The Memory Palace Read Online Free PDF

projects, the Chicago Transit Authority and the city of Cleveland of stealing her teeth, her glasses, her house, her hair, her children, her memory, and her youth. I pulled out stacks of drawings she had made of street scenes, family members, flowers, and fairies. One was titled
Rachel Has No Flowers in Her Hair,
a desolate stretch of gray land with nothing in it but one scraggly tree.
    Our mother was expecting us and we had already been at U-Haul for over two hours. My hands were so cold I could barely feel my fingers anymore. I’d been about to suggest leaving when I found the box.
    “Nattie,” I said. “You better take a look.”
    We dragged the heavy box out into the hall. It was stuffed with diaries, seventeen years of secrets: typewritten journals in bulging three-ring binders, others pocket-sized and written by hand. I skimmed through them for half an hour or more, but had to stop. It reminded me of when I was a teenager and hid in our grandparents’ attic, digging through boxes, searching for a father who had disappeared, searching for a mother before she lost her mind. Then I saw several papers stapled together, stuck in between two journals. At the top of the page, my mother had written, “Life Story.” It began like this:
    There was danger imparted to me at birth. The street was well kept and quiet during the day. You hardly saw anyone. In 1945 I suffered a childhood nervous breakdown. I was nineteen. My father and I were supposed to go to a party at my uncle’s, but instead, we went to a foreign film and as we returned home by bus on 148th Street, my father became angry and said something about not liking my uncle’s associates. Leaving the bus I dropped coins in the fare box. My father was angry that I paid for myself. He became more and more enraged and I became mildly hysterical. When we were in the house, he seized a lamp and said, “I’ll kill you” to parties unknown. My early childhood was deprived in some respects. I did not view television until 1963 and now I see that little bits of my life in distorted form have gotten into movie stories. I still have received no compensation for that. Ultimately, what I do know is this: I am a homemaker, my records have never been straightened out, and my need for privacy and house is greater than ever. I write this in a motel room looking out onto garbage bins.
    I slumped down onto the floor and couldn’t move.
I write this in a motel room looking out onto garbage bins.
How much more did I really want to know about her life on the street? My brain was done for the day.
    “Nattie,” I said. “Maybe we should go.” My sister didn’t hear me; she was lost in her own little world. She sprang up into a standing yoga posture, stretching her arms high above her head. Before my injury, I would have been just as resilient. After a few more stretches, Natalia went back in. I gathered my reserves and went back in too.
    “Look at this!” she said. She pulled out something big, white, and fuzzy from deep within our mother’s den. It was a teddy bear the size of a toddler, dressed in a festive red dress. The red bow around its neck said 2000.
    “It’s a millennium bear,” I said.
    I tried to remember where I was on New Year’s Day 2000, but couldn’t. Where was my mother that day? Who gave her this bear? Would she still be here this coming January 1?
    “Let’s bring the bear,” said Natalia. “We better go back,” she added. “You look tired. Besides, she’s going to think we’re not going to come.”
    Before we left, we made a stack of things our mother might want at the hospital. My sister placed The Brothers Karamazov on the pile and a tornalmanac from 1992. “Definitely this,” she said, holding up our mother’s Glenville High School yearbook from 1945. “She loved looking at pictures of her old friends.”
    I flipped through the pages to find her maiden name,
Norma Kurap.
The portrait of her in a simple white blouse was sweet and demure.