Twisted Roots (DeBeers 3)

He then leaped into the ambulance and gazed down at the baby.

The paramedic who had spoken shook his head. He did it so slowly, it was truly like a slow-motion sequence in a movie. My ears began to ring. Some terribly laud noise was raging through my body. I looked up at Lila, who had crumbled against the doorjamb, her body shuddering like someone who had seized a live electric wire.

I realized what the terrible loud noise was.

It was coming from me. I was screaming as hard as I could, a single note, high-pitched,

ricocheting off the front of Java del Mar and shattering in the air around us.

The second paramedic took hold of Miguel as he began to collapse. He held him at the waist and kept him standing. I stopped screaming and hurried up to Lila, who turned and embraced me. We held on to each other with a desperation that froze my heart. Then I looked up the stairs. Mommy was coming down slowly, moving like a sleepwalker.

"Mommy!" I called. She didn't hear me. She continued toward us and emerged on the portico as Miguel came out of the ambulance.

He looked up at he

r. He was crying hard now. and I remember how strange it looked for a grown man to bawl like a little boy. It made me cry harder. too.

Mommy started toward him, but not halfway there, she crumbled as if she had turned to liquid and poured down to her feet.

"MOMMY!" I screamed with all my strength and being,

"WILLOW!" Miguel cried and ran to her. The paramedics were at his side in seconds.

They gave her smelling salts and revived her, but she shook her head vigorously, wanting to deny reality certainly, and wanting only to return to her blissful state of unconsciousness. They kept her awake and, using another stretcher, lifted her and carried her back into the house at Miguel's direction, bringing her back to their bedroom.

Terrified and vet unable to stop myself from doing it. I went to the ambulance and gazed at little Claude. His little mouth was barely open. His eyes were shut. I touched his tiny fingers, realizing that I had not been with him very much at all when he was alive. How I wished my contact with him could somehow resurrect him. Wouldn't Mommy love me then? Of course, that was not to be.

-Goodbye, little Claude," I whispered and I stepped out. Lila put her arm around my shoulders, and we walked into the house.

"How did this happen?" I wondered aloud. Mommy had been practically still attached to my little brother through an invisible umbilical cord.

She fell asleep. She tried not to, but she was exhausted, and when she woke, he was already in trouble," Lila explained through her sobs and tears. "I heard her screaming for Miguel, but he had already gone after you. so I went to the phone and called 911."

Her explanation felt like a ton of rocks falling on me and then turning to ice. Mommy had been shouting for Miguel, but he was gone to get me? I had been the one to pull him away at the most critical of moments?

I gazed up the stairway at the sound of the paramedics coming down, talking softly to

themselves. I heard them say little Claude would have to be taken to the hospital for an autopsy.

Lila walked away, her head down.

"I'll make something, maybe coffee, maybe tea," she babbled to herself.

Slowly I headed upstairs, my legs feeling detached from the rest of me, carrying the rest of me like a true burden up the stairway. In the hallway outside of Mommy's room. I heard her wailing and pausing to continually ask Miguel if it was true. if Claude was really gone.

He repeated "I'm afraid so" each time until suddenly she began to shout at him.

"Where were you? Why weren't you here when I needed you. Miguel? Where were you?"

"I went to get Hannah. remember?"

'Hannah," she repeated. Never had my name sounded more like profanity to me.

"Yes. Remember I had located her at that boy's home."

Blood rushed into my face. Now she would know it was my fault. She would always think of it as my fault. I was responsible for Miguel being gone. If he had been here, he might have been able to do something or get the baby to medical help faster.

Suddenly all the jealousy I had felt, all the envy I had experienced turned dark and evil in my heart. It was as if a mask had been removed and behind it was the laughing devil himself taking pleasure in what he had done to me. what I had permitted him to do to me.