I stood behind him with the box in my arms and my chin on top of it.

And Maya Lin opened her own front door, sitting in her own chair, in her own hallway, and looked up at a boy from her class and a woman she had never spoken to and a cardboard carton with a manufacturer’s logo across the side of it.

Part Twelve: Jillian’s Face

I have thought about Maya’s face in that doorway for three years and I am still not certain I have it right, and she has since told me her own version, and I am going to give mine first and hers later.

What I saw was confusion, and then recognition, and then — I called it joy at the time — something going across her face very fast and then being put away.