Roots

Roots - Chapter 6

Chapter Six        

A Picture worth A Thousand Words

The next day had to be the longest day in my life.  Sure the upside was that my mom was officially gone for the weekend, so I had the van to drive myself to school, and the house all to myself.  However, every single class seemed to drag on so much longer than I remembered.  Not to mention with the lack of sleep from the past few nights, I was jittery from all the caffeine in my system from coffee, and probably with impatience.

“Lisa, what is the matter with you?  Stop shaking the table.” Eric said as he reached to catch his drink from spilling.

“Yeah, why are you so jittery?” Mandy commented at lunch.

“Uh?” I said as came back to earth from planet questions and daydreams.

“What’s with you?” Eric asked again.

“Sorry, I’m just ready for this school day to be over.”

“Wait you actually want to go see your great grandmother today? Who are you and what have done with my Lisa?” Mandy said as she gave me a weird look before she smiled.

“Yeah I guess I am, well and the fact I’m going to force her to tell me what I need to know about our family.” I said with a smirk.

“There we go, aw look Mandy; our little Russian Spy is getting the hang of it, learning to threaten people, and to possibly torture.” Eric replied with a grin.

“Ha, well I only want to do this so I can beat your butt at Valedictorian.” I said as I picked up my tray as the lunch bell rang loudly, signally that lunch period was over.

“Psssh, whatever, you know what go ahead, to tell you the truth it’s been so lonely being in first place all by myself.  There’s no competition this year without you.” He said as we walked towards our next classes. I smiled back as I thought about the last three years of high school.  He and I had always tied for first in our class every year except this year. Stupid World History!

The second half of the school day continued like the first half. Except in my opinion, time passed extremely more slowly.  However, when the final bell rung I had never left school so fast, in all of my life. 

As I drove, more questions entered my mind; just what exactly was I going to ask Nunna?  How is she going to react? What if my mind is just exaggerating all of this? Did she know about Leon Vasiliev and what he was, or who he was when she married him? And then I came up with the only solution, I’m not going to know until I sit down and talk to her, really talk to her.

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They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but what about a thousand questions?  That’s exactly how I felt as I glanced down at the photograph in my hand before knocking on Nunna’s door before entering.

Knock, Knock, Knock

This was it; I needed all the courage that I had for this, thought to myself as I entered the room was the same as it always was, and even like the last time there sat my great grandmamma by the window in her wheelchair.

“Hey Nunna, it’s me Annalisa.” I said softly as I walked over and leaned down to give her a kiss on the cheek.  Except, she didn’t give me the nod that she always gave my mother, no my Nunna just kept staring out the window as if I never said a word. Alright if this was how it was going to be, then we were going to have to play this question and answer game my way, I thought to myself, as I pulled up another chair and stared out the window, like I always did.