And then the taxi came. It was a black car, I remember it.

WE HAD FOUND Emily and Josias jobs in the neighbourhood before we left, but it was rushed, and I don’t know how suitable the jobs were for them, and I don’t remember how the jobs turned out. And here is my other great failure: I didn’t write to Emily and Josias more than once or twice. Perhaps I was overwhelmed by what faced us in our new home (I was), but that’s an excuse. A year after we left, I had lost touch with them both, and I’ve never been in touch with them since.

Helena has asked me about that, a few times over the years. Could you Google and find them, Mom, she has said. I did Google Emily’s name once, but found nothing. I found people with similar names, or people with her name, who couldn’t have been her. I’ve told Helena that has been a terrible failure, yet another one, of mine. Perhaps Helena forgives me.

But here’s a thing: I think Helena plans to visit South Africa one day. She doesn’t say so, perhaps she thinks she’ll alarm me, or upset me. Even last month, as we sat in my living room, just the two of us under the soft lamplight, she said, I was trying to Google Emily’s name, Mom. Just tell me again: how exactly is her last name spelled? And I became irritated at once and said, there’s no point, Helena, it’s long ago.

But then she said: Emily lives in a free country now. And I couldn’t answer her, except I said yes, she does. She does.

I told you: Helena is interested in all that.

JOSEPH WAS CONVICTED on all charges at his trial in December of 1973. We’d been in New York four months.

How I remember the snow falling that day when Jack Benator told us, how we watched it fall and fall so softly, muffling and covering everything, every car and every lamplight, the tree weighed down with white outside our window. In that moment I felt that we’d be buried by all that snow for always. Perhaps I could not, did not, go out at all that day, perhaps that is true.

I THINK something in Howard was broken by what happened to Joseph. He wouldn’t speak of it.

And he had to build his career again from the beginning, he had to earn a living and support us. The children, and I, needed him to be strong. He was.

IT WAS A LONG TIME before I started painting again.

Howard found the space on Columbus and rented it for me to use as a studio. He insisted on it, although I protested, telling him I no longer wanted to paint, at all.

And then all my canvases and paints and equipment that had been in storage were delivered there, to that studio, for me to start working, once more.