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January 4, 1889
People aren’t kosher, Dad. I realize that’s a pretty stupid thing to start this out with, but you’re the one who made a big deal of getting back into Judaism while you were in prison, so that’s your logical fallacy, not mine. I don’t even know if you kept, but if you did, then my God that is some bullshit.
I’m writing this because the police finally finished their “investigation” of the premises, which essentially amounted to looting everything that wasn’t nailed down, and Anthony asked if I wanted to go look through your things. I said no, and he looked relieved, which is what I expected, but mostly I said it so I could go by myself last night. I know I’m not supposed to want anything to do with you– a valid rule. However, Anthony grew up with three sisters and two parents in Westminster that keep trying to invite us over for dinner, so I don’t judge him as really having any experience in complicated family dynamics.
Most of your things had been left untouched in the upstairs room; I guess everyone thought they would be cursed or something. You were really a minimalist, huh, Dad? Or maybe you were just poor.
I took your coat, which I’m not going to try to justify to myself as anything other than the most base and ridiculous of instincts, and was on my way towards the stairs when I felt something shift slightly beneath my foot. As an experienced practitioner of hiding things myself, I knew a loose floorboard when I felt one. I pulled it up, shooed away a few spiders, and found the book that is currently shoved in my reticule next to the first thing I ever stole from you. Or, I guess it’s not stealing if you were already dead. Maybe you would have left it to me anyway. I can’t exactly ask you.
I’ve only been able to read a little of it at a time; your handwriting is just awful , although I think at the beginning that’s due to being on a ship in the middle of the ocean. They were fairly standard journal entries that provided some much-needed context to what exactly happened to you after you left my mother and me (and also, I know. I know Anthony is relentlessly chipper. I understand your exhaustion with him, but if you’d had the year that I have, you wouldn’t mind a little sunshine. He does need to learn the value of pleasant silence, though). I honestly felt a little confused: you seemed so… normal. Shaken, but well-adjusted.
Then you started writing to me.
It was a shock to see my name in your handwriting, the loop of your “h” so much like my own I felt a little sick. Letters; as far as I can tell, the remainder of this diary is entirely compiled of letters to me from the time of your journey to London to the day of your death. One little book with fraying pages and a broken spine; the rest of your life fits inside.
So here I am, learning who you were and why you did all those terrible things, and, well. I don’t know. I don’t really know what I’m trying to do, replying to letters you never intended me to read. I could argue I’m “processing my grief”, if grieving for you is something I’m allowed to do, much less capable of. You can imagine it’s quite a shock to learn that the man you narrowly avoided having your throat slit by is dead, and in fact, killed and ate people, and in fact, is your father, and in fact, did all of the above for you. Because he wanted to see his daughter again. So I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about this, I really don’t, and I wish Anthony would stop asking me if I’m alright, or if I forgive you, because how are you supposed to explain that you spent fifteen years wondering if there was anyone in this world who really loved you, and you learn that he did the most terrible thing that a person could do, over and over, just to bring you home? Did your father ever say he would do anything for you? How many people can say they believe it?
So here I am, introducing myself to you. Hi, Dad. You can call me Jo, and to make things fair, I’ll tell you a secret of my own: you’re not the only one who knows what a person looks like when they realize you’re about to kill them.
July 27, 1888
Johanna,
Arrived in London today, hoping to see you, only to discover the worst. You’re gone. I’ve waited fifteen years to see you again, and now you’re lost to this city, to a man who has ruined my life and this family’s so many times over. I don’t know what to do. Survive, I suppose. To be entirely honest, I’m not sure if I want to anymore.
I feel so foolish; I don’t know what I was expecting. That you and Lucy would be alright? That she would have found a way to keep you and herself safe and healthy in this horrible city, with so many people who would wish even the most innocent of souls harm? It was a fantasy I needed to keep me sane while I was separated from you in, what I now see, is only the second most hellish place on Earth. Either that sanity has left me, or my will to live; why not both?
I’m not sure what I would have said to you, how I would have explained why your father has been gone for most of your life. I’m not even the one at fault here– that belongs to the man I intend to kill as soon as humanly possible. But I hope you would have forgiven me. I hope that the return of a father who loves you more than anything in the world would have been enough to make up for the years he was gone.
I have to focus. I must see this as an opportunity to be there for you after so long when I could not. You are in what I can only assume to be the most terrible danger, alone and trapped with a man whose predilections I now know too well, and as your father it is my duty to come and save you.
Not even duty, I think. I don’t want you to be trapped anymore. I want you to be safe, home with me where I can, if it is even possible, have a family again. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. It’s what we should have had. You deserve to have had a father who wants to watch you grow up, not for any lecherous reason, but because God, I wish I could have seen you find your place in the world. It’s difficult to explain to someone who’s never had children, but that desire– to bring a life into the world and watch her discover it for the first time, to see what kind of person she becomes, to be a part of each little moment of becoming– it is what I feel robbed of the most. It feels ridiculous, but: I’m making a list of things to ask you, and first on it is your favorite color. It’s silly. But I’d like to know.
First, however, I must set into motion how I’m going to get you out of there. You can’t possibly know it, but I hope somehow, in the deepest part of your heart, you can feel that once again there is someone in this city who loves you.
Dear Dad, I think it’s best if we start this off with a nowhere-near-complete list of questions I have for you, none of which you can answer anymore, but some of which, I hope against any reasonable amount of hope, I might find the answers to here. They are as follows:
1. What is wrong with you?
2. What is wrong with me, and is it, as I suspect, somewhat your fault? To clarify: two months ago I shot a man point-blank in the face and felt blood and brain matter and little bits of bone splatter across my face and shift, and I watched it happen, too, and when I looked over at Anthony he had closed his eyes and paled at the sight of what I’d done. I never expected to have to kill anyone in my life– or, well, that’s not true. I won’t lie to you and say I never thought about what it would be like to acquire some poison, or twist one of my clothes into a rope, or hide a knife in my dress from dinner, and with a few seconds of struggle I suddenly wouldn’t have to wonder anymore what day he would finally stop looking at me like that and just try and rape me already. God, I almost wanted him to try, as if that would be the final excuse I needed to kill him. It wasn’t like I never wanted to. I just never planned on things happening quite the way they did. But the point is– the point is that I did kill a man, Fogg, and it was so much easier than I thought it would be, and after his body fell to the floor, a mass of exploded bone and grey matter where his head once was, all I could think of was, “Well! I’ll bet he never thought that would happen, but thank fucking God it did,”. My hands didn’t even shake. My heart felt like it was going to explode out of my throat, and I couldn’t look Anthony in the eye as we sprinted out of there, but I felt… I don’t know. Relieved? That finally, there was one less thing in the world that could hurt me. And a little proud that I was the one who removed it. All of this is, I have to assume, your genetic predilection for brutal execution. At least I hope it is. I don’t know what it says about me if it isn’t.
3. What on Earth propelled YOU of all people to become a man of faith again? And in prison, no less? As someone who’s only known one her whole remembered life and isn’t very keen on it, I have to assume Judaism makes one hell of a pitch regarding its ability to make you feel a little less miserable in miserable circumstances. Either that, or it just grants you more of a license to complain. I suspect the latter, so I’m interested.
4. What do people taste like? This one is more so my own morbid curiosity (and also, I can’t very well ask anyone who ate the pies).
5. What exactly was your plan once you “rescued” me? I mean, did you really expect me to hear that you were killing and eating and serving people as a sidecar to the family business and go along with it? Why? Because I would be that grateful to you? Because I wouldn’t want to turn my own father into the police? Because I wouldn’t want to lose him again after just getting him back? Because I would learn what had happened to Mom, that the same man who was going to marry me against my will and, well– see above– did the latter to her and dozens of people just stood around and watched? And didn’t care? And that would drive me as mad as it clearly did you?
Because I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t. I’m not like you.
6. It’s green.
July 30, 1888
Johanna,
Before the week is out, I will be one step closer to bringing you home (the circumstances of which have… changed slightly. I don’t know how viable of a surrogate mother Mrs. Lovett will be, but– well, you’ll meet her soon enough). In between the particulars of that plan, I’m trying to decide how we’ll go about things when you come live here. You’re fifteen; you’ll need your own space (or rather, I know you’ll want your own space. I have seen girls your age when I’m out and about, and I have no illusions that you’ll want to cling to your father forever. Although, I indulge myself, I hope you’ll want to a little. I feel once again the kind of nerves I only felt when you were small enough to fit in one of my arms, prone to crawling all around the room and reaching for the most dangerous object you could find, of course in order to put it in your mouth. My nerves have steadied since then, but what can I say: you will always be terrifyingly vulnerable to your poor father).
Dear Dad, went down to the docks today (fun! Sort of!), was mistaken for a prostitute several times (not fun!), and had a somewhat unusual encounter. On one of the fishing docks was a boy, no more than twelve or thirteen, I think, with his line cast off over the edge, swinging his feet back and forth and muttering something under his breath. This wouldn’t have meant much to me– children talk to themselves all the time– but as I approached I would hear a word that sounded, every so often, familiar. Like a song you feel you should know all of the words to, but only the tune has somewhat stuck.
He looked wary when I stood over him (I admit, more than a little awkwardly. My posture is, apparently, terrible, so I’ve started trying to fix it but I’m not sure what to do with all this height) but when I asked what he was reciting, if it was a song or a funny poem or some sort, he brightened and said no, he was practicing. Practicing for what, I asked, and his chest puffed out a little. His bar mitzvah, he said. He’d turned thirteen, making him a man in the eyes of his community (I had a really horrible thought then; a sick internal chuckle that I’d been made a woman in the eyes of my particular community when I was eight and started corseting. Maybe that’s why I liked dressing as a boy that one time; it certainly took less time to put the clothes on. Everything was so big, it draped around me in a way that almost gave me a child’s body again– flat and scrawny and unstructured. It felt nice. I don’t know why) and was practicing the Torah portion he was going to recite in a few weeks at the service. “Parshat Vayera”. The binding of Isaac.
Dad, I know at least a version of that story and I have to admit, I did laugh a little at how the universe seems to never let me get away from you.
He asked me (Frank, I remember now his name was Frank) what was so funny, and I wondered aloud why they were teaching children that if your father is told by a voice in his head that you can’t actually prove exists to take his child to the top of a mountain and ritualistically slaughter them like an animal, you should just go along with it. No wonder it’s so easy for a child’s friends to drag him along into bad ideas (and don’t ask me if I wish I’d had any friends to do that, or bad ideas I thought I could get away with. We both know the answer).
Frank frowned and said well, actually, in that voice of a child who has been suddenly given a lot of authority and doesn’t quite know how to temper it with restraint, that’s not the point of the story at all. He had to give a D’var Torah; a speech about his portion and what it meant, and he said that it’s not a story about blind obedience. In the Torah’s version, the angel that comes down from heaven to stop Abraham from killing his son doesn’t congratulate him on obeying God; it berates Abraham for being about to murder his son just because God told him to. The story is about how we should always question the orders of those in power, and be critical of authority that demands blind faith.
I told him he was probably going to get a very good mark in D’var Torah, if that was something normal to want and possible to achieve. He said it probably was, if his mother had anything to say about it.
I turned to leave, but couldn’t help myself– is there one for girls, I asked? He said some people do; he knew a girl who’d had an as'udat mitzvah, but those weren’t as special. He hadn’t been to any himself.
I’m sixteen, Dad. Would you have done something retroactively? Is that allowed? Would you have let a girl have one at all?
I don’t know if you’re able to choose what portion you read, but here, now, I think I would have chosen Isaac, too. You could learn a thing about not trying to kill your own kid.
August 9, 1888
Johanna,
You will never read this, or if by some miracle you do I will be long dead, so let me tell you about your father.
Your father has killed a man and was willing to kill many more if it meant bringing you home. I don’t know how taken with Anthony you actually were; I only have his words to go by, but if you truly loved him then I would have regretted having to take his life to prevent him from tearing my family apart. As for now, if I ever see him again I will flay him to pieces for ruining the once chance I had– that we had– at happiness. If he had been but a few seconds later… well, he would still be dead, but so would the judge. If there is one reason I have started believing in some kind of a God again, it is because truly not even a cold and random universe would dedicate itself to the ruination of my life this intensely. I am all alone in the world, the only reminder that I was once a man with a wife and child now gone forever. I feel it pressing in against my skin, choking me. I wish I could have seen you, even once. I know in my heart you look so much like Lucy.
I was going to put flowers on the windowsill. I was. I was just waiting until you arrived.
I have found within myself a new capacity for grief. There are other things there; rage, exhaustion, hopelessness; but the grief I feel at the slowly crushing knowledge that I will never see you again, that I had only one year to experience the singular joy of being your father, is what has driven me to the edge. My beautiful miracle of a daughter, you will never know how loved you would have been. How loved you are. And I will never know you, never learn everything I missed, never get the years back that I didn’t get to watch my little girl grow up because this world is cruel and terrible and I do not want to be under the heel of its boot anymore. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, God, I can’t.
I want to burn this place to the ground with me inside it.
Dear Dad, okay. Okay. I’m not really sure what to write here. As in, I’m not sure how to respond and as in, I’m pretty sure this was supposed to be a suicide note and as in, it’s terrible to say but I wish I didn’t know how much you thought you loved me.
As in, I think you only think you did. I don’t know if I look like Mom– maybe she did have hair like mine and she was certainly A Woman, and maybe I can’t blame you, not knowing what your own daughter looked like because you hadn’t seen her in fifteen years and children do a lot of growing up in between then, so you just picked a few bits and pieces from the gene pool and pasted them onto your idea of me, but I don’t know how that makes me feel.
I’m not her. I could never have been what made us a family again; not after what you’ve done. Maybe (I can’t believe I’m writing this), maybe in the universe where the only person you killed was a legitimately horrible man that, see above, I imagined shoving off a rooftop to fall asleep some nights, maybe we could have been alright. This is, of course, ignoring the fact that you were planning to KILL ANTHONY (SEE: WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU), but I’ve proven myself a dab hand at stopping you from killing people before: see, me.
I thought I was going to leave here, but I can’t. Something about London just pulls me back in; maybe it’s your ghost. Maybe you’re keeping me here because we both have unfinished business. Maybe when I finally get to the end of this journal, I can close it and throw it in the fireplace and Anthony and I can go to Paris, or America, or anywhere besides this city.
Or maybe I’ll keep walking up and down these streets because I don’t have anything better to do, until I’m as old and bitter as you were.
I can’t think about this too hard. I can’t think about what it would have been like to walk through those doors and see you, seeing me for the first time, and God, Dad, in my dreams you don’t mind it. That I don’t look exactly like Mom. That, from the memories I have and the image of all those bodies curled around each other on a cold stone floor, I look quite a bit like you.
As in, in my most selfish and stupid fantasy you see me and you say my name like there aren’t fifteen years between the last time you ever said it to my face, and you say, I missed you, I love you, this can be home if you want it and I love you so much I’ll never shout at you or touch you when you don’t want me to or make you lie to me to be able to sleep at night, and you have been so, so brave to get here but you don’t have to be brave anymore. And then you open your arms, the ones I have nightmares about holding me down while you point a blade at my throat, but this time I can just run into them and let the warm door of your hands shut behind me, not like any cage at all, and you just hold me for as long as I want which could be anything from ten seconds to fifteen more years.
And I don’t know what happens next, because after that I always wake up.
Why the fuck do you have to be dead, Dad? Why do you have to be dead. Why can’t you just be here, and normal, and happy to see me and not killing anyone anymore because yes, fine, I admit it, I am your daughter and I miss you more than I forgive you and I am your daughter and I want my dad.
You were the first person in fifteen years who held me and didn’t want to fuck me, and you wanted me dead. You tried to kill me. You tried to KILL me, Dad. There is a line in my head that I have between how I thought of you, how I’d imagined you might be, before you made me fear for my life, and then afterwards. I can’t go back across that line ever again. There is before, and there is after. I will have your words, your hopes of seeing me again, your professed love for your daughter, but more than any of that I will always have your hand at my throat and the rage in your eyes.
And God fucking forgive me, if you’d realized, if you’d dropped that razor and said oh God Jo, baby, I’m so sorry it’s okay, come here, I would have gone into your arms like a lamb to the butcher who raised it.
August 10, 1888
I have betrayed my Lucy. God, what have I done?
Dear Dad, it does not take an alchemist to surmise that you were fucking your business partner, which, it’s fine. I don’t care. I’m an adult; I know about the birds and the bees and what two people do in the privacy of their own home, or down at the docks, or sometimes just out in the street depending on what part of town you’re in, and I really don’t care. Honestly, the fact that THIS is what you were bent out of shape about instead of the decision to start killing and eating people is kind of hilarious. I hope you had fun, but knowing you, you probably didn’t. I’ve decided that I’m going to engage in what seems to be our family tradition and never think about this again.
September 14, 1888
Johanna,
Wishing you were here today, but I can only ask for your forgiveness here on these pages. What does it matter? I’ll certainly never be providing anyone forgiveness again. In fact, I’ve found myself happy to stay within the first step of our traditional process, which is making he who wronged you aware of the fact. Happy, and extremely adept at it. And you would be ashamed of me, of course you would, but I’m never going to see you again so what. Does. It. Matter. Oh, and a belated happy new year. Shana tova, and may I never see the next damn one.
Dear Dad, I don’t think you can fuck up Yom Kippur worse than not fasting when you’re capable of doing so, and also eating people in the process, but I’m still learning how all this works so fuck me, what do I know?
When I was living with Turpin, he took me with him to confession every month and I sat in that booth, reciting the harmless little story of a wrong I’d invented for this particular session, and usually I’d be asked to say a decade of the rosary or a handful of “Our Father”s. They never really felt like anything worthwhile; if you’ve hurt someone, what’s the point of reciting a bunch of prayers to someone else?
I’ve been going to the British Library every week and sequestering myself in the small, dark corner with all the rabbinical texts and Jews College students and the soft sounds of Yiddish and Russian, mostly, and English peppered with more words I don’t understand. I don’t know what I’m doing. All of this is what you were supposed to teach me; or Mom, I guess. But I want to learn. Maybe it’s to feel close to you in a way that’s allowed. Maybe I just feel more at home here than Anthony’s nice flat, with Anthony’s soft words and perfectly understanding smiles and hands that have never killed anyone. I love him. I do. But he doesn’t get it. I hope to God he never does.
It’s so laughably different from Catholicism; there are rules, but most of them make sense. Pay your workers on time. Don’t force people into sexual intercourse. They call that one a mitzvah, Dad. As if it’s some kind of celebration. Is it? I don’t know. I can’t really think about any of that without feeling a little nauseous.
And then, okay. I read this one section yesterday and copied some of it down so I could write it here. It’s from the Talmud, and it talks about two rabbis who were discussing whether or not, if you passed some rubble from an accident and suspected someone might be trapped underneath, you could try to get them out even if the actions it would take to rescue them were not permitted on Shabbat. And then the section says this:
And for all the other arguments as well, we have found proofs for saving a life from certain danger. But for cases of uncertainty, from where do we derive this? For this reason, all the arguments are refuted. However, the proof that Shmuel brought from the verse: “And live by them,” (Leviticus 18:5) which teaches that one should not even put a life in possible danger to observe mitzvot, there is certainly no refutation.
Life supersedes practice. You can break all the rules as long as it helps another person.
You killed the man who was going to marry and force himself upon me. You killed him because he hurt our family, and because you knew what he was going to do. I don’t have to spend my life in hiding because of you. He’s dead– the man who makes me feel sick whenever I hear church bells is dead because of you, and I don’t know how many people you killed but he will always be one of them. A blot on your perfect record of psychopathy.
How can I ever thank you, I guess.
October 22, 1888
Johanna,
The strangest thing happened today, an instance that momentarily shattered the greyness that has become my day-to-day existence and shot me through with a kind of pain I hadn’t felt in weeks.
A customer came in, one that I assumed would be like all the rest, dealt with like all the rest– and then, at the top of the stairs behind him, a little girl that couldn’t have been more than four or five appeared, holding his hand as he led her up. She had the most delicate little head of long, golden hair and wide, clear blue eyes that searched the room for every detail, and if I’m being entirely honest with myself (I admit, I rarely am these days), I felt a little faint.
I froze when I saw her, missing you so much and so suddenly that I couldn’t move with the pain of it. I don’t know where you are now, just that it’s surely some horrible place even worse than where you were before, and I can’t help you; I can’t do the one damn thing I am supposed to be able to do as a father and keep my daughter safe. I have failed you again, and again, and again, and I am writing letters to no one.
I couldn’t help myself as she watched while I shaved him– I showed her the brush for the lather, and let her hold the little pot, pretending for the briefest of moments that this was a scene from your childhood; that you had accompanied me to work and were acting as my little helper with the promise that, if you were good, we might go for a walk afterwards and I would let you ride on my shoulders and look down at everyone below (maybe not now. My back is not what it used to be).
I have a library in my mind of all these created memories; what I wish desperately could have been. You, taking your first steps. You, being the one to ask “Why is tonight different from all other nights?”. You, sitting down to have your hair braided before bed.
After you were born, I found myself looking more closely at the hairstyles of the women I would see every day, trying to pick apart how they were done and how, when it was long enough, I could put up your hair as beautifully as theirs. Even back then, we didn’t have much. I wouldn’t have been able to give you the dresses they wore, the fancy shoes and bows that cost more than I’d make in five years. But I knew, with a little practice and some patience on your part, they would swear you’d been to the princess’ stylist.
And then– you won’t believe this– the little girl found the teeth. My back was turned for barely a second, and when I saw her next she was opening one of the drawers of my workbench and pulling out the box I keep pulled teeth in. She took one out with no fear or disgust on her face, turning it over in her hand and holding it up to her father. His eyes widened and he told her, Mimi, put that back. She held it up to me instead.
Is this yours, she asked, and finding my voice for the first time since she walked in, I told her no, it was someone else’s that I had to remove because it was hurting them. She asked if it hurt, and I said no more than if it had stayed in their head. It’s rotten, look. She turned it over and saw the black and brown thread running through the top. Ew, she said, then, astonishingly, smiling: wow.
I let her keep it. I don’t know why (yes I do. God, yes I do, and I’m lying to myself enough these days), but she left a few minutes later with her father’s hand in hers, waving at me with the other, the lone rotten tooth tucked in the pocket of her coat. I think they were the first customers to leave my shop alive in weeks. I hope he never comes back.
Dear Dad, today I went down to the docks again, and I dressed as a boy so no one would assume I was a prostitute and try anything like last time, and I don’t know why I keep dressing as a boy to do all these things but it feels so much more practical than dresses and I can’t explain it, the feeling I get when I look in the mirror and see a girl, yes, but one with a chest hidden by a waistcoat and hair under a cap and a girl that looks like a boy, but that’s not important; what’s important is that I went down to the docks and stood looking out at the ships in the harbor, the waves crashing against the wood below, the freezing spray on my face, and God, Dad, I just felt so tired. I keep reading these letters from you, hoping that by the end I’ll have found some key, some collection of phrases or even just singular words that explain who you’re supposed to be to me and who I am, who I can be after everything that has happened, but we’re already at October and I feel like I’m just turning pages to see how terribly you fuck everything up next. I don’t know how I’m supposed to be a person after this. I can’t sleep, I feel so sick all the time, and it feels like the only person who even marginally understands how tired and angry and scared and furious and full of this awful, choking rage at the world I am is currently dead in an unmarked grave with human remains rotting in his stomach.
My eyes are brown, Dad. They’re dark brown, with bags these days the size of Persian carpets, and if Mom’s were blue, then I guess we know what that means.
I don’t know how long I stood there. I don’t remember walking home. All I know is, by the time I reached the front door, it had started to snow.
November 5, 1888
Johanna,
These past few months have felt like a new beginning, and yet at the same time I’ve never felt more opposed. All this talk of starting over, starting fresh, getting a change of scenery; I don’t know if I have it in me. It’s just over ten years until the turn of the century; imagine that. I’d rather not. I suppose I’m older, and it’s harder when you’re older to begin.
I look in the mirror, although I try not to, and don’t even have to wonder if you would recognize me. Of course you wouldn’t. I’m shocked anyone has; never my face, always my tools. There’s grey in my hair and beard, and the walls of this room let the cold in so much fiercer than I swear they did fifteen years ago. The floor creaks louder. It’s all aged. Even the rats are greying, too.
But God, sometimes I can remember what it used to look like. The sun would come in through the window just above my bed, and Lucy used to talk of getting her hands on colored glass somehow (she had a talent for miracles, once. Once.) and replacing the window panes so that every morning, we would wake up to rainbows. She wanted to take charcoal and draw things on the walls for you, even if we couldn’t afford paint. She loved to draw; her portraits were terrible, but she captured nature better than any master I’ve ever had the chance to see. She was going to make you the most beautiful tallit, with the stripes all made from bits of colored fabric. She never liked things to just be one color.
She would hate the place now.
I know what I’m doing, but I can’t stop. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t want to, if I don’t care anymore, or… I don’t know. I used to be the kind of man that could claim he would be a good father, but now– well, perhaps I could, but not without you here. The promise of having you home again was what held the edges of my world together, and they have long fallen apart beyond repair. I have no reason to stay here. I don’t know why I am. I can’t go back to who– to what I was before this, but any forward momentum is just another step into the black. I can’t save you. I hold no illusions about myself, at least in that respect.
It feels like my love for you has become one endless apology: I’m sorry for who I am. I’m sorry for what I have become. I’m sorry for what I’ve done to you; for how the negative space of a loving father has been filled by all the most vile things in this world, and now I can only exorcise that part of myself here, onto these pages, where it is safe and utterly, utterly useless.
If you are still alive, even if it is in a place worse than death itself, please know that I have tried to snuff out every good and kind thing left within me, but the part that just wants to hold you remains as stubborn as I suspect you are. I am afraid, for better or worse, I will always be your father who loves you very much.
Dear Dad, we’re almost at the end so let me tell you what I took from you.
The boy, Rover or Hobie or something, turned that grinder for nearly two full minutes before Anthony finally led him upstairs. I didn’t know you yet; I just recognized the man who had tried to kill me, but something in the pit of my stomach tugged me towards you. Your neck and everything below it was covered in blood, but I knelt down and studied your face and tried to ignore the creeping sense of dread, the little chime in the back of my brain that told me look, doesn’t this seem familiar?
Your razor was lying on the floor halfway between you and the grinder, and without understanding exactly why at the time, I picked it up. It was caked with blood; yours, the old woman’s you were lying on top of, Turpin’s. I closed it and put it in my pocket like there was a soft hand wrapped around my wrist, guiding it to its next of kin.
This is what I have of you. Your razor, your body on the bakehouse floor, your eyes. Your penchant for staring over the edge and considering a jump. Your anger. I keep trying to ignore it, but I think I’m very angry, Dad.
I shoved the razor inside my reticule, a mockery of a family portrait. Here’s you, and Mom, and here’s me unable to look at either of you. At the blood crusting on the blade. I’m glad I have it, though. I need to remember what you did, because if I only had this diary, I might do something unthinkable.
I can’t tell anyone this, but the other night I went to Fleet Street, and I broke in and climbed the stairs and stood in the middle of your old room because there is no grave I could find with your body in it, and I stumbled over all of the words and still can’t make that sound, the glottal catch in the back of my throat that’s supposed to come so easy, and maybe it would if I’d ever heard you say it but the point is that I said the Kaddish for you, Dad. I'm not supposed to forgive you. But I said it anyway. This is all I have left of you: these words in two different languages, and I don't know what any of them mean. Your memory is not a blessing, it’s the coat I pulled from your room that smells like salt air and old leather and iron. Sometimes I wrap it around myself and try to imagine in pieces what it might have felt like to be held by you in a way that didn’t end with me dead. You say you loved me very much, right? Well here’s what you did: you loved me enough to eat the world, and then you tried to kill me.
December 17, 1888
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Johanna,
Dear Dad, I hate you. I truly fucking hate you. What did you write up there? It’s all scribbled out– I think it’s more letters to me, but I can’t tell because your utterly illegible handwriting combined with some really intense black pen has made it so I don’t know what the last thing you wrote before you died is. Just my name. That’s all I have left of you: this book and this razor and my name on a page with a comma at the end of it. Were you trying to explain everything you’d done in a way I’d understand? Did you think there was any justification that would have mattered? Is there? Fuck you. God, fucking fuck you.
Dear Dad, I keep having this dream where I’m meeting you again, and this time I know it’s you and I’m trying to say it’s me, Dad, it’s your daughter, but you push me into that chair and drag the blade across my throat and the words mix with too much blood to be understandable, so instead I just choke on everything while you don’t recognize me. Why didn’t you? Was it because I was dressed like a boy? Was it because I didn't look like what you had been picturing this whole time? Was it because I didn't look enough like Mom? I keep turning those moments over in my head, constructing elaborate and ridiculous fantasies where you look at me and see me, the person I am and the daughter that you keep saying you love, and I don't know– maybe you hold me? Maybe you kill me anyway? But I'll never know, dad, because whatever I am, it wasn't enough to be your little girl.
Dear Dad, I keep learning more about you and waking up each morning and looking in the mirror and seeing little parts of you in who I am and I don’t know if that terrifies me or makes me miss the memory of you even more. I think I have your eyes; big and brown and dark and sure, I can see how someone would feel safe with those. I’m trying to convince myself that with every word of yours I read, almost-memories rise to the surface, but the truth is that I didn’t know you and I don’t remember you and you didn’t know me either. I was a ghost pacing your room with my mother’s face and a child’s devotion to the father that saved her, and now I am the only person left with an even semi-accurate understanding of you. You killed people. You were fucking insane. And yet, here I have undeniable proof that if you had known who I was, you would have held me as tight and long as I wanted because the fact of the matter is that you loved me. You killed the most terrifying thing in my life for me. You wanted to bring me home. And yes, you tried to slit my throat like everybody else who came in that room.
Dear Dad, I know what it's like to kill someone now and it makes me feel sick that that's the closest I've ever been to you. Dear Dad, did you figure out how to get your clothes to stop smelling like blood or did you just get used to it? Dear Dad, I keep replaying the last time I saw you alive in my mind, cursing the fact that I was too terrified of you killing me to memorize what it felt like to be held by you. Dear Dad, I don't forgive you but there's still a few pages left.
For Johanna Ilana Barker,
Here, as best I can remember after so many years, is our family recipe for latkes. You’ll find it on the back of this page. I have so much to teach you, so many things to tell you about the history of our family and our people, but for now I can start with the most important thing: food. It’s for a holiday called Chanukah, where oil that was only supposed to last one night lasted for eight; a miracle. That is what you have always been to me: my little miracle. I hope that when I bring you home, this is something we can share together. I lost my faith for a long, long time; I still don’t believe in a God that cares, not after what I’ve seen and done. But I believe it matters more what you do on this Earth, with this life, than any kind of world that comes after it, and I will spend every day this old man has left with you giving you the life you deserve. Make these, and eat well. It’s tradition.
Love, your father,
Benjamin Abraham Barker