Memory Wall

Eleven girls wake in a tall, dilapidated house in a yard of thistles. They know the place, but they’re confused by their presence in it. The oldest girl, Miriam, concludes that they’re dead.

Esther Gramm is born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1927. She’s orphaned at age four and goes to live at The Hirschfeld Trust Girls’ Orphanage, run by House Directress Frau Cohen. A year later, Esther begins having temporal lobe epileptic seizures. During these seizures, Esther has visions. In the first, she sees a woman describing the three deaths: after the original death, a second occurs when the body is buried. A third death occurs when the last person one knew in childhood dies, which is followed by release to the next world. Between the second and third deaths, the woman says, one waits “in another world, folded inside the living world” (190).

Now 81, Esther lives in Geneva, Ohio. Her son and his wife live next door. While they’re in China to adopt twin girls, their 20-year-old son Robert visits with Esther, interviewing her for a college history course. He’s worried about Esther’s recent seizures, during which she sees the 11 girls in the tall house.

Six-year-old Esther sees Dr. Rosenbaum, who’s fascinated by her visions and convinces Frau Cohen not to commit her to a psychiatric hospital. He prescribes phenobarbital, which stops the seizures and visions. Esther, who spends most of her time drawing, becomes close to Miriam. Together they witness the events leading up to World War II and imagine where they’ll go if they have to emigrate.

In the present, Esther has another seizure. She watches Miriam and the other girls exploring the tall house, wondering where they are. Nobody else is present outside the house, and the girls are cold, hungry, and confused.

In 1937, signs saying, “Juden sind hier unerwünscht” (which translates to “Jews are unwelcome here”) begin appearing throughout Hamburg (199). Nancy Schwartzenberger leaves for Warsaw, but the rest of the girls remain at Hirschfeld House, terrified by rumors of what the government is doing with Jewish and disabled people, including people with epilepsy. One afternoon, the neighborhood druggist slits his throat with a razor blade in front of Esther and Miriam.

Present-day Esther has a seizure that lasts three hours and wakes up in the neurology clinic, which Robert brought her to. Scans reveal a lesion in her hippocampus that is twice as large as her previous imaging showed. Doctors plan to increase her medications and keep her there for at least a week. At Esther’s house, Robert finds a sketch of the tall house and a list indicating that all 11 girls were deported on July 29, 1942, to Birkenau.

Esther turns 13 in 1939. Germany bombs London. Jewish citizens are ordered to cede their radio sets. In the present, Esther is still in the clinic, medicated and dizzy. Robert tries to get her to draw, an activity that’s always brought them closer together. She tries but can see nothing in the resulting scribble.

When Esther is 14, Dr. Rosenbaum, her only source of medication, disappears. She rations it but eventually runs out. Her brain feels sharper, her senses more acute, but soon the seizures return. During one seizure, she breaks her wrist falling down the stairs. Frau Cohen shelters displaced persons in the orphanage, though space and food are in short supply. Present-day Esther longs to leave the neurology clinic. She senses that the girls in her visions are real and waiting for her. Conflicted by her requests and doctors’ orders, Robert sneaks her out and brings her home.

Rationing and confinement become the norm in Hirschfeld House. Esther finds a giant cedar wardrobe in the attic and spends entire afternoons inside it, sketching on its interior panels. In March, Dr. Rosenbaum appears at Hirschfeld House, disheveled and haggard but alive. He was in a labor camp for a year but was recently released because of the dire need for doctors. Esther sketches a vision for him in which she saw his wife, who he hasn’t seen in a year. In the sketch, Frau Rosenbaum is part of a pilgrimage and is singing. The next morning, the doctor is gone.

In visions, present-day Esther watches Miriam and two other girls climb to the top of a 20-story building. On the top floor, they find a microphone. Miriam whispers Esther’s name into it. Esther swings between the world around her and that of her visions as Robert reads to her, sketches, and interviews her for his thesis paper. 

In the past, Esther’s seizures scare other residents in the overcrowded orphanage. In response to one girl’s suggestion that Frau Cohen send Esther away, Miriam insists that she can take care of Esther. They move to the attic, and from there, they watch English aircraft bombing the city of Hamburg.

In the present, Esther tells Robert about the girls from the orphanage and goes for evening rides in a trailer attached to his bicycle. In the past, Frau Cohen receives deportation orders for the girls. She tells them they’re going to Warsaw. That night, Dr. Rosenbaum sneaks Esther out while everyone else sleeps and connects her with a group fleeing the country in secret. Over the next few days, she hides in locked, crowded cellars. Everyone is dirty, hungry, and afraid. Eventually, she reaches a clinic where she’s given clothes, medication, and immigration papers for the US.

The Jewish Rescue Authority places Esther with a couple in New Jersey, Romanian immigrants coincidentally named Rosenbaum. She learns about the horrors occurring in concentration camps and writes to Miriam every day. At age 26, Esther meets her future husband. They get married, move to Ohio, and open a bicycle shop. At age 35, she gets a copy of a deportation manifest, dashing her hope that Miriam survived. The list includes Miriam’s name. It also includes Esther’s.

On July 4th, Robert lights fireworks. He knows his parents are on their way home, finally, with their adopted daughters. Esther hears only Miriam’s voice now, describing the place they’ll be going together, the same place Esther once saw in her vision of Dr. Rosenbaum’s wife. Watching the fireworks, Esther has a seizure. She wakes in the tall house beneath a sky full of stars. Outside, 11 girls are waiting for her. Miriam takes her hand, and they set off together.

Robert comes home from college for Thanksgiving and plays in the snow with his adopted sisters. Next door, Esther’s vacant house fills him with memories of her. They intertwine in a shared space with the new memories that he’s making with his young sisters.