Thirty-six
June 18, 1958
Dear Emmy,
I had to take a few days off from the journal. Spilling everything about the bombing like that sort of took the breath right out of my lungs. I’ve been in a bit of a mental wasteland for the last few days—trouble concentrating at work, not sleeping well, things like that. Dr. Diamant told me this might happen and not to worry. It’s perfectly normal to need some time to sort out these memories that I’m dredging up. That hasn’t stopped Simon from worrying, unfortunately. He called Dr. Diamant and said that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. I don’t know what Dr. Diamant told him but Simon said all right. All right. All right. Three times. Somehow she convinced him this was still a good idea. And so I am back.
It’s two a.m.
I can’t sleep, so I may as well write to you.
It’s hard to fully recall those first few days with Gramps and Granny. It’s almost as if there are rooms in my mind where all these memories are kept and some of those rooms have no doors. I know the memories are there but I’ve no way of getting to them. When Granny called Mrs. Billingsley on Monday, two days after the bombing, she was told Mum hadn’t shown up for work that day. Mrs. Billingsley had sent her butler to our flat to make sure Mum was all right, but he’d found our street bombed and our flat empty. All of the flats on our side were empty. He found no one to even ask if they’d seen her. The butler had taken it upon himself to check with the hospital, but there was no record of an Annie Downtree having been admitted.
Gramps and Granny were worried about me because I wouldn’t speak; the only time they heard my voice was when I screamed in my sleep. Granny told Gramps she wanted to take me to America to get me away from the war. Other family members of Oxford instructors had been evacuated to Connecticut under a private scheme, to the homes of Yale professors and staff members. Granny begged Gramps to see if she and I could go, even though everyone else had already left many weeks before. Gramps didn’t like the idea because of the U-boats patrolling the Atlantic. One ship full of evacuees, mostly children, had already been torpedoed.
But Granny insisted. She had to get me away from the war or she’d lose me like she lost Neville, just in a different way. I heard her say this.
We were at the docks at Liverpool just two days later, boarding a ship that would take me away from England for nearly five years. I don’t think Granny had any idea that’s how long we would be away. I don’t think anyone knew the war would last that long. On the passenger manifest I was listed as Julia Waverly. Granny said my father would want me to have his last name since he had been taken from me so early in my life. I didn’t want a new last name but I was unable to argue that point. By the time I was able to speak my mind, I had been a Waverly for almost as long as I had been a Downtree and it didn’t seem to matter as much. Being a Downtree would not bring you back. I have been Julia Waverly ever since.
What I remember of the crossing is the swaying of the ship like a cradle being rocked, but I also remember there being alarms, and donning our life vests as U-boats were in the area and at any moment they might close in on us and blow our ship to bits. I remember Granny having to cram my arms through the vest as I fought and kicked. I also remember her pacing the floor by my cot in our stateroom. I can still see her shoes going back and forth; just her shoes, because I am under the cot. I remember dreaming that it’s not dead cats I see on Thea’s back steps; it is you and Mum and Neville.
The first few weeks after we arrived are a blur. Less than a blur. Those memories are in one of the rooms with no door. I think it’s odd that I can remember the smell of acrid smoke, the feel of broken glass under my shoes, and the open-eyed stares of those cats, but I can’t remember the first weeks of my life in tranquil America.
There was no war there, no sandbags or barrage balloons or running for cover. We lived on the third floor of a brick colonial situated on a peaceful tree-lined street with a Yale professor of history, Dr. Bower, and his wife, Florence. Their twin sons, Charlie and Randall, were in the United States Army Air Corps, training to be pilots. Granny had the bigger of the two rooms, furnished with a lovely canopied bed, but she often slept in the armchair in my room. At least for a while she did.
My room reminded me of the room you and I shared at Aunt Charlotte’s. It was nestled in the corner with a slanted roof that I could touch where it met the wall. After I had settled in, I would lie in my bed, close my eyes, and imagine that I was back at Aunt Charlotte’s and you were just a few feet away. This was how I fell asleep every night for many, many nights—imagining you were in a bed next to me and that we were safe at Charlotte’s, the brides box on the nightstand between us along with my book of fairy tales.
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 me much 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.
Good night, Emmy.
Julia