Twisted Roots (DeBeers 3)

"Oh, no. darlin'. You go out and enjoy the beautiful day with your family. There's not much here to do, and it keeps my mind occupied."

I stood up and then paused just before turning to start away.

"My cousin told me you said Bess forgot about yesterday and last night," I said.

"Yes. Just as I suggested, she didn't do anything different from what she ordinarily does these days, so she might not think of you as Rosemary this morning. I really don't know if she even remembers you are here. Needless to say, there haven't been many opportunities for such a thing as what happened last night to happen. None of Rosemary's school friends ever came here. They rarely came when Rosemary was alive. You're the youngest visitor since the tragedy."

"Do you have her in some sort of therapy program or did you ever?"

She shook her head. "Time is the only therapy program she's in now. It's not easy to share your troubles with strangers."

She turned away, her shoulders slumping. How different this was from the world I knew. I thought. There, most parents wouldn't think twice about putting their children into some formal therapy. In fact, they don't think twice about putting themselves into it. Many of my friends at school talked about their parents being in some form of counseling or another. It was almost a sign of accomplishment, prestigious, and certainly never something about which someone would be ashamed.

"It's getting more and more difficult for people to find a sense of themselves, have an identity with which they can be comfortable. settle in their own bodies," Mommy once told Miguel. "How many people out there look into a mirror and see a stranger or at least someone they would rather not see?"

"Don't knock it. It's your gold mine." he quipped.

"I don't know. Miguel. I don't know how long I can do this. I wonder more and more every day how my father was able to do it all of his adult life and enjoy it without it destroying him. He had a way of leaving it all outside his door when he came home from work. I'm not as strong as that"

"So, stop trying to be him. Be yourself," Miguel advised, and I remember wondering was that what Mommy was trying to do, and was that something I would try to do: be her? I was old enough to understand the implications. Would I be like the people she saw? Would I be struggling forever to find out who I am?

Wasn't that really what I was doing now with Heyden and Uncle Linden: running off to find another Hannah Eaton out there, a new one who could be happier and more contented with herself? Maybe that was just as big an illusion as the one Bess lived in. I thought.

I stepped out of the house and saw Chubs and Heyden working in front of the big barn. With their sleeyes rolled up and the streaks of dirt on their cheeks and chins, they both loo

ked like they were bathing in grease. But I could see they were chatting away happily, neither looking frustrated or disgusted with the work. Heyden waved when he saw me and then nodded toward the field on my right, There Uncle Linden stood before his easel. I saw Bess sitting on a large rock facing him. As I started toward them, my heart began to pound. Whom would she see when she saw me?

"Rosemary!" she called, answering my question when I was less than a dozen yards from them, Uncle Linden turned to me and smiled.

"Here she is." he declared. "Now I won't need this picture anymore."

He put a photograph aside.

-Hurry, Rosemary!" Bess cried. "Mr. Montgomery is working on putting you in the picture. too. He's been using the most recent picture of us, the one I always carry in my pocket."

So there -was a picture of them that hadn't been hidden away. I thought. How could she look at it and look at me and still think I was her daughter, returning?

Bess was still wearing a robe and her hair was down, unbrushed, the breeze lifting and turning strands every which way. She looked wild, but yet very beautiful, natural and unspoiled.

"Come here," she said, patting the space beside her. "It's not hard to be a model, and you can move whenever you want. right. Linden?" she asked.

I raised my eyebrows, Linden? How did they get so close and familiar with each other so quickly?

Uncle Linden nodded, "Of course." he said. "All I have to do is take glimpses, little snapshots of my subject. They get locked in here," he said, pointing to his right temple. "I don't mean you should dance on the rock, but don't think you have to be as still as a statue."

"Hurry." Bess said. "We're getting our picture done by a very famous modern artist."

"Oh, not that famous. Bessie," he said. "I've sold a few pictures, that's all."

"You're the most famous artist who has ever stepped foot on this farm." she insisted, and they both laughed.

How well they are getting along, I thought, Some cynical person might say It takes one to know one." They bath have emotional and psychological problems. But perhaps it was just that they both instinctively understood how each craved some affection, some attention, and concern for their inner feelings. In that way they weren't so different from the rest of us after all.

I stepped up to the rock.

"Did Grandma make you a nice breakfast?"

"Yes," I said.