"I don't know. I didn't look at the tag yet." I reached for the tag, which was still lying face down by my elbow, and before my fingers got there my father had come around the table, two steps, and picked it up.
He turned it over. He read it. I watched his eyes go across it once and then go back to the beginning and go across it again, and then they went to the edge of the tag and stayed there. His mouth moved, a little, without sound.
And then he tore it.
Not in half. He took the loop of string between two fingers and yanked it, so the string snapped where it had been tied, and then he folded the tag over once and twisted it, hard, the way you would wring out a cloth, and I heard the stiff paper crack. He did not tear it into pieces, exactly. He crushed it. And then he dropped it, just opened his hand over the floor by the radiator, and the twisted tag fell between the radiator and the wall, into the gap where the dust collects and the cat we used to have used to lose her toys.
Nobody said anything. Mrs. Okafor had a forkful of cassata halfway to her mouth and it stayed there.
My father reached out and took the camera out of my hands.
He did not grab it. I want to be fair. He took it the way you take something from a little kid who has picked up a knife, firmly but without hurting them, his hands closing around the body of the camera over the top of mine and then sliding mine off it. And he turned around and held it out to Niva.
"This is yours," he said to her.
Niva did not move.
"Niva," he said. "Take it. You're the one doing the photography. You're the one with the portfolio. This is a—" He stopped. He breathed. "This should go to you. It makes more sense. Maya's fourteen, she doesn't need a camera like this, she'll drop it off the porch in a week. You need it for Syracuse."