Snapshot

My grandmother gave me her old books when she moved into the nursing home. "They were going to be yours, when I died, and I guess in a way I am, now." She told me.
I had stroked her shoulder and reminded her of all the things that she would be able to do once she was moved in, but she moved away from me, her slightly humped back exposing her vulnerabilities to me.
Most of the books were cheap romance novels, girls swooning in the arms of muscled long haired men, and I flipped those books back into the boxes they came in. Others were older, some children's books and some the classics. It was in a copy of David Copperfield that I found a picture of my mother.
She is sitting front and center, her pale reddish blond hair swept in a long shiny wave to the side. This was how she had looked for most of my youth, retaining that innocent young look until I had hit my teenage years and had caused grey hairs to form and lines to crease on her, or at least that was what she claimed.
In the picture her eyes are green and large, fringed by long darker eyelashes, but they appear wary and skittish, as if they would rather travel away from the photographer to somewhere else, anywhere else. Her smile is small and close lipped, causing one of her dimples to appear on her right cheek and even now I stare at it with envy.
Her arms are around me, her shoulders hunched as if to protect my baby form. I look like any all American blond blue eyed baby girl, dressed in pink, cheribly fat and smiling. My eyes admit my presence but return to my mother, to her pale green sundress, that contains pink flowers and puckers and tucks to make it stylish and well fitted.
I can not take my eyes off of her face, to the way the light plays on one side of her face and not on the other side, the bottom half in shadow, the upper part shadowed but for the glint of eye staring out. This working of light makes her appear scared, haunted and filled with loss, making her appear older then her twenty years. Her stance, her protective arms and raised shoulders hovering around me as if she is protecting me, rather then simply holding me.
I shudder and stare at her face again, wondering who she was and what she was thinking. I place the picture in David Copperfield again and place it, neatly and concisely on the shelf between Oliver Twist and Great Expectations.