Olivia's Trek (1) (5 page)
Olivia Carter
An ethereal
symphony of notes floats into my ears, enchanting my every sense. It is quite unlike any music I have ever heard before. My eyes are closed but somehow I know that there is a magnificent brightness in the distance. My body whooshes through a tunnel towards the light. As I pass through the dark vortex, my whole life’s events play out for me like my very own home movie.
I’m being born and my dad is crying as he lifts me up, smelling and kissing my newborn skin. Everyone in the room looks so happy. My mother is talking to me, telling me softly that they named me Olivia because it meant peace—from the olive tree and that she hoped that my addition to the family would bring about peace between my father and his estranged family.
Scenes of my father shouting with people on the telephone play out in front of me as I watch on. I’m sitting on my daddy Henry’s knee as he explains to the bewildered toddler how he is the black sheep of his family.
It’s bath time and as he washes my hair he tells the five-year-old, who asks why she doesn’t have any family like everyone else, that her grandparents have cut them off because they wouldn’t accept the Cherokee Indian girl he decided to runaway with and marry.
“Who was that girl?” I ask.
“That girl is your mom,” he says.
I’m six now, Mom works two jobs and I’m waiting for her to come home because we always roll sugary dough together late at night and it tastes so good and takes away my tummy ache. My dad’s eyes look sad a lot, even though he always tries to be happy for me. He starts to hang out with some of the local men that my mom doesn’t like. Daddy is the odd one out with his blonde hair and pale skin, the rest of the men with their matching high cheekbones and long jet black hair. They all look like my mom.
I’m eight now and Daddy drinks a lot of the stuff that has a bad smell, but he loves to tell me stories about the past and his family and I love hearing about this strange, rich world that only exists in my imagination. I always ask the same question: Why is it so bad that he fell in love with my mom? Depending on his mood, he either says that his brother was also in love with my mother but didn’t have the spine to stand up to his family or I would get an absorbing history lesson.
Daddy is patting the dried mud on the ground signaling me to sit there as he brings the white container to his mouth. “Little Olive, in the late nineteenth century, the U.S. government put new restrictions on marriage between a Cherokee and non-Cherokee, although it was still relatively common. A European-American man could legally marry a Cherokee woman by petitioning the federal court, after gaining approval of ten of her blood relatives.” He takes a large swig of the plastic container.
“Ten of her relatives?” I question in wonder, my huge brown eyes and mouth both wide open at the prospect of such a huge number.
“Oh yes, ten indeed. Once married, the man had status as an ‘Intermarried White,’ a member of the Cherokee tribe with restricted rights. For instance, he could not hold any tribal office. He also remained a citizen of and under the laws of the United States.”
“Don’t you miss your family, Daddy?”
“They are bad people, Olivia. They are what is called a white WASP family.”
“Like the insect that stings?”
“Yes, exactly like that. Now go and bring me another white container from behind the hut.”
I’m ten and I’ve discovered a lake not far from where we live and spend most of my weekends swimming. When I’m not at school, the meals are few and far between and being in the water distracts from the hunger. I run there first thing, jumping in, waiting for the way my breath comes in big jolting gasps like someone has clamped on an ice neck brace. The water bites, my skin smarts and burns. I love the way the water plays with me.
I’m still passing through the tunnel while the movie is playing, watching myself over time.
Momma cries a lot now, she’s always coughing. Daddy shouts at her about how he gave everything up, all the wealth and privilege, that he has broken my grandmother’s heart in the process, for her. They are shouting because of a magazine lying on the table in the kitchen with a picture of a man that has the same hair as my daddy on the front. I’m twelve and I love reading.
Momma goes to the bathroom and Daddy slams the front door as he goes out. Sometimes he doesn’t come home for a few days. No one seems to notice that I am here like they used to so I take the magazine and find a blanket to wrap around me as I read. It says that the Carters are one of the oldest established families in Manhattan and made their money by selling gunpowder during the American Civil War, that they are listed in the Forbes Top 200. My other name is Carter, too.
Momma coughs more and more and there’s blood on her hands, in the bathroom, the towel has blood on it but we can’t afford any healthcare. Then one day, I come home from school and the man from the magazine is in our house, on the Reservation. He has a kind smile but very sad eyes whenever he looks at me. Daddy is crying as the kind white man with yellow hair wrestles me away from him, into the biggest black car I have ever seen. Daddy pushes me off, screaming at me to not make everything so difficult and to be good for my uncle who I am going to live with. He says Momma has died.
The movie zips forward to me and the very first friend I made when I arrived in Manhattan. It’s my Aunt Victoria. I’m watching the time when everyone in the apartment searched for me, panicking that I had run away, but she was the clever one who found me, reading with my flashlight. I was in my walk-in closet, which was larger than any room I had been used to.
“Olivia, little pumpkin, why on earth do you insist on spending all your time in that crammed space?” Her kind eyes and hands stroking me to coax me out.
“It’s so big here. I’m scared I’ll get lost.”
“But sweet child, we spoke about this. This is your house. All of it.”
My nose wrinkles at the thought of this giant adventure park being mine, making her smile.
“I tell you what, how about we discover a new room every day together, hand in hand? Maybe that way it won’t be so scary?”
“Okay.”
“And the flashlight? I’m sure it’s not very good for your eyes you know.”
“Daddy says we don’t have money to put the light on so I have to use the flashlight.”
Her eyes close and she takes a deep breath before pulling me out of the closet and I sit wrapped in her arms, my ear next to her heartbeat, her comforting smell making me feel sleepy.
Scenes of playing hide and seek with the son of the man who Uncle Preston is always meeting with in his study continue to roll on. In a land of people with pale skin and blonde hair, the little boy with the jet black hair reminded me of where I came from. We communicated with our eyes for a long time before we actually spoke. His name was Lucien and he spent a lot of time in my new house because his mommy was sick. He always said she was in the hospital because she had a crying sickness. My eyes would widen in horror at such a thought and even though I missed my parents and still couldn’t understand what had happened to my mother, I decided to keep my hurts to myself in case I got the crying sickness. It scared me to know that it was possible to cry and never be able to stop and I didn’t want to die like that.
Then fun times, laughter, Lucien making sure I was safe and settled in at my new school. Lucien always making sure I was okay, checking my homework and carrying my bags for me.
The movie reel is now showing my and Lucien’s first big bust up at his mom’s stables. It was because he said that I was Carter property and I argued back that I was a person and not a property. I’m sixteen now. I watch as he pulls out a piece of paper from his back pocket that he had found in his father’s study, reading aloud the words written on it.
“Preston Alexander Carter III is appointed by the court to take care of and manage the property of Olivia Cheyenne Carter
(the ward) who does not possess the legal capacity to do so, by reason of age, comprehension, or self-control.”
“You’re so stupid sometimes Lucien. It doesn’t even say I’m a property.”
His eyes flash angrily as he walks towards me. “The natural guardian of a child is the child’s parent. A parent can lose this status by neglect or abandonment. In the case of Olivia Cheyenne Carter, the parents, named as Henry James Carter and Kaya Carter (deceased), are guilty of abandonment. They have failed to provide necessary clothing, food, shelter or medical attention, or other remedial care for their child. It has been found that the willful forsaking or forgoing of parental duties is such that the court decides to terminate the natural rights of the parents on the grounds of abandonment to allow adoption by Preston Alexander Carter III.”
“Don’t you dare ever mention my parents, Lucien Borgia.”
Tears stream down my face so that I struggle to see if I’m saddling the horse up properly, my hands shaking as I pull myself up. The words abandonment and neglect echo around in my head.
Lucien shouts in the background, “You’re not Carter property. You’re Borgia property. You wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for my dad.”
I hear him screaming, “I own you, Olivia,” before the blood rushing in my ears drowns everything out as I gallop off irresponsibly, only to be thrown by the horse. I hadn’t buckled up properly.
By the time Lucien gets to me, the pain in my leg outweighs everything and he’s forgiven for what he said.
Scenes in the hospital with Uncle Preston and Aunt Victoria and for the first time realizing how much love they have for me. But it wasn’t just my leg hurting. Lucien getting mad at me, Lucien and I fighting beside the school swimming pool before he pushes me in. The feeling of the water. It’s been so long. It’s like heaven and I refuse to get out of the pool, swimming length after length. My leg doesn’t hurt when I’m in the water, so I spend more and more time there. Coach Duggan watching me day after day in the water. My first swimming competition. My first win and to finally find some peaceful place inside of myself.
Lucien and I fighting in his kitchen because I want to go home. My head feels funny after we drank some wine and I don’t like how he just kissed me hard on the mouth. He’s scaring me. Screaming. It’s me.
I open my eyes, and experience the pure whiteness all around me, I’m compelled to go forward and enter the light. Suddenly, my mother, Kaya Carter, is all around me. It’s like the light is actually her. I am completely known and completely loved.
Her smile glints as she kisses my forehead and walks around me, pure white light being transmitted to me at every part that she touches, “Olivia, my beautiful, beautiful child, don’t let go.”
It feels so good as I feel her soft hands on my face and head and smell her warmth. I know that smell. It’s the incense that my Cherokee Indian mother used to burn to ward off evil, and it surrounds, me comforting me like soft clouds. Her hand brushes my eyes so that they close and I allow myself to drift somewhere.
“Olivia, can you hear me?”
No more music. Other sounds now, harsh, intrusive sounds. Voices. Not my mother’s. Something is beeping, something sounds like it is printing. No more white light.
“Olivia. My name is Dr. Nathan Carmichael. Can you hear me?”
My throat hurts. Swallowing saliva past sandpaper and my head throbs like someone is banging it against a wall, time after time. Why is this stupid guy with the annoying voice who says he is a doctor poking me in the chest with his knuckles? Ouch, it hurts.
“Oh, thank God, she’s awake.” It sounds like my Uncle Preston. Go away.
I don’t want to open my eyes like last time. These aren’t the voices I want to hear. I want to hear and see my mother again. I need to hear that music and watch the movie about me again.
“Momma, please come back, don’t leave me, I need you,” I manage to rasp hoarsely.
I hear the other voices again. “Isn’t her mother dead?”
Fingers trying to pry my eyes open, shining some torch in each eye. I try to move my hand, but everything hurts so much. What the fuck have they done to me?
“Olivia, you’re in the hospital in Stamford. You’ve been in an accident,” says the doctor.
I manage to lift my head off the pillow for all of two seconds, looking at my left hand with two drips sticking out of it, hooked up to some liquid on a stand beside me. I make a pathetic, unsuccessful attempt to try and rip it out. I need to get out of here and find my mother again.
“Calm down, Olivia.”
I watch the doctor, my uncle and a male nurse all hovering around, way too close for my liking. The nurse injects something into my drip and I feel my eyes closing again.
Olivia Carter
They took the drip out of the back of my hand this morning. It feels like it’s been beaten with a heavy metal pole. Inside my head, it’s all fogged up and slow. Everything feels too heavy to even concentrate on what anyone is saying, let alone form a single thought about anything in my head so I just sit quietly most of the time and nod if required. This seems to make Uncle Preston and the kind-looking doctor forget I am actually in the room, so they continue to discuss me as if I am not even there. I don’t care.
Just before I close my eyes to shut out the world, I catch a glimpse of an angel sitting outside my room on a chair facing my room door. He must be all of twenty-five, the blondest curls framing his face like a haughty cherub, an air of distinguished brilliance about him. He’s sitting with his knees together, reading some sort of journal or magazine while making circles and underlining words with a sparkling silver pen. It must be the drugs. It looks like the sun is being reflected off his golden hair. I fight against my tired eyes that want to close, taking in his cobalt blue check shirt, faded jeans and dark brown shoes. I never realized that angels wore shoes.
As if he senses me summoning every bit of strength I’ve got to just focus on him, he glances up at me from his reading and as his lashes move upward like a set of large graceful butterfly wings. The bluest eyes I have ever seen looking straight into the depth of my broken soul. My strength deserts me, exhaustion overtakes me and my eyes close.