Olivia sat hunched, head on knees, on the pedestal of the old statue in a little used corner of the park. She was a sad little figure, dressed all in black, with a too large black sweater hanging over her black t-shirt in acknowledgement of the chilly damp autumn twilight. It was clearly second or third hand and its snags and light spots attested to its previous owners’ lack of care. A black beanie sat on her sandy hair, whose ends still showed evidence of an amateur attempt with black hair dye a few months back. The stone pedestal was damp, and it soaked through the tight black jeans she wore. She was so lost in her misery that she never noticed.
“Bunk over, Livvy, and make us some room,” a voice nearby whispered.
Olivia didn’t move, except for the heaving of her shoulders.
A finger dug into her hip. “Come on, scooch over!”
Her bottom moved over infinitesimally, but it was enough for the speaker to perch beside her.
“What’s up, Liv? The idiots givin’ you a hard time again?”
Olivia still didn’t answer, and the two figures sat in silence for a while. Then the newcomer tried again.
“Say, Liv, you ready to come with me now? I’ve told you, I’ll keep you safe, an’ there’ll be others there, like you. It’ll be good. You know it will.”
A tear splashed down on the damp stone between Olivia’s legs.
“Hey, stop that, Skink! You know better than that!” Another voice came from the other side of the statue, and a head bobbed into view.
“Ah, buzz off, Maple. You don’t have any business being here!”
“Do too. Olivia’s my friend, too, Skink. In fact, she’s known me longer than she has you!”
“Yeah, but where you been the last few years when things’ve been rough, huh? It’s been me that’s mostly been at her side, not you! So mind your own business and get lost!”
“Make me!”
“ENOUGH!” shouted Olivia, her head coming off her knees and her tear-streaked face glaring at the two on either side of her.
The second party sat down on the other side of Olivia, after sticking her tongue out at her rival.
“I don’t need to listen to the two of you fight! I get enough of that at home and at school. So just shut up!” The head descended to the knees again with a sniffle. The three of them sat in silence for a while more, and then Maple spoke.
“Olivia, is there anything we can do to help?”
Olivia’s head turned to the side and she looked at her friend. “No. You’re here, and that’s something. The rest of it, well, there’s no help for it. Any of it.”
Skink spoke up. “Just come with me, Livvy, and I promise you won’t regret it!”
“Skink…” began Maple.
“No, it’s okay Maple, I know better. Going with Skink would just be causing me new problems. Running away doesn’t fix things.” Olivia softened her words with a small smile at Skink, who hung his head slightly in acknowledgement of the truth of her words.
Silence reigned once more, and a yellow leaf floated down and stuck to the damp stone foot beside Olivia. A few raindrops leaked out of the sky. Finally Olivia heaved a sigh and leaned back against the legs of the statue.
“Tony found my notebook today. He took it and was looking at it in English class. Then Mrs. Thomson saw it and took it away. She kept it.”
“Does she know it’s yours?” asked Maple.
“Yeah. It has my name in the front. Now she’s gonna read it. I don’t know what she’ll think. All I know is someone has my notebook and I want it back. I can’t even write this evening ‘cause I don’t have another one.” She sniffed loudly.
“There’s no place for poets in your world, Olivia, especially poor ones from the wrong part of town,” said Skink.
“So tell me something I don’t know,” she snorted.
Maple spoke up. “That’s what Skink says. I don’t know. He might be wrong. Just because your folks don’t understand and the other kids don’t get it, doesn’t mean they speak for everyone. I see people writing all the time.”
Olivia smiled at her oldest friend, holding a precious image in her mind. She was about four years old, and had insisted her mother dress her in a poppy red dress to match Maple’s bright clothing. They had been running around the park together, chasing autumn leaves dancing the wind and laughing as Olivia’s mother looked on with her eyes sparkling. Mother had understood, had known Maple and all of the others. She had never told Olivia to grow up and stop imagining things. It was all part of her world, too.
Mother and Olivia had told each other stories and played games and loved each other until the day Olivia had come home from kindergarten and found the firetruck and policemen at her building. They took her to another family that night, and then later on, another. She had been with this family for three years now, the longest she had been anywhere since Mother had died seven years ago. They weren’t bad to her, just busy with lots of kids, some of whom had problems a lot worse than hers. They just weren’t very understanding. Olivia had found this statue and Skink hiding near it one day when she was escaping the harried household.
Olivia reached out a gentle hand to Maple and her friend climbed on and then jumped to sit on Olivia’s shoulder, her wings ticking Olivia’s cheek.
Skink leaned against her, his gnarly little hand patting her foot gently. “Well, whenever you decide you want to come with me, you just let me know. I’ll take you Underhill faster than you can say Robin Goodfellow. There’s always a place for poets among the Gentry.”
“Yeah, Skink, but I’ve read the stories. Humans don’t do well there. They go crazy, or they stay there for a day that’s a hundred years here. I don’t want to do that and I don’t want to be some kind of fancy pet for the elves. No thank you. Not now and probably not ever.” Olivia curled one hand gently around Skink.
She spoke again. “If I could go anywhere, I’d go to my mother’s mother. She was wonderful, my mother said. She wrote poetry, too – mother used to say some of it to me. And we had a picture she drew that looked a lot like you, Maple.”
Maple and Skink were familiar with this story. “But you don’t know where she is. The fire in the apartment that killed your mother burned anything that might have had her name on it, and no one has heard from her since.” Maple began.
Skink took over, “And she wouldn’t have known where to look for you, because your mother had had an argument with her and hadn’t talked to her for a long time.”
Olivia nodded. “Since before I was born. But she kept saying she was going to take me to see her, soon. And I know she was, because she bought two bus tickets, only I can’t remember where to. I was so little then.” Olivia sat lost in the past for a while and then jumped a little. It was nearly dark, and she was going to get in all kinds of trouble if she didn’t get home right away. Bidding her friends a hasty good-bye, she raced off through the park to the apartment she shared with her foster parents and the other foster children.
When she got there, one of the other children met her at the door and told her to go to the living room. Her foster parents were sitting and waiting for her, along with Mrs.Thomson, who had Olivia’s notebook in her hands. Olivia almost turned and ran back out the front door. She had been writing in class and not paying attention, but she hadn’t thought it was a big enough deal for the teacher to come and visit. She crept quietly into the room and stood there with her head held high. She wouldn’t let them get her down. She waited soundlessly for the lecture about wasting time with foolishness instead of studying.
Mrs. Thomson spoke first. “Olivia, I believe this notebook is yours?”
Olivia nodded silently.
“I looked at it. I’m sorry, because I know it’s a private thing for you, but you brought it to school and I needed to see what was in it.” She paused for a moment. “I’m glad I did look at it,” she added.
Olivia winced, waiting for the rest.
“Olivia, these are very good. Very, very good. You have a real gift for poetry. The stories are well done, too, and I love the little drawings. Do you have any more?” Her face lit up as she asked.
Olivia stood there open-mouthed. Mrs. Thomson liked her foolish little poems and stories? Well, she had never thought they were foolish herself, but others had told her they were, so she had stopped letting people read them a long time ago. Slowly, she nodded and answered Mrs. Thomson’s question. “I have a lot of notebooks. I keep them put away, though, ‘cause the other kids think they’re silly.” She didn’t add that the adults thought so too.
Mrs. Thomson nodded. “Other children can be harsh, I know.” Olivia noticed her foster parents flushing slightly.
Her foster mother spoke up. “Do you really think there’s any point to this? I mean, writing things isn’t going to get her an education or a good job like studying hard and getting good grades, is it?”
Mrs. Thomson looked at them. “I understand why you want Olivia and the other children you care for to do well in school, but this could actually be to her advantage. Even now… There’s a children’s poetry competition for the city’s schools. The winner gets a savings bond and a scholarship to City College whenever they are old enough to use it. Even the runners up get savings bonds. This could actually be everything you want for Olivia.”
Her foster parents looked stunned. “And you think Olivia’s poetry is good enough to win?”
“I’ve seen the entries in past years. Yes, I think it is.” She turned to Olivia. “Olivia, will you trust me enough to get some of your other books? I want to read through your work, and then you and I can choose the best one to submit for the competition. It closes next week, so we need to hurry.”
Olivia stood there for a minute, unsure. Then behind her foster parents, on the window sill, she saw Maple. Maple was nodding and smiling. “Okay. Just a minute. I’ll go and get them.” The books were buried in the trunk where she kept all the things that were really hers, like the stuffed cat that had been saved from the apartment after the fire, along with her one picture of her mother and her grandmother. As she hurried off, she heard her foster parents discussing the contest details with Mrs. Thomson.
When she returned a little while later, with a stack of black hardbound composition books cradled in her arms, her foster parents were looking at her as if they were seeing her for the first time. “Olivia, we had no idea…” began her foster mother.
“We’re sorry. We just didn’t know.” Her foster father said.
Olivia nodded and then she turned to Mrs. Thomson. “Can I have the newest one back? I don’t have another one, and I want to do some more writing.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ve got one you can have. I got too many when I was doing back to school shopping, and I think you need one of those now,” said her foster mother.
Olivia watched nervously as Mrs. Thomson took the things that mattered the most to her away into the night.
Later that week, they chose the poem to submit. It was a poem called “Maple Days” that Olivia had written about that special day in the park with her mother, playing with Maple while her mother watched. Mrs. Thomson said it was a wonderful, special poem.
Olivia figured that even if it didn’t win, at least people weren’t laughing at her now, and she could write in peace as long as she got her school work done, too.
But she did win. The poem, along with her picture and name, were posted in the city newspaper, which had readers all over the state. The savings bond went in a special savings account, and the plaque that said she had won the scholarship went on the wall by her bed. Maple and Skink celebrated with her at the park. Maple in particular was delighted that Olivia had won because she was in the poem.
Things were getting back to normal again when the next surprise came.
Olivia came home from school one day to find her social worker in the living room. This was usually not the best thing – all too frequently it meant she was being moved, and she was as happy here as she had been anywhere since her mother died.
“Olivia, come here and sit down beside me,” said the social worker. “I have some news for you.”
Olivia warily came over and sat down.
“Olivia, when you won that poetry contest, you know that your name and picture were in the paper, as well as the poem.”
Olivia nodded. She had several copies of the paper and the clippings put away in her trunk.
“Well, we had to wait to tell you until we were sure, but thanks to your win being published in the paper, we have found your grandmother.”
Olivia’s heart leapt up into her throat.
“My grandmother?” she whispered.
“Yes, dear. And she had no idea what had happened to your mother, or to you. She feels terrible that you have had to do without each other for so long.” The social worker went on to tell Olivia that her grandmother had noticed the picture first – Olivia apparently looked just like her mother had at her age. Her grandmother had known that Olivia had been born, but had not known her name or anything else about her, but since Olivia’s mother had given Olivia a family name that proved to be the second clue for her grandmother. Curious, her grandmother had done some investigating and found out about Olivia. She lived in a small town on the far side of the state, and she wanted Olivia to come and live with her. She was a school teacher.
Olivia sat there in shock. Her grandmother had found her, and wanted her. All of the stories her mother had told her came rushing back. She knew, even though her mother and grandmother had quarreled and her mother had left, that her grandmother was a good person who would love her just as she was.
“When can I meet her?” she whispered, tears rolling down her cheeks. She wiped them away with the sleeve of her black sweater.
“I’ll bring her upstairs. She’s waiting in the car.”
Much later, when Olivia was settled in her grandmother’s house, she and her grandmother were talking about how Grandmother had found Olivia.
“Your picture and your name were part of it, yes,” Grandmother said as they sat by a warm fireplace in the book filled front room, “but the real clincher was the poem “Maple Days” itself. It was about Maple and while I didn’t know your Maple, I know others of her kind. I knew that if you knew them, you must be my granddaughter.” She smiled at Olivia with a smile so like Mother’s that Olivia almost cried.
Olivia smiled back at her, and they both chuckled as Skink slipped out from behind the sofa and climbed up on the sofa beside them to try to cadge some popcorn.
-She Wolf (c)2007
