The Anna Papers

by Ellen Gilchrist

  They arrived there in the middle of the national DAR convention, which Mrs. Hand was helping host. Summer Deer stayed ten days in the Hand house amidst the horrified stares of Daniel’s relatives and the guarded kindnesses of Anna and Helen and James and Niall and

  Baby Louise. On the evening of the tenth day she sat for several hours in a locked bathroom holding a knife in her hand and waiting to open her veins. Finally she put the knife away in her backpack and bathed instead. As her hands slid down her legs she thought perhaps she would go downstairs and kill some of the Hand children. The thought sustained her and she got out of the bathtub and dried her body very carefully and lovingly and dressed in her jeans and shirt and sandals and picked up her backpack and climbed out of the bedroom window onto a porch roof. She sat on the roof behind a chimney until it was dark and then she climbed down an oak tree and walked out of the neighborhood and found the highway and began to hitchhike to her home. She was in Memphis, Tennessee, when she began to suspect she was pregnant. She went that night to a dilapidated movie theater near the Memphis State campus. They were playing an old film with Olivia de Havilland and Summer Deer cried in the film and decided if the baby was a girl she would name it for the actress who had unleashed the tears in her heart. She wept into her popcorn and wondered how hard her grandfather would beat her when he learned of her shame.

  Olivia was born seven and a half months later on the reservation in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, with two midwives and Summer Deer’s mother and grandmother and sister Mary Lily in attendance. Summer Deer labored for two days to deliver the child. But without success. When the midwives sent at last for the doctor in Tulsa, it was too late to stop the bleeding and pints and pints of Summer Deer’s beautiful red blood ran out upon the bed. By the time Olivia was born Summer Deer was lost in a dream that had nothing to do with birth. “You will call her Olivia,” Summer Deer told her sister. “And you will never let her go to those people. Promise you will never let her go there, but she may bear his name. It is written on a paper for you to see. A marriage paper that we signed.” Summer Deer passed a hand very softly across the body of her daughter and closed her eyes and left the world of men and women and birth and death.

  The Cherokee honor the words of a dying man or woman, and so, although it seemed absurd to them to name a child a word that denoted nothing of either the heaven or the earth, they named the baby Olivia as Summer Deer had asked and they took the marriage certificate and the letters from Daniel that had been forwarded from California and never answered and put them in an unlocked wall safe behind a calendar in the grandfather’s room.

  By the time Olivia was nine years old she was in the habit of opening the safe and looking in the envelope that contained the marriage license and her father’s letters.

  Dear Summer,

  I know you are mad at my folks but I didn’t do anything to you. Please write and tell me where you are. I want to see you.

  Daniel

  Dear Summer,

  I am sending this to Jimmy because I called him at Elsie’s and he said maybe he knew someone that knew where you were. We are married in case you forgot. Please just let me know you’re okay. My mom says to tell you she liked you a lot.

  Love, Daniel

  Dear Summer,

  My dad called the Indian reservation in Oklahoma where you said you were from but they never heard of you. If Jimmy gets this to you please call me up right away. It’s important.

  Love, Daniel

  Dear Summer,

  I have gotten this girl in trouble and we have to get married pretty quick. She is the daughter of my dad’s business partner. I guess you can see I have to talk to you as soon as possible. I know damn well you are getting these letters. This is mean as shit not to call me. My dad’s lawyer says he can go on and get me an annulment, have the marriage declared illegal, since we were stoned. I guess I’ll do that.

  Love, Daniel

  After Summer Deer was buried in the Indian burying mound on the Illinois River, her family went home and had a meeting. They passed the baby around from arm to arm. Finally, it was decided that Mary Lily would raise the child. She was the youngest of Summer Deer’s surviving brothers and sisters and too fat to attract a man of her own so it was decided that she should be the mother of Olivia. The natural forlornness of Mary Lily’s nature lifted as she looked down into the child’s bright face. The family were Roman Catholics in this generation and Mary Lily took the infant in her arms and went to the parish church and knelt by the statue of Mary, amazed at the bounty of God.

  6

  Anna slept on the plane to Tulsa. She had been up since before dawn, dressing, watering plants, writing a letter to Daniel to explain what she was going to do. Tearing the letter up, writing another one, finally calling him, waking him at seven. “I’m on my way. She’s meeting my plane. You could come and meet us. It’s never too late to be a man, Daniel. I can’t believe you’ve gone pussy on me in my old age.”

  “You called me and woke me up to tell me this.”

  “You should have heard her voice when she asked if you were coming to see her.”

  “Anna, I told you not to do this.”

  “I’ll be in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at two this afternoon. You could fly there in your plane. You could bring Jessie.”

  “Are you drunk, Anna?”

  “No, but I’m alive, I’m still alive. How about you?”

  “Don’t make her any promises, Anna. I guess you’ve just gone crazy on us for good, is that the deal?”

  “I’ll call you when I get back. Daniel, you’ll be glad I did this.”

  “Goodbye, Sister. Thanks for waking me up.” He hung up the phone and Anna finished packing and walked out into the beautiful morning and got into her car and started traveling. She drove down the gravel road leading from her house and turned onto pavement and began to drive into the morning sun. It was eight o’clock when she left her house. In six hours she would be there.

  She slept on the plane. Slept and dreamed. She could see the zygote splitting, the map of chromosomes. The paired genes, if only three or four pairs were in each niece or nephew that might make a whole. The books are there, she told herself, half-waking. The books count. No, they are only books, only paper bound in paper and strips of tape in some computer in Boston or New York. Imitations of life, the final reality is living children, a living child, the sine qua non of all history. The books are what I could do, all that I could do. This girl in Oklahoma might be the one who has my brain, my strange old brain. Also, my terrible ambition, the way I feel about cripples, the meanness of me. No, it was only because I was the oldest, and so the leader by fiat, like a queen bee, fed the most ambition, the most attention, the most expected and demanded of me. How could I have stopped, known where to stop, there was always another brother or sister to lord it over, keep in line.

  Anna opened her eyes, woke from her wordy dreams. The plane was climbing through thick white clouds, marvelous clouds, a marvelous bumpy ride.

  She fell back asleep and dreamed of Daniel putting fish in all the bathtubs of the house on Shannon Street. Get those fish out of here, she was saying. You will give the children germs. Anna took the fish out of the bathtub, scalded them in the sink and set them out to dry for dinner, then told the maids to clean the bathtubs.

  When she woke again the plane was landing in Atlanta and she got off and found the connecting flight to Tulsa and began to think about what lay ahead. All I am doing is coming to see her, she told herself. I won’t promise her anything or speak for Daniel or speak for the family or apologize for them. This is Olivia and me, nothing else. To do my own self-righteous, thrill-seeking stuff, nothing else. So I can brag to Philip about my goodness. An excuse to tell him something. Why do I think I need an excuse to love him?

  She took out a notebook and began to write. “I boarded the plane to Tulsa,” she wrote. “And went off to see what I could see. None of my business. None of my goddamn business. Sticking my nose in Daniel’s
business, into Daniel’s child. This girl belongs to him and to an Indian girl I wasn’t even nice to, wasn’t old enough or wise enough or free enough to be nice to. I wasn’t even nice to your mother, I might begin by saying, now I am growing older and I am childless, manless after all those men I loved or failed to love and now, in this last-gasp effort to create meaning where there is none, here I am. It looks pretty good, doesn’t it, your famous aunt coming out here to look you over. Since I can’t have what I want taking anything I can get. Here at the Last Ditch Carleton it’s just one little displacement activity after another. Oh, hello, Olivia, hello, hello, hello.”

  The girl was standing by the rail in a white dress, so delicate and beautiful, so open and inviting, a wonder of a girl, a girl anyone would want and need and be proud of.

  “You look wonderful,” Anna said. “You look so wonderful. Are you alone? Where is your aunt?”

  “You look wonderful, too. You don’t look like your pictures. You look different.” She reached for Anna’s handbag and they embraced, excitedly, strangely, pleased with the moment.

  “Where’s your aunt?” Anna said again.

  “She thought we might want to be alone for a while. She’s outside.”

  “How kind of her. Well, let’s get my suitcase, then go somewhere where we can talk. Start telling me everything.” They walked together through the airport and down to the baggage claim. Twice Anna stopped walking and turned to look at the girl, marveling at the resemblance, amazed and trying to be cautious. Do no harm here, she was thinking. Be careful of this child.

  “There’s not much happening in Tahlequah,” Olivia said. “Unless you like to go to ball games or like to ride. I guess you could say it’s just summer, winter, spring, and fall.” She was holding Anna’s handbag and now she swung it around in front of her and held it with both hands. She looked so much like Jessie it was uncanny. Like Jessie, like Daniel, like Louise, and somehow, most of all, like Anna herself. “I wish you could stay a few weeks, then you could see what I do,” Olivia went on. “It’s hard to tell anybody what you do. I just keep going to school and thinking about things and about college and, well, you know, about everything.” She looked down the walkway, at the receding backs of the passengers who had been on Anna’s plane. “I think about you,” she added.

  “Oh, honey, that’s so pleasing to me. I can’t tell you how glad I am, that you do, that we are here, together.” Anna took back her bag, put it over her shoulder, took Olivia’s arm and began to walk toward the baggage claim. “I’m sorry your dad couldn’t come. He should have come with me.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay. Tell me about your school. What do you study now?”

  “It’s terrible. I argue with the sisters about everything. I don’t believe any of that junk they’re pushing. You don’t either. I can tell by your books.”

  “You wrote me that you were unhappy with them.”

  “I want to quit and go to the public school but my aunt doesn’t want me to.”

  “I did it,” Anna said. “I quit a convent school and went into town to high school. What does your aunt say?

  “I almost talked her into it, then she changed her mind. The priest tells her there are drugs in the public schools, as if they weren’t everywhere.” Bags began to roll past on the conveyor belt and Anna found hers and they went out through the glass doors into the bright blue skies of Tulsa. Then Olivia’s aunt Mary Lily was there, appearing as if from nowhere, wearing a stiff gray suit with a pink blouse. She moved close to Olivia, worried, hovering.

  Anna took the woman’s hands, kept holding them. “I want you to know we thank you for taking care of this wonderful child for us, for making her strong and wonderful.”

  “Oh, I’m not giving her away.”

  “I’m sorry. That was the wrong thing for me to say. Look, let’s don’t be embarrassed by things we say. None of us has ever done anything like this before. Let’s go get some lunch somewhere and celebrate. This is a day to celebrate.” Anna put her arm around the woman’s shoulder, moved in, as her Zen master had taught her, allowed herself to be as vulnerable as she dared. “Let’s go do some talking.”

  They went to a small seafood restaurant and ate salads and Olivia talked about her school and her teachers and her classes. The more Anna looked at her the more she liked her. She seemed so clear, so level-headed, so right. The aunt was sad and fat and Indian. The aunt’s a slave, Anna decided. The aunt is the slave and this kid is the princess. But benevolent. She’s a benevolent despot. Olivia stopped in the middle of a sentence and gave her aunt a smile.

  “So I want to take honors next year, don’t I, Aunt Mary Lily?”

  “She does very well in her work. They like her work. She helps the teachers with the other ones.”

  “Is it going to be all right for me to stay with you? I could get a motel room.”

  “Oh, yes. We want you with us. You can stay in her room.”

  The check came. Anna paid it and they gathered their things and walked out into the heat of midday in Oklahoma. They got into an old Pontiac and began to drive. Anna was sitting in the passenger seat. Olivia was in the middle. Mary Lily was driving. The child’s legs were outlined beneath her skirt. The skirt was thin white cotton with small violet flowers. Her legs were so long, so tender, so perfect. Anna touched the child’s hand where it lay upon her leg. This moment, she told herself. This moment in this old Pontiac with this wonderful child, this strange Indian aunt, this car, this day, this sunshine on these leaves.

  They left Tulsa and drove out of town on a narrow, two-lane highway that curved down through the hills of the Indian territory, headed for Tahlequah, where the Trail of Tears ended for the Cherokee. Mary Lily turned on the radio. The whiny voice of Willie Nelson filled the air, a ballad about lost love and tequila.

  “Don’t play that,” Olivia said. “I know Aunt Anna doesn’t want to listen to that song.”

  “I love country music,” Anna said. “One time I had a fight with a boyfriend to that song.”

  Mary Lily turned the dial, clearly embarrassed. A Christian station came on, advertising Christ. Olivia reached over and turned the radio off.

  “So you all are Catholic,” Anna said. “How did you become Catholic?”

  “Our mother was a convert,” Mary Lily said. “Nearly everyone else around here is Baptist. I raised Olivia in the Church but she’s not faithful now. Children don’t do anything now, it’s not only her.”

  “I go,” Olivia said. “I’m just sick of the school. It’s too small. It’s not good enough.”

  “There’s the beginning of Indian territory,” Mary Lily said. “When you cross this river. Everything on this side. If you have time we’ll take you to the museum.”

  “I’d like that,” Anna said. “History interests me.”

  “Some of it is pretty boring,” Olivia put in. “Unless you like arrowheads. Did you know my mother?” she added. “You said something in one of your letters about her.”

  “I knew her when she came to North Carolina with your dad.” Anna paused. “I think she was very unhappy there. Well, you know that.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Very beautiful and different from anyone I knew. She wore her hair down her back in a long braid. She and your daddy were just babies. They had been in California at a hippie commune and they were pretty wild. We were all sorry when she left.”

  “And was my father sorry?”

  “I don’t know. Yes, I think he was. But then he got involved with a girl and she got pregnant with your sister, Jessie. They were so young, Olivia. So very very young.”

  “I tell her that,” Mary Lily said.

  “I want to see my father.”

  “Of course you do,” Anna said. She and Mary Lily looked at each other in the rearview mirror. “And you will.”

  “Why doesn’t he want to meet me?” Olivia was very still as she said it. She repeated it in a louder voice, as though
gaining courage by the sound. “Why won’t he come to see me? I thought he would be with you. All morning I thought he would be here too.”

  “Because of Jessie,” Anna answered and knew she should not have said it. She went on, saying it whether she should say it or not. “I think he believes it will harm your sister. He had to fight a long court battle to gain custody of her. He’s irrational where she’s concerned.”

  “I wouldn’t have any way to harm my own sister.” She twisted her hands together, the fingers wound into each other. “How could I hurt her? I want to know her. I want to know her as much as I do him.”

  “She doesn’t know about you. No one has told her yet. He hasn’t told her.”