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.