Gastown : Xanadu : The Onyx City Manuscripts by Philip Relmond

2. Marta Espinoza Renard Dubois Delano (1906-1979).

YOUR FATHER DIDN'T KNOW I was pregnant with you, Jacky, when he left in September, 1940, for that job in the Dutch East Indies. I was supposed to follow him in January, but by then I learned I was carrying you, and my ankles had begun to swell, and the doctors advised me to stay in Los Angeles. Fortunately, your aunt Juanita came up to help me. Then you were born in June, 1941, on the twelfth. Your father was planning to come back to live with us, but the Pacific war began in December and... we never heard from him again. The Japanese took the Indies... and... Raoul disappeared.

What? Oh, no, it's all right. I cried, yes. Still do, sometimes, especially after I dream that I see him again. We should have known, of course. He should never have gone. But he thought the British would protect the Dutch colonies, from the base at Singapore. One last letter came in November, and then... nothing.

No, no, I'll be all right. Thank you.

You remember those first years, when you were such a wonderful little boy? How you came to my room at night when you heard, or felt, that I was crying in bed... I tried to be quiet but somehow you always knew. You came dragging your favorite blanket down the hall of that house that grandmother left us - but you don't remember her or... grandfather... or my parents, either, they all... died... before you were born.

To Chapter 3.

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