“But I don’t see them. I don’t see colors when I hear sounds.”
“I know.”
“What are these colors like? Are they pretty?”
“I don’t know exactly. Perhaps.”
Amaryllis sighs, lets her gaze wander as she thinks for a moment. “I bet they were pretty. I wish I could see colors like that.”
“There have been plenty of days when I’ve wished I could, too.”
We are both quiet for a few moments.
“This is why I speak to people about what I experienced in the war,” I say. “It’s because I want to change what is happening here in California. What was done to your mother is still happening here, and not just in California but all over the United States. It’s still taking place because there is a way of thinking that allows for it. This kind of thinking, that one person can say he or she is a better human than another, is not only cruel, it is dangerous. I saw with my own eyes what can happen when this way of thinking flourishes without restraint.”
I have given Amaryllis so much to think about. I worry for a second that my spontaneous move to tell her so much about Rosie without warning was a mistake.
“I’m glad you told me,” Amaryllis says, partially relieving my fear. “And I’m glad you asked me to come to New York with you. I really do want to come.”
“I’m glad, too. I’m sorry if this is too much to take in.”
She chews on her lip in thought and then stands. “No. I’ve wanted to know for a long time. I was ready for you to tell me. But... I’m going to go inside now.”
“You okay?”
Amaryllis nods. “I just want some time alone to think.”
“I understand.”
She starts to walk away but then turns back. “Thanks for doing this. What you’re doing. I’m... I’m proud of you. And I think my mother would be, too.”
She is gone before I can react.
•••
Two weeks later, I receive a second letter from New York, this time from a Manhattan publisher. They want to meet with me when I am in town to discuss my writing a book. They are prepared to make me an offer on my memoir of the war. One of their editors heard me speak at a college event in the Bay Area a couple of months ago and was moved by my story.
They wish for me begin work on the book right away.
I’ve never thought of myself as a writer, but I immediately feel that I can share on paper as easily as I can at a podium. At least I believe I can, and isn’t that half the recipe of any successful endeavor? The belief that you can do it?
A book is always in many places at once. That is its singular wonder. A book takes one voice speaking and makes it many. Abook can shine far brighter and longer than I ever could on my own.
As I press this second letter to my chest, I hear the echo of Johannes Maier saying, “Power like that can’t be stopped,” and my own voice saying back to him, “Of course it can.”
It can.
It is stopped. All the time.
Not with a magic wand or hopeful thoughts or wishful thinking or mere words, but with courage and resolve and the refusal to allow those without voices to remain unheard.
This is what makes us sublimely human, isn’t it? Not unsullied genetic perfection, but when we stubbornly love and honor one another.
Just the way we are.
EPILOGUE
DECEMBER 1957
