Tangled Roots

by Marcia Talley

  ‘Thank you, Mary,’ Paul breathed close to my cheek.

  Dad’s family, the Alexanders, descended from sturdy, Scottish stock. Our dad was a George from a long line of Georges who were fairly easy to track through successive US censuses, not having moved around a lot during the previous three hundred years.

  ‘If you’re going to keep interrupting,’ I said while typing, adding a trio of siblings to the Alexander line, ‘do something useful, like massage my shoulders.’

  ‘Have you run up your grandmother’s line on your father’s side?’ he asked, applying gentle kneading pressure to my aching muscles.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said, leaning back gratefully and surrendering to his magic fingers. ‘Right now I’m trying to clean up the mess Georgina’s made. She’s got one of our great-great-grandmothers married to herself and two of the poor woman’s children born years before her marriage, which would probably have been a big no-no back in 1820.’ I corrected the spousal connection, then clicked off through the database in search of Sam and Maud Alexander’s marriage record.

  Working on Gen-Tree was as addictive as playing the quarter slots at Atlantic City. I’d just be thinking of quitting and then … I’d click on one more pennant. And then, well, OK, maybe one more. Before long, I had followed a promising hint and found myself back in Vermont with the Smiths.

  My third great-grandmother on my mother’s side, Helen Smith, was one of thirteen children. Four of the poor woman’s ten children perished in a typhoid epidemic in 1856 while still in their teens. ‘I. Can’t. Even,’ I muttered, as I linked to a photo of a weather-worn tombstone for sixteen-year-old Abigail that someone had posted on FindAGrave.com.

  ‘That’s why they had big families,’ Paul offered, not so helpfully.

  ‘Some simply can’t manage it,’ I said, indicating an icon of a sorrowful angel. Back in 1876, baby Richard lived for six hours, and his mother died the following day.

  I’d lost a baby sister, Mary Rose, to crib death, and even after all these years, the memory still stung. ‘Vermont keeps terrific records,’ I said, moving on quickly before I could tear up, ‘but some other states, not so much.’ Baby Richard’s father had remarried, but I lost track of him after the 1880 census. The entire US census for 1890 had been destroyed in a fire at the Commerce Department in Washington, DC, and by the time the 1900 census rolled around the guy had disappeared.

  ‘What are you looking for, exactly?’ my husband wanted to know. ‘I can’t see how tracking this dead boy’s father is going to get you any further along on the Native American question.’

  I clicked on my own icon – my senior yearbook picture from Oberlin College, the one where I was rocking the Dorothy Hamill wedge – and displayed my immediate family tree. My parents, four grandparents and eight great-grandparents lined up in rows of tidy boxes. ‘If I am one-quarter Native American, it stands to reason that it happened in this generation here,’ I said, indicating the row of boxes representing my grandparents.

  Although my mother had died fairly young of congestive heart disease following decades of smoking, the four grands had lived long and happy lives, until – as one death certificate had put it – ‘a surfeit of years’ had carried each of them away. Earlier, I had uploaded family portraits of each of them. ‘Nobody looks the least bit Native American,’ I pointed out.

  Paul leaned closer to the screen, adjusted his reading glasses to better study the images. ‘I’d have to agree.’

  ‘I wish I could ask Mom some questions,’ I told him.

  ‘You can’t assume it’s on your mom’s side of the tree,’ Paul said. ‘Could be your dad. He’s still alive and kicking. Why don’t you ask him if he remembers anything?’

  ‘I plan to,’ I said, ‘but he’s been away. When I talked to Neelie the other day, she mentioned he’s off in Florida tweaking some component on a SpaceX guidance system.’

  Cornelia ‘Neelie’ Gibbs was my father’s long-time girlfriend. Why they hadn’t tied the knot, I couldn’t say, although I suspect it had something to do with the retirement benefits from Neelie’s late husband which, I gathered, had set her up for life as long as she didn’t remarry. It didn’t trouble me that Daddy was ‘living in sin’ with Neelie, but it had been an issue for Georgina’s husband, Scott Cardinale. A ‘recovering Catholic’, he dragged his family off every Sunday to an evangelical mega-church just outside the Baltimore beltway, where he served as Treasurer, taught Sunday School, and led a Wednesday night Bible study class. ‘I called Dad’s cell and left a message for him to call,’ I said. ‘But I didn’t say exactly why.’

  Paul pulled up a chair and sat down next to me. ‘Meanwhile, since you don’t have your test back, and just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Georgina’s results are accurate.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘First scenario. Your DNA is relentlessly North European and Georgina’s adopted.’

  ‘Impossible. I remember when she was born. Mom was so pregnant she couldn’t fit behind the wheel of a car.’

  He held up two fingers. ‘Second scenario. Your dad’s in the Navy, on active duty. Maybe your mom had an affair while he was deployed?’

  I punched him in the arm. ‘Shut your mouth! That is totally out of the question.’ I thought for a moment. ‘Besides, when Mom got pregnant with Georgina, we were living in San Diego. Dad had a desk job at the Naval Sea Systems Command, doing …’ I paused to think. ‘Developing something that had to do with landing planes on aircraft carriers.’

  Paul shuddered. ‘Those guys are gods.’

  I had to agree. Anyone who could land a plane at full throttle on a moving target no larger than a football field in the middle of the ocean deserved respect.

  ‘So, one of these,’ Paul said, indicating my grandparents, ‘is full-blooded Native American.’

  ‘So it would seem.’

  ‘Or, perhaps two of them were half Indian?’

  I shot daggers. ‘You can be exasperating sometimes, you know that, darling?’

  ‘Or one-eighth and three-eighths,’ he continued with a grin. ‘Or, three-sixteenths and five-sixteenths, or …’

  ‘That’s enough for today,’ I said, cutting him off before he could lob more fractions my way. I logged off the website and shut down the computer.

  Paul rose from his chair and rested a hand on my shoulder. ‘Maybe Georgina’s test was wrong and all this is for nothing.’

  ‘Oh, not for nothing,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you the least bit curious to know why a Vermont death certificate lists great-great-great-grandmother Smith’s death at age eighty-three as “suicide by hanging”?’

  ‘The one with thirteen kids?’

  ‘Ten,’ I corrected.

  ‘I rest my case.’

  ‘Go away,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it your turn to cook dinner?’

  For our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, our daughter Emily had given us a three-month subscription to a popular meal delivery service. Turns out, Paul enjoyed the service more than expected, throwing himself into meal preparation like, well, a mathematician. His small dice of green peppers – precisely six by six by six millimeters – had to be independently verified using a specially-marked cutting board he’d bought for himself from a company called Obsessive Chef.

  It was agonizing to watch.

  ‘Besides,’ I said, ‘how else would I know that I’m related to Lovey Bean, whose descendent, Leon Leonwood Bean, founded L.L. Bean?’

  ‘Think that will get you a free pair of duck boots?’

  I put a hand flat on his back and shoved him out the door ahead of me. ‘A gal can dream.’

  THREE

  Not long after Paul and I had crawled into bed, Dad returned my phone call. ‘Did I wake you up?’ he asked to my groggy hello.

  ‘No, no,’ I said while squinting at the bedside clock. 10:42. I propped myself up on one elbow. ‘I had to get up anyway. The phone was ringing.’

  Dad chuckled, deep and gravelly. ‘Sorry to be calling so late, but
I was out to dinner with some of the team.’

  I heard ice clink against glass – my father’s nightly tonic and lime ritual. ‘Papa Vito’s,’ he said, adding in his best Valley Girl accent, ‘the cheese bread is to die for. I may never have to eat again.’

  ‘Where are you, exactly?’ I asked.

  ‘If I told you, sweetheart, I’d have to kill you.’

  ‘Seriously, Dad!’ I really wasn’t in the mood for jokes.

  ‘Florida.’ The ice clinked again.

  ‘Neelie said it had something to do with SpaceX,’ I said.

  ‘Tangentially,’ he said. ‘What goes up must come down, at least that’s the idea. Sideways spoils everyone’s day.’

  ‘When do you get back?’

  ‘Back’ would be to the two-bedroom condo he shared with Cornelia Gibbs at Calvert Colony, an upscale retirement community that sprawled grandly along the banks of the Chesapeake Bay just outside of Annapolis. It was adjacent to Paradiso, the day spa owned by our daughter, Emily, and her husband, Daniel Shemansky, or Dante as he preferred to be called. Just plain Dante, like Elvis, Madonna or Cher. The spa had been a dream of my son-in-law ever since he dropped out of Haverford College a year before graduation and eloped with our daughter. Somewhere I had a photo of the happy couple posing in front of a wedding chapel in Las Vegas. Not an auspicious start to a life-long relationship that now included three adorable children.

  ‘Next week,’ Daddy was saying. ‘Neelie’s signed us up for a Road Scholar trip to Cuba. Thirteen days of birdwatching.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were interested in birds.’

  ‘I’m not, but Neelie’s passionate about her feathered friends. According to the brochure, there are twenty-five avian species unique to Cuba. She hopes to add some of them to her life list.’

  Tramping around all day in hot, humid, tropical rainforests didn’t appeal to me one bit, and I said so. ‘I’d rather hang out with artists and musicians in Havana.’

  ‘What? And miss the opportunity to spot a rare Gundlach’s hawk?’

  ‘Tragic,’ I said.

  Next to me, Paul stirred, opened an eye and said, ‘What’s going on?’

  I flapped a hand at him and whispered, ‘Sorry. Just talking to Dad. Go back to sleep.’

  After another sip of his drink, Dad said, ‘It’s wonderful to hear your voice, Hannah, but I got the impression from your message that there was something on your mind.’

  I scooted up in bed and rearranged the pillow between my back and the headboard. ‘I wanted to give you a heads-up on something. And also pick your brain.’

  ‘Sounds ominous. Do I need to add some gin to my tonic?’

  This was a joke, and I knew it. Dad was a recovered alcoholic. He’d earned his ten-year medallion from Alcoholics Anonymous and was proud of his hard-won sobriety. And so were we.

  ‘You know those DNA test kits Georgina handed out a while back?’ I asked.

  ‘If you’re calling to nag me about sending it in …’

  ‘No, it’s not that,’ I said, gathering my nerve, stalling for time, ‘but, uh, did you?’

  ‘Did I what? Take the test?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Forgot all about it, sweetheart.’

  That didn’t surprise me. He’d accepted the test kit from Georgina reluctantly. She’d flounced off in a snit after he referred to the commercial testing company she’d chosen as ‘recreational DNA’. He’d made no secret of his disdain for the industry either, lumping it together with pseudosciences like aromatherapy and homeopathy. I thought he was overreacting.

  I forged on. ‘You know the fine print, where they warn you to be prepared for identity-disrupting surprises?’

  ‘Uh huh,’ he said cautiously. ‘Cut to the chase, Hannah.’

  ‘Georgina’s test just came back. According to Gen-Tree DNA, she’s one-quarter Native American.’

  A long, low whistle came down the line, then silence.

  ‘That means that either you or Mom—’

  He cut me off. ‘I know what it means. And it’s nonsense.’

  I explained that Georgina had demanded a re-do from the company and was still waiting for results. I told him I’d sent my test kit in, too.

  ‘So the jury’s still out,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘But, what?’

  ‘I’ve done a good bit of reading since Georgina called with the news, and Gen-Tree’s quality control is convincingly solid. Because each company uses a different database, results may vary from one DNA company to another, even between identical twins, but specimen contamination and out-and-out mix-ups are rare.’ I paused to take a breath. ‘I’m proceeding on the assumption that Georgina’s test results are accurate.’

  Daddy let the remark pass. ‘Did the test identify a specific tribe of Native Americans?’

  ‘The science is confusing, Dad, at least to me. Apparently they can link you to one of five broad mitochondrial DNA haplogroups but they’re unable to pinpoint a particular tribe or even a particular combination of tribes,’ I told him. ‘The database is too small. I read while I was poking around that forty-four percent of Native Americans belong to haplogroup A.’

  ‘What was Georgina’s haplogroup, do you know?’

  I confessed that I didn’t. ‘I’m waiting to see how my test results turn out before digging any deeper. I don’t intend to become the world’s foremost authority on Native American mitochondrial haplogroups unless I have to.’

  ‘When will you know?’ Dad asked.

  ‘I waved goodbye to my saliva this morning,’ I said, ‘so five or six weeks. I hope the suspense doesn’t kill me.’

  After a moment, Dad said quietly, ‘Hannah?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t want you to lose any sleep over this. It doesn’t change who I am or who your mother was.’

  I puffed air into the phone. ‘I know that!’

  ‘There’s nothing you can do to change the past,’ he added gently.

  ‘I know that, too,’ I said, but there was something in his voice – was it a hint of apology? – that made me think Dad knew more about our family tree than he was admitting.

  After we said goodbye, I lay flat on my back staring at the ceiling, listening to Paul’s gentle snoring. Shadowy leaves hopscotched over the striped wallpaper, cast by a full moon shining through the branches of a tulip poplar just outside our bedroom windows.

  I closed my eyes, slowed my breathing and concentrated on repeating the mantra I’d been given – hirim, hirim, hirim – but my thoughts kept drifting.

  DNA. Fractions.

  All along, I’d been focusing on one of my grandparents. But as Paul had pointed out before dinner, there were other mathematical possibilities. Despite everything I believed I knew about her, had my mother been unfaithful?

  FOUR

  ‘In the nucleus of every cell,’ I read aloud to Coco, ‘there are twenty-three pairs of chromosomes. Twenty-two of these matched pairs are called autosomes, while the twenty-third pair – either X or Y – determines your sex.’

  My daughter’s chocolate-colored Labradoodle cocked a shaggy brow and considered this information with eyes of liquid gold. Her tongue lolled as if to say, ‘And dogs have thirty-nine pairs of chromosomes, did you know that, Hannah? Neener, neener, neener!’

  ‘Smarty pants.’ I patted the dog’s head and continued reading.

  Autosomal DNA is inherited equally from both parents – I remembered that from college biology – and includes contributions from previous generations in ever lessening fractional degrees: your grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents and so on. It’s a genetic snapshot of what makes you uniquely you. By comparing the bits we have in common with our mutual predecessors, Gen-Tree’s DNA test can match us up with relatives, both known and unknown.

  The frustrating part at this early stage of the process was the realization that the test couldn’t pinpoint exactly where on Georgina’s family tree th
at the Native American match occurred. No wonder she had encouraged everyone in the family to get tested; it would help narrow down the field.

  But Mom was no longer with us, Dad seemed reluctant and Ruth openly hostile, having told Georgina to ask her again when someone developed a test that could tell who you were in a previous life. It seemed to me that good, old-fashioned research might be the way to go.

  I’d spent a significant portion of my professional life commuting from Annapolis to Washington, DC, getting my ticket punched along the way until I made it to the top – a high-paying job at Whitworth and Sullivan as head of archives and records. All was going well until a quality management team somewhere on the tenth floor began throwing darts at the accounting firm’s organizational chart and twenty-five percent of middle-level management, including yours truly, found ourselves tossed out on K Street, dazed and blinking, clutching our dress-for-success briefcases.

  Frankly, I had mixed feelings about being RIFd. I’d been recovering nicely from a mastectomy and chemo-from-hell, thinking that there was nothing like a cancer diagnosis to give me the permission I needed to ditch the punishing long-distance commute and seek part-time work closer to home. With the decision out of my hands, I registered with a local agency and worked on and off as a temp in libraries, insurance agencies and even for Spa Paradiso when I could spare the time. Paul was a tenured professor, so we didn’t really need the money, but no sense allowing my brain to grow rusty.

  Fast forward. Me, sitting in our basement office, refreshing my research skills by reviewing census records for 1920 and 1930 that placed my grandparents firmly in Vermont and southern Maryland, respectively. Although Indian tribes inhabited both states during English colonization, they had either been forced onto reservations further west or been assimilated into local populations by the time my grandparents were born.

  Genealogical research should come with a warning. I linked to a photograph of my grandfather Smith’s tombstone in Tunbridge Village Cemetery in Vermont. It was like getting sucked, head first, down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe entirely populated with dead people.