Annie and Bess made their way through their childhood much I suppose like any pair of look-alikes who were struggling to establish their separate identities in a world that wanted to think of them as the same person. Those two were identical down to the pads of their feet. Unlike their fathers, it was hard to tell one from the other even once you got to know them. Still, like their fathers, they were fundamentally different. Annie was good at mathematics, Bess was good at Language. Annie liked light haired boys, Bess preferred dark. They fought like two cats locked in a box as well. You would have thought that they hated each other the way they’d scream and pull hair. Lucy and I, having grown up separate, couldn’t understand that. We’d rush in to break up the tussle, but Oliver and Alexander would stop us when they were home.
“Let them go, Love,” Oliver pulled me back gently by the hand, “They’re all right.”
“Annie’s going to kill her!” I swore as Annie grab her sister by the shirt and threw her to the ground, then sat on her and hit her in the shoulders.
“She’s not trying to hurt her,” Alexander promised, but he poised himself on to the edge of his chair to see better, “If she wanted to hurt her, she’d be punching her in the face-like.”
“Bessie’s not even crying,” Ollie added, “She’s just screaming her head off, yeah.”
“Stop it, you two!” Lucy jumped to her feet and headed to the girls, but Alex caught her by the elbow. “Let me go, Xander!”
“No!” Alex told her in a firm, gentle voice, “They have to do this! You don’t understand! Oliver and I do! They have to settle this!”
Lucy looked disgusted.
“It’s a twin thing,” Oliver explained, “You don’t understand. We do. Let them sort it.”
So we did. We sat in our chairs, Lucy and I biting our lips, and we watched the two youngest girls slap and punch the hell out of each other. When they were done, they sat with their backs to each other and they cried. When they were done crying, they checked to make sure the other was all right and they went inside and both had a kip. They fought again from time to time, but each spar became less violent until it was mostly just arguing that went on. They were never as tight as Oliver and Alexander. It wasn’t until there was an advantage or some hint of trouble that they suddenly united or, as they were coached by their father and his brother, conveniently attempted to switch identities. It worked often. Even on me.
Neither of the twins took much after their mother or their father in looks. They were both medium height with long strawberry hair and big green eyes. Those were Cotton traits for sure. The thing that struck me odd about them was that both their faces were sprayed with beautiful, pale freckles all across their noses and cheeks. No one on either side of the family that I knew of was freckled. That was until Ana showed me a photo of herself at about fourteen, “Those are mine!” She laughed and pointed at her young face, “I hate my freckles! I’ve covered them with powder for years!”
Annie had a head for science like I did, so she and I got on quite well. Annie reminded me in many ways of her grandmother, Ana. It was her properness, her organization, the way she made sure that everything had a place and was in its place at all times. But just when you’d begin to think she was no fun at all, she’d come out with the most outrageous and hilarious statements that would leave you standing with your mouth hanging open. Annie loved to shock people and she was very good at it.
“Annie! I told you to get out of that tree!” Alexander shouted angrily at her from the porch when she was about four years old.
She replied in Welsh.
Alexander stiffened and locked his jaw. He looked at Oliver, “What did she just say?”
Oliver sniggered, “She told you to go put your finger up your arse and whistle.”
Alexander blinked, “I thought that was it. I should really go and beat her now, yeah?”
“I don’t know, Brawd. She’s quite small.”
“I can’t believe she just said that to me!” He tried not to laugh. “Bloody hell! And in Welsh, too! Where‘d she learn that?”
“She heard it from you!” Oliver glanced back across the garden to Annie, “You think you they can’t speak Welsh yet? They know everything you say. You always were the bad egg.”
“Aye! There’s nothing I can do! I’ll just go stick my finger in my arse and whistle then?”
“May as well,” Oliver replied. “But you still better make her come out of the tree or she’ll know you’re a pansy.”
“Right!” He drew a breath, “Antonia, I said get out of that tree! If you don’t you’ll be the one whistling out your bum!”
He took only two steps before she was on the ground.
Bess was a separate sort from the other Dickinson children. I can’t put my finger on exactly how, though. She was bright and lovely. She ran and giggled and dropped candies in the faerie circle like the others. As she grew, however, it became more and more obvious that she lacked understanding of the wood. To her it was a lovely place to visit, but it was never a home. I never saw the winds embrace her. She never woke up and told me she heard voices in the night. Rarely did anything she brought over come up missing.
Bess was like her brother, Nigel, in many ways. The first would be in temperament, as she was predisposed to outbursts of rage that included knocking around a girl or two at school when they trespassed the boundaries she had set for them. The second was her inclination toward athletics. Bess was one of the few girls who made it on to the high school rugby team, playing forward, as she was extremely nimble and quick in a race. She did quite well at it, but it was tennis that was her real love. She competed in many tournaments throughout the years, but when she was offered the chance to pursue it semi-professionally, she opted for college instead. Sports, she reasoned, could make her quite a name and perhaps a bit of money, but in the end it would take its toll physically and offer nothing permanent. She was more interested in putting her hands into the dirt and therefore opted to study history and anthropology, which became her life long career. Our Bess was full and whole, but she was a different echo from that ancient Dickinson stone. She was more like the Cottons, I’d say, bright as the sun, focused, and not afraid to set goals and chase them until they’d been had, but she wasn’t whimsical and certainly not a daydreamer.
Warren, on the other hand, was a Dickinson down to the marrow in his bones. He had inherited the red hair of the Cottons, although his was a much darker shade than anyone else, as if coffee had mixed with copper. He had the devil’s grin, that boy. Warren looked as much like Oliver as Gryffin did, but wasn‘t as dark. He was like his father in many ways as well, especially with his enthusiasm and zest for fun, but there were other similarities. Like his father, Renny was very popular without any effort, especially with the ladies. It was hysterically funny the way they flocked to him, even when he was just a little boy. I remember when a new family moved in across the street from Ana and Eddie, Warren, who was about five years old, went outside to see them. Two little girls in pigtails came skipping across the street and it wasn’t fifteen minutes before he had them in the house. It wasn’t an hour after that they were fighting each other in the yard to decide who got to be his girlfriend.