Dead Past

looked at it before inserting it into a player. She felt really reluctant to listen to Juliet in one of her sessions with Laura. It was as if she would be listening to something she had no business hearing. However, if Juliet thought it was a good idea . . . Diane slipped on the earphones, and pressed the PLAY button.
    “Juliet, tell me what you remember.” This was Laura’s voice.
    There was no introductory conversation. Laura had edited the tape. Diane felt better.
    “Dark and hard to breathe. I’m afraid of being closed in,” said Juliet. Her voice was low and soft.
    “Just tell me what you remember. We’ll talk about your fears later,” said Laura.
    “I remember dark, and something in my eyes that hurt. I do remember that. I don’t know when that was—I could have been playing outside, for all I know,” said Juliet.
    “That’s OK. We just want to look at your conscious memories right now,” said Laura. “Do you have any other memories that frighten you or that you find mysterious or simply can’t connect up with anything that your parents remember about your childhood?” asked Laura.
    There were a few moments of silence. “I had a doll that Gramma said I must have stolen. I didn’t, but I don’t know where I got it,” said Juliet. “Gramma was a strict woman, but she could be fun sometimes, especially when she baked or when we collected seashells on the beach.”
    There was a pause, and Diane could hear Juliet breathing.
    “I remember being in a dark room with new dolls. I remember a baby doll, and I remember being afraid in the room.” She paused again. “The room had hardwood floors.” Juliet laughed. “I’m not afraid of hardwood floors.”
    Diane heard Laura laugh, too.
    “I remember running from something,” continued Juliet, “just running. I remember someone saying, ‘She said you took it.’ I don’t know if any of these memories are connected to the same thing, but they all give me the same fear when I think of them. I have very few memories before the age of seven. That’s when it happened, and I don’t really remember getting kidnapped at all. I don’t know if any of these memories are from the kidnapping. I used to have this dream of rows and rows of new dolls. The dreams stopped for a long time, and now they’ve started back. I don’t know why. And I don’t know why I’m afraid of them.”
    “What do you mean by new dolls?” asked Laura.
    “Dolls still in the box,” said Juliet. “What does it mean?”
    “I don’t know, yet,” said Laura. “But we’ll find out. Memory is funny. I have a friend who associates the name Louise with vinegar .”
    Diane smiled. That was her. It was something she told Laura when they were kids. Talk about memory.
    “Vinegar?” said Juliet.
    “The word Louise sounded like vinegar to her—that’s the best she could explain it to me. It may be that when she was little she met someone named Louise who spilled vinegar, and the association stuck. But most probably, when she learned the words Louise and vinegar, they somehow got stored in the same place in the brain. Or there could be some other reason entirely.”
    “My memories are so frustrating,” said Juliet. “They don’t make sense to me.”
    “Early memories are not always accurate,” said Laura. “There was this book that I liked as a young child—it was one of the Golden books. In the book there was a red ball and red wallpaper. To this day when I see a certain kind of red wallpaper, it reminds me of that book. The same with a certain kind of ball. Not long ago I was sorting some stuff in the attic and came across that book. I looked through it for that ball and wallpaper and, to my surprise, the drawings were much cruder and the colors much less vivid than my memory of them. The drawings were childlike in the book, but in my memory they were more polished—finished.”
    “How does that happen?” asked Juliet. “I thought memories were written in stone once they get stored.”
    “No. Your memories change over time as the brain develops, or as people and events influence them. Some memories are only memories of something that was told to you, and your brain filled out the image. If all your life your parents and relatives tell you a story of how you fell in the creek and almost drowned, you will likely have a memory of it, especially if you’ve ever seen the creek where you were told the event occurred. That happened to my cousin. Years later, she