Strange Pictures

On the Prologue’s facing page, there is a rectangular image of a child’s line drawing. On the far left of the drawing is a house. Just to the right of center, a smiling child almost as tall as the house stands with her hands at her sides, facing out toward the viewer in her floral-print dress. On the far right is a tree. Its rounded top is supported by sharp, spiky branches, and in its trunk, there is a round opening. Inside this darkened opening, a white bird sits facing toward the child.

Dr. Tomiko Hagio lectures her psychology class about this drawing. The drawing was made by one of her patients, she says. This patient, “Little A,” was 11 years old at the time she was accused of murdering her own mother. Hagio draws her students’ attention to particular features of the drawing and explains what, in her expert opinion, these features indicate about the child’s state of mind.

The child’s blurry smile indicates that she worked hard to ensure the expression’s correctness; Hagio suggests that, in her abusive home, the child had to smile “right,” lest she receive a beating for not performing happiness correctly. The lack of a door on the house shows that the girl is trying to hide her interior life from the outside world.