Under the Willow Root

Chapter 13

"And those who were seen dancing were thought crazy by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche

Lara Ashley's face stares at me from the confines of the picture frame, her laughing eyes full of life and mischief. I touch my own face, which I know is a near mirror-image even though my mother was a few years older in this picture than I am. It was taken at her high school graduation. She was seventeen...no, eighteen. Her birthday was in April. April twenty-second. I have to consciously call up this fact from my memory the way I would a piece of information from a text book. It's not an everyday fact, not a part of me the way my birthday or my grandmother's is.

Baba Nadia's arms envelop me from behind, and I squeak in surprise. She moves like a ghost even in this old, creaky house. Baba Nadia chuckles and picks up the picture, gazing at it with a familiar mix of bittersweet joy and crushing grief. As always, seeing such strong emotion in an elder makes me uncomfortable and I look away, tracing the lines of my grandfather's bland, remote face.

"I have something for you," Baba Nadia finally says. "For your birthday."

"What is it?" I ask immediately, as excited as any little kid getting a birthday present.

"Come sit down," she says, and leads me into the kitchen.

"Well?" I ask eagerly, grinning in anticipation.

"Patience, kitten," Baba Nadia laughs.

She takes out a small box from the pocket of her robe. It's so prettily wrapped I almost don't want to open it. Almost. I carefully remove the silver ribbon and paper and open the box to reveal an exquisite antique pendant wrought of lacy white gold and moonstone. I gasp with delight and turn it over in my hands, admiring the elegant lines.

"Someone very special gave me that on my fourteenth birthday," she says. "I wore it for many years."

"What made you stop?" I ask, still engrossed in my present.

"It made your grandfather uncomfortable," Baba Nadia said. "Not that he ever said anything, dear man, but he was never particularly good at hiding his feelings."

At this, I tear my eyes off the pendant and look curiously at my grandmother. "Why did it make him uncomfortable? Who gave it to you?"

Baba Nadia smiles. "Your namesake. Aleksander. He gave it to me on my fourteenth birthday, right before he left to fight the Germans. It was his mother's, and the most valuable thing he owned. I told him I couldn't possibly accept it, but he said he was giving it to me with his mother's blessing, that she had given it to him to give to his wife. He wanted to give it to me a little early, he said, so I would have something to hold on to while he was away. It never entered either of our heads that he wouldn't come back, or that I would leave. He was only seventeen."

A tear trembles at the corner of her eye, threatening to escape. I realize that my mouth is hanging open and I shut it with a click. I don't know what to say.

"Is that the boy in the picture next to your bed?" I finally ask.

"Yes," she says with a little laugh. "He was so handsome, and so proud to be a soldier. He was bursting with it. He could barely sit still for the picture."

I'm silent for several minutes while I take this in. The idea that my grandmother had loved someone else before she met my grandfather is shocking. Even that she loved anyone in a non-grandmotherly way is new for me. I've never thought of her as a girl--a young woman. I've never thought of her as anything but my grandmother. It's strange...and a little uncomfortable.

"What happened to him?"

"He died," Baba Nadia says simply, but I can see the pain behind her eyes. "I found out much later, of course, long after my parents sent me away."

Once again I find myself at a loss for words. I have no idea what to say or how to reconcile this suddenly real and vivid picture of Nadia, a girl my age, with Baba Nadia, my grandmother. She saves me from having to reply by taking the pendant from my limp grasp and fastening it around my neck.

"I want you to have it," she says. "So would he, if he were here. He would have been your grandfather...he should have been. He would have loved you so much, kotik."

She pats my hand and shuffles off as silently as she came, leaving me feeling overwhelmed and confused. I head out to the studio and mull things over as I warm up. Then I dance, letting emotions and ideas pass through the music like flour through a sieve and sort themselves out through movement. When I'm done, I feel like I've sweated out all the bad so that it lies on the surface of my skin, ready to be washed off. Only the good remains, the trust that my grandmother placed in me and the memory of her first love.

Later, as I lie on Baba Nadia's enormous bed with Melanie and Tara giggling on either side of me, I wonder why my mother named me for her mother's dead fiancee rather than her own father. Somehow it disturbs me, and I resolve to ask Baba Nadia about it later. Then Melanie shrieks with laughter at something on Tara's phone and I roll over to look, all thought of names and long-dead husbands and lovers forgotten.