Twenty years earlier, Robert Johnson also had a child he never met. That baby was stillborn. When his gloomy wife found out that he was also having an affair, she committed suicide. Robert’s life became more and more tragic.
His health deteriorated rapidly and he died quite early, at the age of 59. He was all alone when he passed away. In a room in a TB clinic on Roosevelt Island between Manhattan and Queens. The year was 1978: he was dead, broke, and with no family or friends.
He was then taken as a pauper to a mass grave on Hart Island 41 years ago. I walk by Daria’s side when, after a long search, she finally finds the place where her long-lost father lies in the ground. It turns out that he comes from Scandinavia (Norway or Sweden, she doesn’t know exactly). First his name was Robert Johnston, then Johnson. His year of birth was 1919.
Daria feels deep shame about how she came into the world how her life began and what events it all started. One of her several stepfathers called her one as a child disease (illness), because she was the only one in the family to have blonde hair (perhaps her Scandinavian roots that she didn’t know about at the time). It took her years to get over those humiliations.
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