While the rest of that September and then October and November are lost to me, I do remember my first Christmas in America. Snow covered the ground, lights shone in every window, and there were presents under a lovely tree. Florence made gingerbread men and decorated them with frosting faces and buttons. We drank hot chocolate while Professor Bower read from the Bible by a snapping, happy fire. The professor and his wife didn’t listen to the radio, as least not when I was in the vicinity, so there were no reports of doom telling us how terrible it was in Europe. School had been let out—I don’t recall much of my first months of school, I’m afraid—and Granny bought me a plaid wool coat and a matching tam with a pom-pom on top so that we could go for twilight walks under violet skies. I remember feeling a sense of tranquility for the first time in weeks and weeks. But when I heard carolers outside my window, I was back under my bed again while Granny paced the floor of that pretty little room, begging me to come out.
She didn’t find out for a long while why I couldn’t handle hearing Christmas carols. In some ways I still can’t. When I hear them now at Christmastime, I want to think only happy thoughts. But a niggling tug won’t let me forget Thea singing carols in her bomb shelter as she held me tight and hell fell down all around us.
There was a terrible night of bombing in London that same Christmas. Worse than the day you were taken from me, but I didn’t hear about it until later. Newspapers never made it home to the Bower house. The professor read them at the college and left them there.
I think I started to see that first troll of a doctor right after Christmas. I had begun to say a few words here and there. Mostly “no” and “I don’t want to.” Florence had a cute little spaniel named Pixie that I liked to play with and I would talk to her. But never more than a few sentences, and I always stopped when the adults froze like statues to listen to me. I knew if I started talking in full sentences to them, they’d start asking me questions.
So to Dr. Nielsen I went. I suppose he tried all the tricks he knew with me. But I didn’t trust him, Emmy. I didn’t believe that by telling him anything he could reverse time, and you and I could go back to that day at Aunt Charlotte’s when I found those notes you wrote. If I could have lived that moment over again, I would have told Charlotte what you were planning to do. I would have run down the stairs and shown her those notes. And yes, you would have been hopping mad at me. Maybe for quite a while. But then you would have softened as you always did. You would have forgiven me for tattling on you. And then you and I would have spent those five years of the war together at Aunt Charlotte’s. You would have continued to draw your lovely dresses. We would have celebrated our birthdays and Christmases without me under the bed. Mum would have come to visit us now and then. And when the war was over, we would have gone back to London. We’d be together and I would not have needed to count things to keep from going mad. You would have gotten your job back at that bridal shop you loved. (I’ve looked for that shop, too, but have not been able to find it.) And you would have made your wedding gowns and they’d be in the window just like all those other dresses had been, except yours would be more beautiful and I would have said,I told you so.
Could Dr. Nielsen have made that happen?
No, he could not.
He wanted me to talk about the horrible things that had taken place and which he could not change. What was the point of that?
I suppose Granny kept dragging me to him because he kept saying it might take time. By the end of May, she figured out he wasn’t going to be the one to help me. School was about to be dismissed and she wanted me to enjoy a happy summer, even if it meant a silent one.
I was actually sad to see the school term end. Even though my teacher could barely get a word out of me, I did well in school. Learning was my place of escape. Not school itself, but the activity of learning. It gave my brain something to do that was unrelated to the war and my losses. When Dr. Troll suggested perhaps Granny needed to consider institutionalizing me, she showed him my report card and said—so she told me—that what I needed was a break from doctors like him.
We spent the summer at a cabin the Bowers owned somewhere on a lake. I don’t remember what the lake was called. It was very beautiful there, Emmy. There was a girl in the cabin next to ours named Frannie who was a year younger than I was, and in Granny’s words, a relentless chatterbox. Frannie probably loved that I said practically nothing when we played together, because that allowed her to fill every silent moment with her ceaseless prattle. I felt very much at ease with Frannie. She did all the talking and never hungered for me to say anything in return. Some days I very nearly forgot why I was there.
Amazingly enough, whole days passed when I didn’t think of you and ache for a time machine.
Every summer we’d go back to the cabin on the lake and every year Frannie would be waiting for me.
The last time we went was the summer of 1944. I was eleven. Frannie wasn’t there when we arrived. She came a few weeks into July and she was different. Quieter. More like me. One morning just after she and her parents arrived, we went out on the lake in her little rowboat. She had never asked memuch about my life to that point. I figured Granny and Frannie’s mother had talked and Frannie had been apprised that I was a British girl who had fled the war in Europe. But that day she asked me if I knew what the war was like.
I nodded.
Is it terrible?she asked.
Again, I nodded.
Then she told me her parents had been sent a telegram. Her brother was missing in action, somewhere in France. His plane had been shot down.
Do you think he’s afraid?Frannie asked.
I thought about it for a moment and slowly nodded my head. Just because you’re an adult doesn’t mean you’re not afraid. I’d seen fear in Granny’s eyes.
Do you think he’s okay?
She wanted what I wanted. To know that her brother was alive somewhere and would come back to her.
I spoke to her. Just one word.
Maybe.
She was no doubt surprised to hear my voice, but that I had offered a ray of hope was the bigger surprise.
The girl who knew what war was like was telling her not to give up hope.
Sometimes I wonder if that’s what the journal is supposed to show me, Emmy. Perhaps it is so I can know if it is possible to hold on to hope and still move on.
Is that possible?
I don’t know.
I am tired now.
