Chapter One of yet Untitled Story

Chapter 1

Olivia Margaret Kennedy woke up from her deep safe sleep with her little brother, Cullen, curling up next to her. His breath, deep and steady, and not too pleasant to the smell, breathed heavily on Olivia’s cheek. Olivia tried to move slowly, as to not to wake him. She slowly rolled to the left and moved the hot blankets off of her, exposing her tattered stained green dress that she had worn the day before. The dress was covered in mud and food and hardly bared the resemblance of being green.

Olivia stepped down onto the bare hardwood floor. She could feel the gritty dust of the dirty floor under her bare feet. Looking back over her shoulder, she was satisfied that she hadn’t disturbed her four year old brother, still curled as if she were still lying next to him. Olivia made her way to the corner of the bedroom that she shared with not only her brother Cullen, but also shared with her newborn twin sisters, Sheila and Suzanne. The babies just born 3 weeks before and nearly a month premature had been put in dresser drawers on the floor to sleep. She briefly kneeled down and checked the sleeping babies carefully to tuck the towel that acted as a blanket around the littler of the two, Suzanne.

Olivia quietly made her way down to the hall. She momentarily thought about going outside to the outhouse their neighbor Mr. McGilley had built for them. Mr. McGilley felt a pang of responsibility for the Kennedy family, as their father was always working. But, Olivia’s fear of the morning dawn and apprehension of feeling the cool air on her, she decided to stay in and start her morning routine.

She usually started her mornings by starting the fire in the stove. She expertly moved the cut wood that Mr. McGilley had given them into the black potbelly stove. And, with the same expertise, she started the fire with long wooden matches the church had donated. Then, Olivia grabbed the rusted coffee pot that she attempted to wash the night before and filled it with water from the pump and put the final 2 scoops of coffee in the metal filter. When the aroma of the coffee started to fill the room is when her mother would awake. During the time it took to heat the stove and make the coffee, Olivia started making bottles. Her mother was too sick to breast feed, so Olivia learned to mix canned milk with caro syrup, which she did this morning. Other mornings, when the canned milk was gone, she would use powdered milk. After she made the babies bottles did she decide that the need to use the outhouse overrode her fear of the dark. But when Olivia opened the door, she hadn’t expected how light it got so quickly.

Running at almost a full sprint to the outhouse she welcomed the safety of the small potty room. Olivia found potty time as escape time, even for a few brief moments, she could pretend a wild horse would find her and whisk her away or a rich man from town driving one of those cars that only he well to do drove and saw her to be the perfect little girl and wanted her to be his daughter to spoil and love. But her fantasies were always short-lived. Someone would have to interrupt and this time it was her mother screaming from the house, “Olivia Margaret, Momma needs you now, DAMMIT!” Olivia bolted out of he outhouse and quickly made her way down the grassy knoll that lead to the house. She skipped the stairs and made it into the house with one big hop. She paused only a moment to feel the splinter of wood dig into her heel.

Bernadette Kennedy was laying on the old couch she and daddy had found sitting on the side of the dirt road that lead to their property. Bernadette was only 28 years old but looked 10 years older. Her face was weather worn and streaks of gray were already running through the dulling auburn hair. Bernadette always wore her hair long and in a thick braid, it was a part of her Native American Heritage. But right now, all she cared about were her cigarettes and finding that damn girl! “Olivia Margaret Kennedy” but before her mother could spout out the full name, Olivia was on target at her mother’s feet lying off the end of the couch.

“Olivia”, her mother snorted through ragged breath that came from a chronic smoker, “where in the hell have you been? And have you seen my Pall Malls? What did you do with them, child?”

Olivia automatically walked to the butcher block next to the potbelly stove that held the matches and their eating utensils. In a 2nd drawer, Olivia pulled out the red packaged cigarettes and one of those long wooden matches. Turning to face her mother, who had instructed Olivia to put her Pall Malls in that very drawer so no one would take them, Olivia coyishly smiled as if she had some greater knowledge than her mother. Her mother quickly snatched the cigarettes out of her daughter’s hand and proceeded to light one up. All the while, Olivia was hastily pouring her mother a cup of coffee, with 2 sugars and a dash of canned milk. Olivia brought her mother the coffee in her mother’s favorite coffee cup, a large mug with a hand painted picture of an Indian Warrior on the side. Many of time Bernadette would stare at that picture and say, “life would have been better if I had stayed with my own people, instead of marry that Irish father of yours.”

“Momma, would you like some eggs today?” Olivia asked in hopes of changing her mother’s attitude. “What child, trying to make today special are you? Having a birthday means nothing but another year older child. One more year closer to dying!” Olivia stood at the black stove, stunned, she herself had forgotten! Today was her birthday! September 10, 1946! How could she have forgotten her own birthday? She was 7 years old today! No longer considered a baby.

With the thought of having a special day to herself, Olivia skipped down the hall toward the room where her brother and twin sisters slept. Looking down at the still sleeping twins, she hoped momma felt well enough to take care of the babies today. She decided that today she would put on a clean dress, just in case there was going to be a party, no, a great big celebration with horses and clowns ready to entertain! Olivia wondered if her Grandparents, her dad’s parents, from Nashville, would make a special trip to see her and bring her presents!

Olivia hadn’t seen her grandparent’s in several months. And, when they were there, Olivia noticed that her grandfather and her daddy had words and were arguing over money. Her grandparents want her daddy to move them back to Nashville, where he could find a better job. But daddy didn’t want to leave Birmingham with the impending delivery of the twins. The same twins he has nothing to do with because neither was a boy. The night that Bernadette gave birth after 38 hours of labor to the premature babies, the first thing out of Walter Craig Kennedy’s mouth was, “she didn’t even get one right”. He left the hospital and didn’t return until the twins were 2 weeks old and being released from the hospital. He hadn’t even bothered ask their names. He basically announced to Bernadette, “One is Sheila after my momma and the other is Suzanne, after my dead sister.” And his wife didn’t complain, she new better.

Olivia chose her Sunday dress. It was a white dress with small pink flowers along the trim. Yes, this dress would be wonderful for a birthday party! Olivia set off to wash her face and put pink ribbons in her hair. She pulled out her good Sunday shoes and slipped them on. Olivia noticed that her shoes were begging to get too tight. She had had the white Sunday Shoes for almost a year now. But she knew her family didn’t have the money to by new ones. Maybe she would mention it to daddy today during her birthday. She didn’t expect him to get too mad, and it was her birthday after all.

While in her bedroom, Olivia heard heaviness of the front door slamming and the heavy boots of her father’s feet. Daddy was home from working the night out in the onion fields. His first movement would be to grab himself a cup of coffee and then sit at the old wine barrel that substituted for a table, with his coffee and his paper that he could barely read. Olivia knew she had to make haste and get out to he and Momma. He would want breakfast.

As Olivia made her way down the small hall, she could smell the sweetness of the onions coming from her daddy’s clothes, mixed with the smell of moonshine. That smell, the smell she loved and hated. That smell was all too familiar these days. And what Olivia met in the living room, was also becoming all too familiar.