I’m so desperately sorry, Emmy.
If I could remember Aunt Charlotte’s last name or the house where she lived or the town where the house was, I would see if the brides box was still there and I would spend the rest of my life looking for you so that I could give it back to you. But I can’t remember where that house was or Charlotte’s last name. When I tried to find out, I learned that the building where the East End evacuations records were kept was destroyed by a V-I flying bomb in 1944.
I can’t make it right.
I wish I could take back what I did. I wish it all the time.
This is not helping me.
This is not helping.
Julia
Thirty-five
June 12, 1958
Dear Emmy,
I told Dr. Diamant today that the journal idea is not working. She wanted to know why. I told her that I didn’t feel better after writing to you. I actually felt worse. She said sometimes on the road to healing, you must reopen an old wound. It will hurt again, maybe as much as or more than it did when it was first inflicted, but as you reconnect with and embrace the healing process, it will begin to hurt less. Sometimes a broken bone does not heal properly and there is unrelenting pain because bones that aren’t supposed to touch are rubbing up against each other. The only way to fix it is to break the bone again and reset it. That’s the only way it can heal properly. You have to break the bone again.
That was her way of explaining that as I write to you, I might feel worse before I feel better.
I suppose that makes sense.
But I didn’t know what else to say to you. Dr. Diamant asked if I would feel okay if she read what I had written so far. I let her read it.
Dr. Diamant said she was very proud of me for being so honest with you and that I should keep going.Keep going how?I said.
She suggested that I start at the beginning where you and I left off because if I were to see you again, that’s what I would want to hear from you. I’d want to know what happened to you after we were parted.
I admit I’m afraid to go back to that day, Emmy. I’ve placed it so far in the back of my mind. I worry that by dragging it up from that dark place where it’s been sleeping, I will relive it. And if I relive it, then I will again become that silent girl who can’t sleep at night. Dr. Diamant told me that little girl has grown up. I can speak to that seven-year-old inside me and tell her she survived this. I don’t need to be afraid of looking back to the place where she was because that place is just a memory, and memories have no power but what I allow them.
I will try very hard to keep that in mind as I write.
Simon is sitting here next to me. He doesn’t know everything about what happened the day my life changed, but he knows how hard this is for me. I told him I would let him read this journal when I am done so that he will know what he’s dealing with. That seems only fair. In the meantime, we are sitting side by side at my kitchen table with only a teapot between us. He is reading while I write these words to you. And every so often he gently rubs my back and refills my teacup.
So here we go. Back to the beginning.
I awoke to the sound of sirens.
At first I thought you had not left the flat because it seemed you had only just been at my side a second earlier, fluffing the sofa pillows and telling me to stay where I was and that Mum would be home soon.
I called for you as the sirens wailed but you did not answer. I heard popping sounds, the far-off echoes of the antiaircraft guns, and thundering booms that seemed to come from up underneath the earth. You did not tell me what to do if the sirens went off. So I stayed on the sofa and covered my ears with the throw pillows. I screamed for you—and for Mum—even though I knew I was alone.
Then I heard the whistles of the bombs, some far away and some near, and I began to hear the explosions as they landed, despite the pillows over my ears. I felt them in my chest, in the very depths of me. This wasn’t a drill. This was real. The Germans were bombing London.
Instinctively I knew I should run for cover but you told me to stay in the flat. Mum was coming. I scrambled to the corner with the sofa pillows and crouched there. I remember crying and how my wails sounded like the sirens outside.
But then a bright flash and a thunderous whack shook the flat. The front window shattered. Confetti-like glass blew into the room and fell on my hair and in my lap. Everywhere.
I screamed for you.
I screamed for Mum.
I tossed the pillows and sprang for the front door. When I opened it, I could see that the row of flats across the street was wrapped in a fog of powdered debris. A gaping hole stretched across where front doors and upper floors had been. The air was thick with smoke and fire and the buzzing of giant insects, which were the planes that I could not see. It was as if I had been transported to hell.
All I could do was stand there and scream for you.
