Twisted Roots (4 page)

I was about to pound on the glass and shout it, but the nurse smiled as if there was absolutely nothing wrong, then she said something to another nurse and took him out. I worried about where she had taken him until
I
saw she was bringing him to Mommy's room.
'What's wrong with him?"
I
asked.
"Nothing. He's just hungry," the nurse replied and went in to wake Mommy so she could breast-feed him. She had decided she would do that.
Nothing brought home little Claude's favored place and status in our family more than watching him suckle at Mommy's breast and seeing the angelic joy in her face. Mommy never told me whether or not she had breast-fed me, and suddenly it became very important to know.
"He's so hungry," Mommy said. "That's good."
"Was I breast-fed. too?" I asked abruptly. Mommy looked up at me, holding her smile.
"No, actually, you weren't. I was so crazed back then. Your father and I had separated. I was feeling so abused. Despite what everyone was telling me. I couldn't help believing
I
had permitted him to ruin my life."
"Then you didn't want me to be born?"
"Yes, of course I did. I was just feeling terribly sorry for myself. My mother had died; Linden was not doing very well. as I explained to you. and here
I
was. pregnant with a husband who considered adultery less important than a parking ticket.
But the moment you appeared on the scene, it all changed. It was as if the sun had finally come out on a rainy day."
"Then why didn't you breast-feed me. too?"
She hesitated, glanced at Claude. and then looked at me and forced a smile. Mommy's forced smiles always looked like she could go either way: cry or laugh.
"I just told you. Hannah. I was in somewhat of a state of turmoil. I had no one but Miguel really. I needed to get back on my feet as quickly as I could. I tried to stay home with you as long as I could, but eventually. I had to get out in the world and occupy myself. You
had
a wonderful nanny in Donna Castilla, and Mrs. Davis, bless her soul, watched over you as though you were her very own grandchild. In the beginning
I
had my hands full arbitrating the arguments between the two of them concerning what was best for you and what was not. Do you remember any of that?"
"A little." I said.
"Yes, well. I'm glad
I
didn't keep
a
nanny as long as my stepmother did, even though Amou was more my mother. You, thank goodness, had me and had a stepfather who has always loved you like his own."
"Now he has two children to love," I said.
She gazed down at Claude. I wondered if she could hear my fears in my voice. I really meant he'll love him more. It's only natural. I thought. Claude is his real child and Claude is his son.
"Does that hurt?"
I
asked.
"Breast-feeding? Just the opposite. However. you won't find many Palm Beach mothers doing it. They're terrified of losing their figures."
"Aren't you?"
"No," she said firmly. "Besides, I want to do what's best for him." she added.
Then why didn't you do what was best for me? I wanted to ask. but
I
didn't. I watched for a while, and then, after the nurse returned and took Claude back to the nursery, I went to get Mommy some magazines at the hospital gift shop. When I returned to the room. Miguel was there. He was ranting on and on about his faculty meeting, and Mommy was lying back on the pillow, a smile of amusement painted across her face.
"I mean, they will, they won't. Talk, talk, talk, but
no
action!" he exclaimed,
"They're afraid. Miguel. They have to talk themselves into it first. It takes time."
"Time is not something they have in abundance here. Willow. Oh, what's the use!" he cried and collapsed in the chair, his arms dangling. The he looked up at me and shook his head.
"Don't marry a schoolteacher unless he's independently wealthy." he told me.
"I'm not getting married." I retorted.
"What? Why not?"
"I want to have a carter."
"Your mother has a career and she's married," he said, nodding at Mommy.
"She's different,"
I
said "She can be a psychologist and stay in one place. I will have to travel, do tours, be in shows. I won't have time for a husband and especially not for a child."
"Sure you will," Miguel said.
"No, I won't.
I
especially won't be able to breast-feed," I practically screamed.
The smile lifted off his face. He looked at Mommy.
"It's all right. Hannah. You're too young to have to worry about those things anyway." she said. "What did you get me?" she asked. and I brought her the magazines, "Good," she said, looking them over. You guys better go home." she told Miguel.
"Sure," he said. standing. "I'll be back after dinner." He leaned over and kissed her softly on the mouth.
"Thank you for my son." he whispered loud enough for me to hear.
She beamed.
I turned toward the door. "Hannah?" she called, holding up her arms.
I
went to her and let her embrace and kiss me on the cheek, but my own lips were still stuck in
a
firm pout.
"Take care of Miguel." she said. "Make sure he eats a real dinner and doesn't stop at some taco stand and call that a meal," she added, eyeing him with pretended fury.
He laughed. "She reads my mind, that woman. No wonder she is such a successful psychotherapist."
If
she could only read mine. I thought, she would know how deep the hurt I felt was and how it seemed to travel through my body, even affecting the way I walked. Miguel insisted on stopping by the nursery on our way out.
"One more look to be sure it's all real," he said.
Little Claude was contentedly asleep, his tummy full of Mommy's milk. There was no umbilical cord between them, but he was still dependent on her.
He wasn't a day old, and he was already more a part of this family than I had ever been. I thought.
Maybe more than
I
would ever be.

2
Brothers and Sisters
.
Suddenly I was the center of attention for all

my friends at school. They practically attacked me with their questions when I returned the following day. With Mommy in the hospital. I had use of her car. It was one of those rare heavily overcast days with a marine layer that grew thicker and thicker with every passing hour, the clouds rolling aver each other and growing darker, looking mare scuffed and bruised, until the skies exploded in thunder and seared the underbelly of the stormy ceiling with lightning. Finally a downpour brought some cool air, but the clouds still seemed embedded in my thoughts, and the lightning still sizzled in my eyes.

My girlfriends surrounded me as soon as
I
entered the building. They fired their questions in shotgun fashion.

"How much did your little brother weigh?" "What does he look more like?"
"Does he look at all like you?"
"What's his name?
"Why did they call him Claude?"
"Did your mother hire the nanny yet?" Massy asked pointedly, pushing her way to the forefront.

Mommy hadn't hired anyone even though she had conducted interviews and had
a
dozen or so resumes. She had decided only during the final few weeks not to do so immediately.

"I think it's important for me to be home and continue the breast-feeding," she announced at dinner one night.
I
looked at her and thought Massy was right after all. Despite Mommy's knowledge of psychology, she would be the neurotic mother Massy had predicted.

Massy practically illuminated, her eyes filling with candle flames.
"Not yet?" She laughed. 'I told you." she declared with such an expression of self-satisfaction. I felt my stomach churn. "I told you your mother would be too nervous to put her trust into anyone but family."
"Yes, you told me. You're so brilliant and the rest of us are all stupid." I retorted, shaking my head in front of her and burning my eyes into hers.
"Don't get mad at me for being right," she fired back,
Everyone looked at me. My face was flushed.
I
was already in a mood that serial killers would envy, and here was Massy putting her fat, self-satisfied face in mine.
I smiled coldly at her, "I'm not mad at you for being right, Massy. I'm mad at you for enjoying it so much and for taking your frustrations out on me.'
"Huh?" she moaned, stepping back, her cheeks swelling so much, her eyes seemed to disappear. "What frustrations?"
"Not being able to get Raymond Humphrey to give you the time of day."
I
replied in a voice loud enough for the boys behind us to hear. Raymond being one of them.
Massy's face turned more blue than red. She looked at the other girls, and then, with her eyes filling with tears to drown out those candle flames, she lifted her heavy shoulders, squeezed her books against her ample bosom, and spun around to march away. The boys laughed aloud behind us.
"That was mean. Hannah," Brigitte Sklar said. The others nodded in agreement. "You know she told us that in confidence. We were all trusting each other with our heartfelt, deepest secrets."
"It's her own fault, making me feel bad first."
I
said.
I
hated sounding like I was whining, but that was exactly what I was doing.
"What did she say that was so terrible? She was just trying to give you heads-up about your mother and what things might be like for you at home." Tina Olsen said.
"You should know better." Brigitte insisted. "That wasn't fair."
"Fair has nothing to do with anything!"
I
snapped back at her. "It's childish to think it does."
She didn't reply. She looked at the others and then the bell rang and we headed for our classes. At lunch
I
felt like being by myself. It wouldn't have mattered if
I
hadn't because all my friends were comforting poor Massy, who was milking their sympathy and throwing glances full of darts my way. I had sulked all through my last two classes, not answering questions
I
could have easily answered. Everyone kept her distance between classes, too. They could see in my face that
I
was full of anger and selfpity and not fit company. I found an empty corner at a table and attacked a cheese-and-tomato sandwich as would a ravenous dog.
"Are you that hungry?" I heard and turned to look up at Heyden Reynolds.
"No," I said. "I don't even know what I'm eating." I replied. He smiled and looked toward my friends,
"Trouble in paradise?" he asked me.
"Some paradise,"
I
muttered, His smile widened to reveal how pleased he was about that. Was this a case of misery loves company? I wondered.
"I heard you singing in Mac's class the other day." he said, sliding himself onto the chair across from me. "You have a nice voice. It has timbre."
"Timbre?"
"Yeah. When you want to, you can bellow it aut. Your voice has a thickness, a resonance. It's deep and rich." he continued like a professional music critic. "I like the way you hit the law notes and then lift the melody when you have to and get into the high ones. You've got the range someone needs to make it out there," he added.
I simply stared at him. He raised his eyebrows at my silence and at the way I glared. Then he tucked in the corners of his mouth and began to rise.
"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to poke my nose in your life."
"No!"
I
cried when he turned to walk off.
"No?"
"I mean, you're not poking your nose into my life.
I
mean, you are, but that's okay. I appreciate it. Thank you. Poke all you want."
His annoyed expression flew off and a smile of amusement settled in to replace it. He glanced back at my girlfriends, who were all looking our way with interest, and then he slipped back into the chair across from me.
"So, what's up? Why are you ostracized from the henhouse today?"
"I'm not ostracized. I'm just... just not in the mood for their silly talk."
"Who ever is?" he said. "What happened to put you out of the mood-- or is that me sticking too much nose into your life?"
"It's complicated,"
I
said. "What isn't?" he retorted.
I
glanced up at him. When he spoke, he had an accent that suggested his Haitian mother's influence. There was a unique sort of cadence and melody. He had an intelligence in his eyes, a look that reflected something more mature than most of the boys I knew, and all that was reflected in the confident way he held himself. walked, and talked to people.
"My mother gave birth yesterday." I said. "I have a new brother. His name is Claude. He's named after my mother's father."
"Any other brothers or sisters?"
"I have twin half brothers, my father's sans, but they would deny they're related to me in any way if you asked them."
He sat back. "Is your mother your real mother?"
"Yes. I know what you're thinking, and that's part of what makes everything so complicated."
"What am I thinking?"
"Why did my mother wait so long to have another child?"
"Did your mother just get remarried or something?"
"No. She's been remarried about sixteen years."
"Okay, I'll bite, Why did she wait so long?"
She didn't want to interrupt her career. I guess." And now she does?"
"I don't know."
I
said with more annoyance than
I
had intended, but I did hate answering the questions. "Like I said, it's complicated."
"So, make it simple." he said, standing again.
"How?"
"Do what I did." he replied, picking up his books,
"Start thinking more about yourself. Stop worrying about everyone else, and especially," he added, glancing at the girls again. "what they think."
He walked away. My eyes followed him until he was gone, and then I looked at my girlfriends. They were all chattering at once.
It made me laugh.
They did look like hens in a henhouse.
I
saw Heyden a few more times in the afternoon between classes. He smiled, but he didn't stop to talk to me. I couldn't help being disappointed, and that just added weight to the burden of heavy emotions I was lugging about all day. When the school day ended.
I
was looking forward to going to see my uncle Linden. His home, his world never seemed more appropriate. I felt like moving in with him.
Neither Mommy nor Miguel really knew how often
I
visited my uncle Linden. Whenever
I
was able to get Mommy's car, it was the first place I thought I would visit. It was an easy ride, only a mile and a half off 1-95. Nothing about the house Uncle Linden was in suggested it was a supervised residency. It was a big, front-gabled house with a two-tiered porch. The flat jigsaw-cut upper balustrade and the gable trim were all in a fresh-looking linen white. The rest of the building, except for the shutters, was in a dark chocolate wood cladding.
Stuart and Elizabeth Robinson, who owned and operated the residency, were a very pleasant couple in their fifties. There were only four clients, as they were known, presently living in the house. They had supervised as many as six since I had been visiting Uncle Linden, but two were now gone, one to live with her family, and the other, an elderly man, had become very ill and passed away in the hospital.
Uncle Linden was barely two years older than Mommy, but he looked more like twenty
^.
years older. I once asked Mommy about that, and she said it was probably a result of years of medication and depression.
"The mind has more influence on the body than most people think. Hannah." she told me. "Stress, emotional turmoil, worry, and depression all take a great toll."
To be sure. Uncle Linden was still a rather good-looking man. Although he had some premature graying in his temples, his hair was thick and an interesting shade of blond, more like a light olivebrown. He had dark brown eyes that he directed with such apparent intensity at whoever spoke to him or he spoke to that the person always thought Uncle Linden was concentrating hard on what he or she was saying. Actually, he often turned his brain inside out but left his eyes fixed like that, just the way someone might direct a flashlight on something and walk off. It took me a while to realize it when I was younger, but he could and often did drift away on the shoulders of some thought or some memory. It was my way of knowing my visit had came to an end. My kiss goodbye on his cheek would flutter his eyelids and bring the trace of a smile to his lips, but not much more.
Lately, though, I found him doing this less and less, especially with me, and either Stuart or Elizabeth had told me on more than one occasion how much my uncle looked forward to my visits.
"When he's not absorbed by his painting, he often sits on the porch and watches the highway. hoping. I'm sure, to see you drive up. Hannah." Stuart told me. Then he added in practically a whisper. "He has this fear in his face that he missed you or that somehow you were there and he hadn't paid enough attention to you.
I
know. He's said as much," Stuart said. He patted my hand and added. "He needs reassurance, lots of reassurance. I'm not a psychiatrist and I don't have a degree, but experience has taught me that people who are in his state of mind are constantly afraid of abandonment."
"I'll never abandon him."
I
said, sounding furious at the very suggestion. "If anything, as soon as I am able to. I'll take him out of here to live with me."
"That's very nice," Stuart said. "He's lucky to have a loving niece like you."
I knew that smile was a smile meant to humor a young girl who fantasized, but he didn't know me. He didn't know how determined I could be and how loyal I was, especially now. Uncle Linden was all the family I had, real family, other than Mommy. Daddy was in a class by himself along with his children. I stopped trying to figure out where
I
would fit in his view of things.
As lean as he was in the pictures we had of him when he was much younger, Uncle Linden still ware his hair long and dressed casually, favoring a windbreaker I had bought him for his birthday two years ago. Most of the time he wore jeans and a pair of sandals. One of the things I did do with him occasionally was go for a walk along the street, passing the gates of home developments with their security guards peering out of glass booths at us with what looked like paranoid eyes, expecting us to rush the entrance way and crash into their precious housing development. People knew that the residency was just down the street, and that drew up terrifying scenarios and nightmares for them. I was sure. The Robinsons told me that there had been a number of challenges to their existence over the years, attempts to use zoning ordinances to stop them from housing what was politely referred to as the mentally disabled. It was another in a growing list of reasons why I wanted us to bring Uncle Linden home, He and the other residents had problems, but that didn't mean they couldn't sense being persona non grata.
When I drove up to the home this time. I was pleased to see Uncle Linden sitting on the front porch. He recognized Mommy's vehicle and stopped rocking. As soon as
I
stepped out of the car, he rose and came to the railing to call out, only he called out. "Willow." instead of Hannah.
"It's me. Uncle Linden," I replied.
He stood there strangely gazing past me as if he was really a blind man tying to hear or somehow sense what he was supposed to see.
"It's Hannah." I said, hurrying to the steps.
"Oh. Hannah. Hannah," he said. nodding. He smiled and
I
rushed up to embrace him.
"How are you today?"
"Good," he said, nodding and looking thoughtful about it. "Good." he concluded. "Where's your mother?"
"She's still in the hospital. She might be coming home tomorrow morning. It all depends on Claude."
"Hospital?" He sat in the rocker, his face turning ashen with concern. "
^-
What's wrong with her?"
It
simply hadn't occurred to me that neither Mother nor Miguel had called the residency to tell Uncle Linden about little Claude's birth. I knew from previous visits and one visit, nearly seven months ago with Mommy, that Uncle Linden knew she was pregnant. She didn't spend very much time talking about it, and I remember he seemed unimpressed, even though she had gone so long without becoming pregnant.
Maybe they were planning on telling him today. They didn't know I was coming to see him. but Mommy hadn't told me to wait for her to tell him or anything like that. However, she always made it seem like I should tiptoe around Uncle Linden and never volunteer any more information about our family life than he actually asked about.
"I know it's hard, maybe even impossible for you to realize how ill he was and still is," she instructed. "so please especially try to avoid talking about the past. If he brings anything up from our past, just say you don't know anything and you're not comfortable talking about it. He'll understand and stop.
"I'm not saying you can make him sicker or anything like that. Hannah," she added when she saw the expression on my face. "I just don't want you to feel any sort of pressure."
"I never do," I said.
"No. I'm sure you don't. and I am happy about that.
I
do know he enjoys seeing you very much, so spend your time talking about yourself, your school, your music lessons, things like that.
He has no other way of learning about that sort of thing, you know, Okay? You understand?" she asked. and I nodded even though I didn't understand. Why was our family past filled with so many minefields? I knew so little detail about everything anyway. What was she afraid I would say? It did make me nervous.
And so whenever Uncle Linden did begin to drift off, to talk about life before me. I interrupted and mentioned something that had just happened. Sometimes he would bite and ask me about it, and sometimes he would simply clam up and take on that far-off look, and I knew he was hearing another voice, seeing another face. That was my clue to end my visit.