Oatman by Inés G. Labarta
Photo by Jeremy Alford for Pexels
‘I’m completely sure I want to do this,’ said Ellen, trying to sound convincing. With her pale pink angora sweater and white jeans, she didn’t look like someone who would get that kind of tattoo. ‘I’ve done quite a lot of research before coming here.’
‘Good. There’s no way back with a tattoo of this kind,’ Kayleigh tapped the sketches she had done, all of them spread over the table. ‘You won’t be able to laser it off or hide it. It’s not a butterfly on your ankle. And you say this is your first one?’
Ellen considered lying, but Kayleigh looked like the kind of person who would make her go naked just to check. Perhaps she should have gone to a tattoo parlour and not the house of a woman who called herself a ‘tattoo hag’ on her Instagram profile. A woman with silver dreadlocks and a line of black dots that went down from her lips to her chin and throat and disappeared under the collar of her flannel shirt.
She nodded.
‘See,’ Kayleigh said, ‘I just don’t think it’s a good idea.’
*
Ellen had come across Olive Oatman while researching a feature on women and tattoos for work. Kitty O’Farley, her boss at the radio show, challenged her to find a ‘sexy theme’. Ellen came up with it after Kitty had laughed at all her other ideas. She didn’t even care about tattoos until she stumbled upon Olive on Pinterest. The stern middle part in her dark hair. Empty eyes. Victorian black dress. Hands joined on her lap as if tied. A geometrical tattoo on her chin: five straight vertical lines and a triangular pattern on the sides that reminded Ellen of fangs. A wolf trying to break free from the photograph.
Her sister rang just as she started a new Google search.
‘You didn’t call yesterday,’ Susie said. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ Ellen held her phone against her cheek and her shoulder while she typed on the computer. ‘Sorry about yesterday. I went for drinks with some colleagues. Didn’t want to wake you up.’
She skimmed the Wikipedia article on Olive Oatman. Born in Illinois in 1837. From a Mormon family.
‘When did you get back? What did you drink?’
‘Not too late. I think ten. White wine. Just a glass, though.’
Olive’s family had joined a wagon train led by James C. Brewster, a self-proclaimed prophet of the Mormon church. Ellen didn’t know much about Mormonism, but apparently, there had been many sects. They wanted to get from Illinois to California. After a disagreement with Brewster – the article didn’t specify what about – the Oatman family continued the trip alone. In Arizona, they were attacked by Native Americans who killed almost all members of the family and took her and one of her sisters as slaves. So far, it seemed the standard plot of a Western movie.
‘It’s so dark at eight. Be careful.’ Susie said. ‘How’s Geoff?’
‘He’s alright. Working. So, how are you doing today?’ She knew that the only reason her sister called was to talk about herself.
‘Well, I’m lying in bed now. I’ve been dizzy all day. The humming’s back.’
Ellen kept scrolling down. After spending some time with the Native Americans, Olive and her sister had been traded to another tribe. They lived with them for a few more years and that’s where Olive received her face tattoo.
‘The humming is back? And how’s mum?’ Ellen wondered if she should offer to go down to Lancaster. Again.
‘Mum’s ok. I managed to go out and do some shopping. Then I cooked lunch. Nothing fancy. Broccoli soup. We had chicken breast for dinner. It’s just the humming, on my left ear, all day long. I’ve had to lie down.’
‘I could go and see you both. This weekend.’
‘No, no. We’re fine. You have your job.’
‘But Susie, you need to go to the doctor.’
Olive had eventually been spotted by some white men and brought back to American society. Her sister couldn’t join her, as she had died a few years before of starvation. Olive became a celebrity. Books were written about her experience and she toured the country retelling her adventures.
‘No. No more doctors. Those hypertension pills they had me taking? Well, that’s when the vertigo attacks started too. You know that. Doctors? No. I’m done.’
*
‘I’m sure about this tattoo,’ Ellen said to Kayleigh. ‘I’m a writer on the radio. All the work I do is inside the studios. Nobody will care about a tattoo there.’
She considered telling Kayleigh about her obsession with Olive Oatman. How the tattoo made her feral, and how much Ellen wanted that for herself too. But she couldn’t say that out loud. It sounded silly.
‘You’re the creative kind.’ Kayleigh smiled at her for the first time. ‘It’s good you’ve given the job thing a thought. A tattoo like this could make you unemployable. For me, tattooing is a spiritual practice that connects us with our ancestral roots. I do warn my clients, though, I’m not going to pretend like it doesn’t matter out there. And that’s just a piece of the puzzle. With something like this, you’ll get the looks wherever you go. Some people will think it’s beautiful, others will say is disgusting and everyone will want to give you their opinion. It can get rough. People screaming, cursing at you. Are you ready for that?’
Ellen thought a bit before answering.
‘When I was fourteen years old, I was on the train with my friends. Going home. It wasn’t that late. Seven, eight in the evening. This drunk guy was walking up and down the carriage, singing. Everyone was trying to ignore him. Then he spotted me. Came by, shaking his hips and dancing, licking his lips. He tried to grab my hand so I’d get up and join him. People in the carriage laughed at us. My friends too. Everyone thought it was so funny.’ Ellen realised she had been twisting her hands on the table and brought them down. ‘I don’t remember how I got out of it. But I kept wondering why he’d chosen me. My friends were wearing miniskirts, tight tops, and glittery make-up. My mum didn’t let me dress like a whore, that’s what she said, you know. I had wide-leg jeans and my dad’s hoodie on. It doesn’t matter what you wear. What you look like. You still get the attention.’
*
In front of the bathroom mirror, Ellen applied the hydrating cream to her face. Every day, for two weeks before the tattoo appointment. Those were Kayleigh’s instructions. The ointment was runny powdery white. It made her think of breastmilk.
By then, she’d read all the online articles she could find about Olive Oatman, plus the books that had been published about her. She even managed to arrange an interview for the radio show with the professor who had written the only academic biography on Olive. Most of the other books she’d read were full of speculation and American patriotism. The quintessential colonial woman surviving the Wild West against all odds and keeping her purity intact. But many things didn’t add up. The presence of the Native Americans, for example. Had they truly been there to attack Olive’s family? Or had they been added later because, in the 19th century, they had been assigned the role of the villains and the savages in American imagination? It didn’t make sense that Olive and her sister had been spared when the rest of her family was clubbed to death. Olive was one of seven siblings. She was fourteen at the time of the attack. Her sister Mary Anne was only seven. If the Tonto Apache or the Tolkepayas – historians didn’t seem to agree on the Native American tribe, which in itself was telling – wanted to take slaves, why only women? Wouldn’t the Oatman boys have been more useful? And if they only wanted to take the women – why kill Olive’s other sisters and even her mother?
Ellen massaged the cream into her cheeks, making smaller circles with each new motion. Perhaps when the family had been attacked – by whom, she still thought was unclear – Olive and Mary Anne hadn’t cried, screamed or resisted like the others. Perhaps they just stood there and witnessed the attack doing what women had been taught how to do best for generations: being diminutive, insignificant, invisible.
*
At work, Kitty O’Farley, the programme’s host, was in one of her moods.
‘This morning was absolute crap, team,’ she told them when they all met at the balcony so she could have a smoke. ‘That professor was completely bonkers. Helen, why the fuck did you choose her?’
Kitty had been calling her Helen since they’d started working together. Ellen didn’t dare to correct her the first time it happened. And now, she was stuck with a different name.
‘You thought women and tattoos was an interesting theme…’ Ellen said.
‘Yeah, sure, tattooed women are freakish, but this woman was a freak too, why the fuck are we bringing her to the programme?’
‘Well, I—’
‘Well, I—’ Kitty mocked her voice. ‘You ran the preliminary interview with her. You read the damn book. You should’ve told me.’
Ellen kept quiet. She read the books, interviewed the authors and wrote the script that Kitty read every morning. But she couldn’t really prevent Kitty from making an unfortunate comment off script that would show authors she hadn’t read the book. Authors were good at picking up on those things, and a few took it badly.
‘You’ve made me look like a fool in there,’ Kitty threw a pen at her.
Everyone in the team stared at Ellen. They were sorry but relieved that Kitty already had a favourite person to bully. Many of her other producers had left the job in weeks. Ellen had stuck it out for five years. She was proud of that.
‘Don’t fuck around with me again, Helen, yeah? Go and bring me back at least ten new ideas for next month. You lot as well, work on that. Together. Let’s do some real work here for a change.’
‘Don’t take that to heart,’ George told Ellen as they went back to their shared desk in the office. ‘She has to cope with so much pressure, you know. She’s the host. Anything goes bad out there, it’s on her.’
‘I know,’ Ellen said, smiling. ‘I know.’
*
That night, Ellen phoned her sister just before going to bed.
‘How are you feeling today?’ she asked, while she put the call on speaker and started checking her face in the mirror. It was the day before her transformation.
‘Not too good,’ Susie said. ‘It’s the dizzy spells, they’re worse now. And the humming has turned into this vibration. Like I’m living next to the railway. Don’t know. When is this going to end? I can’t keep going on like this. Most mornings I don’t even want to get out of bed. Honestly.’
‘Maybe you should go back to taking your hypertension pills?’
‘What pills?’ Susie shouted. Ellen wasn’t sure if it was because she was angry, or because she was getting deaf in one ear. ‘Those pills were the ones that were messing me up. I’ve told you already. I’m never going back to those pills.’
‘And your vertigo ones?’
‘They’re all the same. Poison. They want to kill us all.’
Ellen took a deep breath. She’d managed to get a doctor in the house six Christmases ago. That day, Susie’s vertigo had been so bad she couldn’t stand up or even eat. Ellen called 111 and they sent an ambulance. One of the paramedics checked Susie. He injected her with prochlorperazine to end the vertigo attack.
He pulled Ellen aside.
‘Your sister needs to see a psychologist,’ he said.
Ellen was surprised at his bluntness. She bit her lip, decided not to share that she’d tried to convince her for years now.
‘Can you refer her to one?’ she asked, weakly.
‘No. We came here because of her vertigo. Not her mental health. But talking to her for five minutes, I can tell. Convince her to submit a self-referral form, though. That should help.’
‘Sure. Thank you.’
‘So, how’s Geoff doing?’ Susie said.
Ellen decided she couldn’t be bothered lying about it anymore. It’d been almost ten months since she lived alone.
‘Well, we’ve decided to take a break.’
‘What?’ Susie said. ‘For how long?’
‘You know… it’s pretty much final.’
‘Are you telling me that you’re not together?’
‘Yes.’
‘But why would you do that?’
‘We’ve become different people. It wasn’t anything dramatic.’
She wouldn’t tell her about Geoff’s anger outbursts at the smallest things. Not against her – not very frequently. They happened mostly outside. Waiting in line, and someone in front of them took too long for reasons he didn’t approve of. People who bumped into him in the street because they didn’t diverge course in time. Shop clerks who were being rude for no reason. Her inability to remember to open the toilet window when she was showering.
‘You’re crazy. Leaving Geoff after what, seven years? But why? You share the house, he treats you well, he has a good job, his family is there. You have it so good. And you throw it into the bin, just like that? Do you think it’s going to be easy to find someone else who loves you? What are the chances of that happening again?’
Ellen fought her need to answer back. She wanted to yell at her sister. What was she to know about Geoff when she’d only met him a couple of times?
And it wasn’t like Susie had much experience in relationships anyways. There had only been one guy, back when Susie had moved to St Ives to join a local art studio. It had all ended with their mother having to bring Susie home with both her arms bandaged. When Ellen asked about it, her mother said that Susie fell and cut herself on some glass. By then, Ellen was busy moving to Edinburgh to start university. She almost didn’t notice that Susie had stopped painting. That she didn’t get another job. That she stayed home, which came in handy when their mother fell ill and couldn’t live by herself anymore.
*
The morning of her tattoo appointment, Ellen sat at her desk in the living room and took her beauty mirror out from one of the drawers. For years, putting make-up on at that desk before leaving the house had been an essential step in her routine, just like brushing her teeth.
She examined her face one more time before it changed. Her eyebrows needed plucking. Concealer for the darker areas under her eyes and the spots on her chin. Eyeliner. Mascara. Blush. Lipstick. All to fit. To camouflage.
The face tattoo would end all that. People would notice her because she would be incompatible with their idea of a woman. The Geoffs of the world would stare at her. Kitty and her colleagues at the radio would run out of words. And Susie and her mother would be shocked. Wondering what had happened to Ellen, their Ellen, who lived her mediocre, cosmopolitan life in Edinburgh and thought herself too important to go down and visit them. Their Ellen, with a face tattoo. Their Ellen turned into a ferocious creature. Sharp eyes and black lines. Feral. Yes, she liked that word.
She imagined Olive getting her face tattoo. The books said it was blue, inked with cactus pigment. She thought of the Mojave settlement, near the Colorado River.
The medicinal smoke blends in the purple shadows, making them longer and longer. The sun sinks behind the red mountains but the ground is still warm. The women sing and dance, and all their bodies beat together, part of the same organism.
Olive lies down under the smoke when an elder kneels next to her. Her white hair is braided and the faded blue lines in her wrinkled face are like rivers flowing down a mountain. The elder hums the song while she selects a shard of obsidian from a bowl. With a firm hand, she draws the first lines on Olive’s chin.
Olive closes her eyes and a few tears run down. But she’s not scared. She has her head on her sister Mary Anne’s lap. And it’s her sister’s hands that frame her face and keep it still while the elder rubs the blue pigment on the wound.
*
Kayleigh’s tattoo studio was a blue hut in her garden. It was a warm May afternoon, and the grass was full of dandelions. Inside the hut was a white counter with a sink and a tattoo chair opposite the window. A few pictures and sculptures hung from the walls. A small alabaster figure caught Ellen’s attention: a woman with wide hips and an ample bosom. A Venus of Willendorf.
Kayleigh adjusted the chair and spread a cover on it so Ellen could lie down.
‘Make yourself comfortable,’ she told her while washing her hands at the sink.
Ellen obeyed. She hadn’t expected it to be so cosy. Turkish rugs on the floor and candles by the windowsill. A soft drumming sound, like a heartbeat, emanated from a set of speakers in the corner.
‘When people got tattooed, in the ancient times, it was a rite of passage,’ Kayleigh said. ‘The word ‘Pict’ means ‘the tattooed people’. I bet you didn’t know that.’
The drumming became hypnotic.
‘This is not a transaction,’ Kayleigh said. ‘This is a ritual. A spiritual practice. Don’t run away from the pain. If you want a break at any point, just tell me.’
Ellen nodded.
‘I need you to be very still.’
Ellen closed her eyes.
‘That’s it.’
Kayleigh’s hands, covered in black latex gloves, were cold and smooth. They cradled her face and applied a cold substance to it before placing the stencil on her chin, her cheeks and nose.
Ellen’s breathing synchronised with the drumming. It was like following someone else’s footsteps in the dark.
The pain came as icy rain. Her body became alert and adrenaline built up at the back of her throat. She swallowed her urge to stand up and run away.
‘How are you feeling?’ Kayleigh asked after puncturing the first dots. ‘It’s a bit of a shock, isn’t it. Like wild swimming. Have you ever tried it? I started in my late twenties. I had a farmer boyfriend back then. Water is so cold up in the lochs, especially in the evening, when the sun is setting down and the last tourists leave. The first time you put your head below the surface – that’s something. But then your body gets used to it. Think about the pain as the freezing waves from the loch, licking your skin. The further they go, the easier it gets.’
Ellen closed her eyes while Kayleigh worked on her face. The discomfort took her back to the red desert in Arizona, right to the flat where Olive’s family was massacred.
Olive doesn’t remember much about them. The attackers. But she knows they spoke English, they were blond, and had blue eyes, didn’t look that different from her and Mary Anne. After taking them into the desert they got rid of their painted clothes, moccasins and feathers, and wore shirts and hats.
These white men wandered the desert, and when food was scarce, they dressed in their Indian clothes again and attacked what small groups of travellers they could find. Olive and her sister never went on those expeditions. They remained in the camp, scraping the red dust from the food they managed to find. They cooked for the men and mended their clothes. They sorted out what they brought back: three lanterns, a brass pocket watch, five pairs of small black leather boots that were repurposed for saddles and pouches.
But the white men were scared of Olive and her sister running away and telling other people what they’d seen. They considered killing them – Olive knows this, she heard them, and she tells this to Reverend Royal B. Stratton – but a few of them said they couldn’t do it, not again. And that, in any case, they’d get more from them if they traded them to the Mojave.
And so they did.
‘Your memory is getting confused there, my dear girl,’ Reverend Royal B. Stratton tells Olive while he takes notes on her story. ‘Your captors, they couldn’t have been white men. In that area near Yuma, they were surely Apaches. These Indians can show a lighter skin hue because many of them have mixed with Spaniards.’
Olive nods, eyes empty, twisting hands that the Reverend attributes to the trauma of her captivity.
Twenty years later, Olive will read about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and of white men, Mormons as well, dressing as Indians to attack a wagon train. She will ask her husband then to bring her all the copies of Captivity of the Oatman Girls: Being an Interesting Narrative of Life among the Apache and Mohave Indian that he can find. And she will burn them.
The Reverend makes a few other changes to her account. Changes to protect her, but also to tell a good story. That’s what he keeps telling Olive – it’s such a wonderful story, such an inspirational tale.
Olive tells him that it was white men from Fort Yuma who spotted her: a pale woman speaking the Mojave’s tongue, wearing one of their bark dresses with her breasts out, tattooed, like her arms and her face. They couldn’t take it. They had to cover her with a shift, a petticoat, a corset and a dress that anchored her down and made her unable to run away.
‘So that’s how they saved you.’ The Reverend decides to add a few details here and there to make the truth a bit more enticing. An exceptional Indian with a good conscience who tells people about the captive white girl. The pious wives from Fort Yuma, who donate some of their clothes so Olive can come back to civilisation dressed like a proper lady.
And next, one of the Reverend’s favourite parts. The reunion of Olive with Lorenzo, her long-lost brother, left for dead at the Oatman massacre, who had never stopped looking for her and Mary Anne.
Everyone wants to know what happened to her younger sister. Everyone asks. Men from Fort Yuma and their wives. Readers from the Sacramento Daily Union. Journalists from all over the country stalk her. Reverend Royal B. Stratton, her self-proclaimed biographer, asks the question once again.
‘What happened to Mary Anne? You can tell me anything. I know I don’t have the sensitivity of a woman, but with the help of God, I will understand.’
Olive thinks before answering that last question. She misses Mary Anne. That’s why she’s always so quiet, why she wakes up in the middle of the night crying. That’s why she keeps a jar of hazelnuts wherever she goes. To remember the times she and Mary Anne collected them together from the trees in the desert, all pregnant with nuts under the orange sun.
‘What happened to Mary Anne?’ the Reverend asks one more time.
With a quivering voice, Olive lies:
‘She died.’
*
Ellen’s face got swollen. Her nose, cheeks and chin itched while the first layer of the tattoo peeled off. She was glad she’d followed Kayleigh’s advice and booked a week off work.
Looking in the mirror for the first time hadn’t been upsetting. The face that she found there seemed to fit her better. As if the thin black lines and the dots had always meant to be there.
She called her sister on her third day off.
‘Hello?’ Susie answered. ‘You alright? Were you out? I’ve been calling you.’
‘Is it a bad time to talk?’ Ellen said, her left hand in a fist to avoid scratching. She always called at night.
‘I’m just going to take mum to the Ashton for coffee.’
‘Yes, yes, of course. I was just calling to tell you that I have a bit of time off and I’ve booked a train ticket to go down. Tomorrow.’
‘I have to ask mum,’ Susie said. ‘To make sure it’s a good time.’
‘But I’ve already booked the tickets. I’ve paid for them. I’m coming tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow? I have to check mum’s appointments. We may need to go to the doctor. For her check-ups. And I haven’t even done the weekly shopping. I think it’s better if I ask mum first, and then I tell you when.’
‘But I’ve already—’
‘You’re not the only one who’s busy, you know? I have to take her to her appointments. Do the shopping. Cook. Clean the house. I’ve not been feeling well. It’s not a good time.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll help.’
‘It’s not a good time.’
‘So? We’re family. Are we not supposed to be there during the bad times too?’
Silence. Ellen waited for Susie to get back at her. To remind her that she’d left the house to go live in Edinburgh, do her fancy job, stay in her cute apartment with views of Arthur’s Seat. While Susie had stayed with mum. Taking it all in. Feeling like she wanted to die some days. Because there was nothing worth leaving bed for. Only mum complaining her muesli didn’t have the right number of raisins in it.
Ellen had felt so guilty over those years. She’d tried not to think much about Susie back home, in the three-storey house that had too many rooms for only two people. But saying she was sorry for leaving Susie behind felt even worse than silence.
Ellen wondered about Olive. If she’d lied about Mary Anne. If she’d said she was dead so the white men wouldn’t go back for her too. Through all those years, Olive would have thought about her sister, of course, but never tried to go back to the Mojave. She was too afraid. So she suffered her sacrifice in silence. In the end, she couldn’t forget that one last lesson women got hammered with. Sacrifice. Life in the service of others. Was Susie like Olive, then, a caged animal that made up stories to explain grief she couldn’t confess to anyone? Was she Mary Anne, the other tattooed sister, who had managed to escape?
Susie was still having a go at her. But her recriminations didn’t feel sharp anymore. Ellen was used to them. She felt warm. A burning that radiated from her face and expanded all over her body.
‘I’m getting there tomorrow at two in the afternoon,’ Ellen said. And then hung up.
*
When Ellen arrived in Lancaster, Susie was there to pick her up. She rarely ventured far from home these days, and yet there she was, alone on the small platform. She was wearing a black coat Ellen remembered buying with her when they were both in their teens. Susie’s hair had gone white at the front, with some blueish grey chunks at the back. She stood there, letting Ellen come to her. This was the first time they’d seen each other in six years.
At some point, Susie noticed. An invisible wave broke her stern look and she opened her mouth.
‘I’m so happy to see you,’ Ellen said. ‘Remember when you picked me up from school?’
‘What have you done to your face?’ Susie said. Her eyes filled with tears.
‘It’s my tattoo.’
‘What? Is it…?’
‘You know, your scars, in your arms…’ Ellen said.
‘What?’
‘We’ve got to talk about that. I never really asked. I’m sorry.’
Susie gasped, hands in her throat as if she was struggling for air.
‘But this,’ Ellen gestured at her tattoo, ‘this different. I want to be seen. Not to be invisible. Do you understand?’
Inés G. Labarta
Inés G. Labarta is a queer, immigrant writer. She has published a collection of middle-grade novels and two novellas. Her forthcoming novel, The Three Lives of Saint Ciarán, (Blackwater Press, 2023) was described by Toby Litt as ‘exciting and provocative’. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Plymouth.
Inés co-runs The Wandering Bard and can be found on Twitter and Instagram.
Image: Ginny Koppenhol