesus surrounded by his white disciples. Or the fruit magnets on the fridge holding up psalms and prayers. Or the sad money plant sitting on the kitchen windowsill, or the plastic plates on the drying rack along with the scratched forks and knives, the wobbling table, the cheap flooring of your walk-up apartment. No. You couldn’t go to Rutgers and take that bus and sit in the kitchen that with every second became smaller, and your words squeezed from your diaphragm and out your voice box: “I don’t want to go to Rutgers. I want to study photography.”

She rolled her eyes. “That bullshit again,” she said. “En mi casa no.”

She followed with the usual litany: You would end up on welfare or living in project housing. You would end up stealing. You would end up a whore. She didn’t scrub the grime out of strangers’ toilets for you to walk around taking silly little pictures.

In the comfort of your bed, you placed your head against an oversized stuffed animal you had won by pounding frogs into lily pads at the state fair. Your room was small and you had been forced to keep a few non-negotiables in it: beaded rosaries tacked to the wall; another painting of Jesus, his fixed, unnaturally blue eyes staring at you from across the room.

How long would you have to wait until you could be yourself? The time would come when you would not be able to kneel at your mother’s altar. God was in the beauty of the world, the warmth of red and coolness of blue and the stillness of the images you captured.

You hunched over your computer searching for scholarships, grants, a way out. But you were fixated on the contest that Mr. Tehran talked about. The promise of a $2,000 award and a two-week-long internship at a gallery in the city.

You thought of your friend Roman and texted him, adding ten more cents to your cell phone bill. “Are you at the shop? I’m on my way.” Maybe Roman could help you get the money for the camera. His parents owned Carmine’s Pizza, and he often walked around with wads of cash, and he liked you.

Even though they had just replaced the light bulbs, Carmine’s looked dingy. Plastic red booths lined the shop, pleather seats cut open and pink foam cushions spilling like organs. No one ever sat at Carmine’s. People just took their pies to go. Roman stood in front of the brick oven, gripping the long stick of a wooden pizza peel like Moses holding his staff. He had the authority and command of someone who’d grown up making pizza. He knew the perfect balance of salt, water, and flour, the perfect way to knead and stretch the dough, how to toss and spin it in the air, how to catch it, and how to layer the perfect amount of sauce and cheese.

He lifted the pizza peel, placed it inside the oven, scraped off the pie, and moved it toward the front, where the flames burned with less rage. You had watched him do this countless times. He had his attention on the girls waiting at the counter. They tossed their tennis balls in the air impatiently.

“Couple more minutes,” Roman said.

“We’re not paying for a burnt-ass pizza,” one of the girls said, which prompted the other to laugh. He rolled his eyes at them; removed the pizza, a thirty-inch pie as wide as a door; and placed it in a box.

“That’s a big pie for just the two of you,” Roman said. One of the girls giggled, but the other seemed to take offense. “That’s not just for us. Can you slice it into a bunch of small pieces? It’s for the whole team.”

You laughed. The tennis team consisted of four people and never won a single match.

“How many slices? Sixteen?” He grabbed the slicer and drew his arm across the diameter of the pie. His biceps constricted with each forward motion. He had to inch forward to reach from one end of the pizza to the other.

“Arms aren’t long enough,” the gelled-hair girl said. They both giggled this time. Roman scoffed and placed the slicer down. “I’ll show ya what’s long,” he said, reaching for the condiments on the opposite side of the counter. He grabbed the jars of red pepper flakes and garlic powder, then looked at the girls. “You like hard and salty?”

You looked the other way. You liked Roman, liked burning CDs for him, playlists curated based on his mood and needs. The pizzeria playlist, the weight room playlist, the Mosquito Park playlist. You liked sharing a camera in class, and liked that he was serious about art. Almost as serious as you. When he made off-putting innuendos, you felt something amorphous taking shape in your throat, making it hard to swallow.

“So what’s going on with you?” Roman asked.

“I saw a camera at the pawn shop. One hundred and forty-five dollars. If I can get it, I can submit to that contest.”

His eyes widened. “One hundred and forty-five isn’t so bad.”

You nodded. “Do your parents need some help?”

“Maybe,” he said. “But you wouldn’t get paid right away.”

You nodded again. “I know. But maybe you can lend me the money and I can pay you back.”

“I can’t ask them now. They’re watching Wheel of Fortune. You know my dad has a thing for Vanna White — does what she’s told, never talks back.” He laughed. Maybe this was a stupid idea.

“I’ll figure it out,” he added. “Maybe we cut school tomorrow and go straight to the pawn shop.”

Every time you cut class with Roman, you found yourself doing things you didn’t want to do: sneaking inside the porn theater downtown and hearing the noise of old men masturbating under their coats; strolling the old arcade on Market; getting chased by truancy enforcement while meandering through Mosquito Park after drinking cans of Four Loko from inside a paper bag.

“Sure,” you said as you fiddled with a plastic fork, snapping the tines off one by one, hoping things would be different.

The next morning, you straightened your curls and drew a cat-eye eyeliner, then slung your backpack over your shoulder and headed to school, only to turn back when you knew your mother had left for work. You jumped in bed, closed your eyes, and fantasized about what you would photograph. Perhaps the commuters at Penn Station waiting for their train to New York City. Or maybe the bodega cats curled on a stack of dusty cans of Goya beans. Maybe your mother — if she let you — knees folded in front of her makeshift altar, lighting candles and crossing herself, praying to her dead. Maybe Roman at the pizzeria, chopping garlic, shallots, parsley, and basil. Or shirtless in the weight room, grunting, pumping, lifting, blood rushing to his face. And maybe yourself.

Your heart jumped at the knock on the door. You walked to the living room and peeked through a broken panel on the blinds. Roman was downstairs. He looked up and smiled. “I see you,” he mouthed before knocking on the door again.

You dashed down the flight of stairs, opened the door, and held a finger over his mouth. Your mom was gone, but you didn’t want your neighbor, Ms. Duarte, to hear. On the way upstairs, you felt something prick your calves. “Roman, stop.” He giggled.

In the living room, he cupped your face. His hands against your cheeks paralyzed you for a moment. “I did something,” he said. He took a plastic bag out of his backpack. Inside the bag was the camera in its box. Your heart galloped in your throat.

“Why don’t we test it out?” He placed a memory card inside it. “You can pay me back later.”

You grabbed the camera, squinted, and looked at Roman through the small lens. You snapped a photo and paused to inspect it, then showed it to him. Standing near your bookshelf, with artificial cherry blossoms draped down its length, he looked beautiful. You unzipped his pullover jacket and directed him to sit on your bed. You snapped another picture. Excitement whirled inside you. It was a good photograph, and it would make an even better print. Ten years into the future, you knew that you both would look back at that photograph with fondness and appreciation.

“I wanna see what you see,” he said. You tilted the camera so he could see, but he grabbed the camera from you. “That’s not what I meant.”

He set the camera down, grabbed your arms, and directed you to lean against your bookshelf. Tall, made of solid oak, your mom had found it discarded on the sidewalk, and had insisted it was worth dragging up the steps of your walk-up. It was sturdy enough to support your weight as you stared at Roman. He removed your sweater and placed it on the bed, then inched closer to you and snapped another photo. He moved closer and tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear. The brush of his hand, nearly electric, was something you wanted to feel again. But being photographed by him was even better.

He held your chin and pointed it up, then down. You registered how smooth his hands felt. He snapped a photo and then another one. Confident and focused, he stretched your arm toward the ceiling, and snapped another. You modeled, posed, twisted, and turned in whichever direction he wanted you, smiling then not smiling, looking into his eyes then looking away, the willing subject all photographers dream of.

You took your shirt off.

There was a pause, a discernable moment where neither you nor Roman made a sound. Then he reached for the back of your bra and unhooked it, his wavering hand lingering on you for a moment. He looked at you as if pleading for you to react. You removed the bra straps of your own volition, feeling the release of your naked breasts. You covered them with your hands before taking a deep breath and releasing a nervous laugh.

“Go ahead,” you said, giving him permission. He shot you at an angle before moving in front of you and handing you the bundle of rosaries that hung on the wall. He exhaled and frowned into the lens. And you wondered if this really was about the art, not your body.

He paused, handed you the camera, and removed his shirt. You reached for his belt and unbuckled it. The worn leather felt thin and flimsy, like you could snap it if you pulled too hard. With one hand on the camera and one hand on the belt loop of his Levi’s, you pulled his pants down, the back of your hand brushing against his skin. The pants dropped. His wallet and keys hit the floor, the noise jolting you.

He removed his briefs, then placed cupped hands in front of his erection. You tried not to fixate on the intimate details of his body: deep collar bones, a birthmark above his right nipple, sparse hairs gathered on his abdomen. You could smell the faintest trace of sweat mixed with cologne — the scents of a person who has removed their clothes, inviting you in. You gripped the camera a little tighter, then moved his hands out of the way and proceeded to shoot. And he let you. This was anatomy, you thought. Body parts that existed outside of urges. Yes, you wanted to touch Roman, to feel the texture of the hair on his skin, and you wanted him to touch you; but this moment in time was unique. You couldn’t sully it.

When you set the camera down, it seemed as if the energy had been sucked out of the room. What was there to say now? For a moment, you felt uneasy. But then you brushed off the discomfort. This wasn’t your first time naked in front of a boy. You reached for your computer, clicking on whichever track had just downloaded off LimeWire so you didn’t have to get dressed in silence. You tossed him his shirt playfully, though he didn’t smile about it. “Those are gonna be some dope-ass pictures,” he said. “Anyway, I guess I better go.” He grabbed his things and shoved them into his backpack. Soon, you were standing at the front door, awkwardly hugging, telling each other you would talk after nine when your minutes were free.

On the way back to your room, you stopped at the mantelpiece with the makeshift altar lined with pictures of your dead father. A photo of him holding you as a baby. The second picture was of him and your mother standing on the boardwalk in Santo Domingo, palm trees as tall as God, waves crashing against ocean rocks, your mother smiling in a way you had never seen. The image eased your discomfort. The thought of the two of them waiting weeks, perhaps months, to see that photograph.

You wanted to share the news of the camera with your mother. But you couldn’t bring yourself to endure the questions that would follow: What did you have to do in exchange for it? Was Roman someone you could trust? You just couldn’t tell her. So instead, you took pictures of the altar, the assortment of colorful candles, their flickering light reflecting against the picture frames. The incense resting on the ashtray. The billowing smoke, the ashes gathering underneath.

You spent the week photographing the neighborhood. You photographed the Portuguese men down the street, their games of checkers, the coffee on the rims of their cups.

You photographed Ms. Duarte in her nightgown, sweeping the sidewalk, watching you quizzically from a distance.

You photographed the kids congregating in the alleyway behind the Pathmark, flipping their skateboards and riding along the railing of a set of stairs.

You photographed the group of immigrants standing outside the hardware store, waiting for work.

You photographed the bus, the train, the commuters, the pigeons eating crumbs outside the Portuguese bakery, the rats scurrying on the riverbank, the Newark sunset: pink and yellow and purple streaks thick with pollution and sulfur.

You wanted to save the pictures to your computer, but the clunky thing, burdened by viruses and malware, kept lagging. So you texted Roman, who’d offered to upload your files to his computer and save them on a flash drive. And so, you met him at Mosquito Park, where you handed off both the memory card and the camera.

The contest stipulations called for 8″ x 10″ original prints along with a statement about the artist’s aesthetic. You began to scribble sentences about yourself when your mother knocked on the door. Before you could answer, she was standing there, resting her head on the wooden frame. Her eyes drifted to your desk. They lingered on the Rutgers application.

She smiled and pointed to it, “Yeah?” Her voice seemed to float with hope and excitement.

You lowered your gaze and covered the text with your palm. “Yeah, I’m working on it now,” you said, trying to keep yourself from fidgeting.

Your mother wiped her hands on the side of her bleach-stained sweatpants. She wore them on days that she expected to kneel and scrub grime off the floor. They were the good sweatpants, thick and fleece-lined, which provided a little extra padding for her knees. Once a shade of forest green, now a hue you couldn’t describe.

She walked toward you and placed her hand on your head, petting you like she used to when you couldn’t stand the pitch-black darkness of your bedroom.

“I’m proud of you,” she said, kissing your forehead. There was so much she could have been genuinely proud of, if only she gave you a chance. You wiggled your fingers to stop yourself from ripping the skin of your cuticles.

After she left, you revised the artist statement, then redrafted it again. You typed it and pressed print. But you still didn’t have the money to pay for the submission fee or to print the photos, and you couldn’t, out of self-respect, go back to Roman. You dug your hand inside the pockets of every pair of pants you owned. You looked in your junk drawer before heading to the living room where you quietly flipped each plastic-covered cushion on the sofa. Nothing. Sitting across from the altar, you felt a compulsion to to ask whatever entity to help you find a way.

But there was the manila envelope and the money order. The “payable to” line was still blank. It was enough money to cover the cost of printing and the submission fee. You could always apply to Rutgers later or tell your mother that you didn’t get in.

You took no pleasure in being dishonest. Stealing made you feel like you were sinking. You wanted to be your mother’s friend. But to choose your mother was to choose to be someone you were not.

You walked to the supermarket, where you endorsed the money order to yourself, cashed it, and tucked it inside your pocket. Approaching Carmine’s Pizza, you texted Roman. “On my way to pick up the flash drive.” As you walked, you ran through an inventory of the photographs you had taken, unsure of which you would submit. You conjured the image of the immigrants waiting for construction work. Those men with their hands inside the pockets of their ragged jeans, braving the cold, standing on an unpaved parking lot, breathing in the sulfur fumes of the Ironbound, waiting.

You opened your phone and realized that Roman hadn’t texted you back. “Roman?” You waited a few seconds but gave in to your desperation and dialed. The phone rang. You called again, but he didn’t pick up.

“What the fuck, Roman?” you wrote.

Maybe there was a dinner rush at the pizzeria. Or he was in the weight room, his phone tucked away inside his duffel bag. If you rushed over, you could still get the flash drive and take it to Walgreens or CVS and get the photos printed and mailed.

You wove through passersby. Your heart beat fast, and you huffed for air. Something was amiss. You made it past the basketball court and the volleyball court and the soccer field and the thundering bass from some far-off speaker. The world around you moved, but time dripped like the slow trickle from a faucet. When you made it to Carmine’s, the door was locked. You leaned closer to the glass. Inside, a silhouette walked toward you, slow footsteps that seemed to shuffle and drag. You waited, holding on to the door handle for dear life. Roman’s mother unlocked the door and let you in. The pizzeria was dark save for the illuminated fridge where soda cans were neatly stacked. She said they’d closed early because Roman couldn’t tend to the store. He had to rush to print some photos. His submission had to be postmarked by a certain time. A big contest.

You felt warm, then cold, before losing your balance, your body momentarily rocking forward. Roman’s mother looked at you with a confused expression, and it made you wonder what was it that she saw when she looked at your dumb face. Which pictures did he submit? His? Yours? The immigrants? The Portuguese men? Your naked body?

You drifted your attention to the fan above, its old, wood-paneled blades spinning counterclockwise. You wanted to lie still on the floor, breathing in and out, adjusting the shutter speed to capture the blurring blades in motion.