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Mrs. Moscardi G - period

Survivor Alicia Donovan leans causally against the railing of her grandmother's porch,

smoldering cigarette in hand, watching the cars and passerbys going up and down Mount Pleasant Avenue in Providence. A beat up Chevrolet with blasting rap music slows down and Donovan exchanges good natured insults with the four or five boys inside. Teasingly, she makes and obscene gesture and the car takes off up the street, leaving the air thick with the distinct smell of muffler smoke and the fading strains of DMX. As they disappear out of sight, she shakes her head and chuckles slightly, obviously struck by some funny thought that she's not about to share. Watching this nonchalant blonde, no one would ever guess she carries the stigma of a childhood marked my tragedy and trauma.

Alicia looks right at home in front of the shabby, grey tenement which she shares with her grandmother, great grandmother and aunt. Unlike most of the girls today, she's not trying to be trendy or fashionable. She has on a plain white T-shirt, worn from unsuccessful attempts to get out its numerous stains, and a pair of jeans which are slightly ripped in the knees. Turning her attention away from the view, she runs her hands through her tousled hair and drops into one of the porch's slightly rusted aluminum chairs. "Well let's do this," she says with a good natured shrug, "so whatcha got for me?" Alicia wipes the trademark grin off her face and gains a serious, thoughtful expression as she begins to listen.

It's not hard to think of questions to ask a girl who has seen and been through as much as she has but, not sure how to handle some of the more delicate details, it's best to just start at the begiiming. "The beginning," Donovan explains wdth her Cranston drawl,

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"goes back fifteen years." Three year old Alicia lived in a working class Cranston neighborhood with her mother and father, a patrohnan on the Providence police force. Her parents both worked hard to maintain a comfortable middle class lifestyle, providing what seemed to be a happy and stable life for their daughter, Alicia excitedly awaited the arrival of her first sibling upon discovering her mother was pregnant. "Sure our little family had it's problems just like everybody else's, but it all seemed fine. I loved my parents and I couldn't wait to have a little brother or sister. Then, m 1987, everything just fell apart."

It seemed like they were Uving the American ideal for a while but, after a six year marriage, the pressures of careers, raising kids, paying bills and battling everyday stresses began to produce cracks in their relationship. " I remember them arguing back and forth for a while but then one day it all exploded," says Johnson. Her father abruptly moved out of the family's comfortable home and into a cheap motel and, within a week, her mother had oflBcially filed for divorce.

Michael Donovan disagreed with getting a divorce, doing everything in his power to avoid signing the papers. He intimidated his estranged wife by threatening to declare her unfit and procuring sole custody of their daughter; something which police status and a few government connections might ensure. At the peak of their arguing, Mrs. Donovan revealed that her unborn child was the product of her ongoing affair with another man. The shocking news served to persuade Mr. Donovan mto signing the divorce papers and things appeared to be progressing smoothly. "When my mom first demanded a divorce my dad was around the house all the time, calling and coming by to argue and trying to threaten her out of it. After she told him about the baby though, he just seemed to disappear altogether. Maybe it wasn't his kid, but he didn't seem to have any interest in seeing me either. It was like we all just died to him." Ahcia swallows hard, her passive demeanor losing out to an understandable swell of emotions. She wipes her pahns on her jean and gazes out at the street for a minute or two before talking again.

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Shortly after the divorce, Alicia and her mother, then six months pregnant, were forced to move from their comfortable house to a smaller one closer to the city. " My mom wanted to be closer to her sister. She needed to work more because my dad wasn't paying child support or alimony and all that good stuff that you get when your family falls apart. My aunt MeUssa babysat us all the time." Ahcia says, hints of bitterness creeping into her tone at the thought of her father's absence. But she had not seen the last of her father.

On the night of August 20,1987, an evening that Alicia will never get out of her nightmares, Mr. Donovan appeared at their home. Ahcia gets a faraway look on her face as she relates the event of the faithful evening:" I was sitting on the dryer watching my mom do laundry. No one heard my dad break into the house but suddenly he was just standing in the doorway of the laundry room. He didn't even look Uke the man I remembered, he looked crazy." Before Mrs. Donovan had the chance to do anything more than utter a startled gasp, her ex-husband drew his .38 caliber service revolver and fired two shots directly into her chest. She died right before the eyes of their three year old daughter. That is not where the tragedy ended for Alicia. Her father grabbed the terrified child, drove her to his mother's house and left her. He then shot and killed himself under an overpass less than a block away; that night was Michael Donovan's thirty-fourth birthday.

" For years I relived that night over and over again. " Alicia recalls," I saw it when I slept so I just stopped sleeping, but then I saw it when I was awake." However, the difficulties were just beginning for the child. After her family began to recover from shock waves of grief, they put Ahcia in the center of a difficuh legal battle. Her father's mother, Marie Donovan, and her mother's mother, Angela Pilkington, both wanted custody of their grandchild; the only living piece of their own children. " It was so hard to be in the middle of that. We had always had strong family bonds but suddenly I had no parents, and the two sides of my family that used to sit across from each other at Thanksgiving dinner

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would now only face each other in a courtroom." During the course of the trial, autopsy results on Mcia's unborn sister revealed that she was actually Michael Donovan's daughter; a particularly painful revelation to his mother.

Finally, after months of painful Utigation in which both sides of the family tried to discredit the other, the court ruled in favor of Alicia's maternal grandmother. " My grandmother adopted me. For a long time she wouldn't let me have anything to do with ray dad's mom but, over time, she realized how important it was for me to have some kind of relationship with my remaining family. Their relationship is still strained but I'm glad I have the opportunity to have one."

Living with her grandmother presented Alicia with what she describes as "a whole set of new problems." Being a little kid in tiny a house with four people and two bedrooms was tough. I had no yard to play in and we were one of the few white farrdhes on the street." The death of her parents also forced Alicia to deal v^th a number of "personal demons" ranging from depression and confusion to resentment. " I wasn't sure how I was supposed to feel as a kid. For a while I hated my father because I thought that was how I was supposed to feel; I'd just think of him as the guy who killed my mom. It took me way to long to reahze I was just cheating myself out of a dad in addhion to losing a mom."

As Alicia unsuccessfully struggled with her past, her present was plunged into turmoil. She became involved in drugs and associated with a bad crowd at school. Unsure of how to let go, Alicia's bitterness caused her school work and family relationships to suffer. Finally, midway through her sophomore year of high school, Alicia's grandmother decided that she must take action. She pulled Alicia from public school and enrolled her in Bishop Keough, an all girl's Cathohc school in Pawtucket. Despite the fact that Alicia was placed in new surroundings and worked with intensively by school teachers and guidance counselors, she was unable to change her poor habits. Despite the efforts of others, she was not able to change until she, herself, decided to.

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During her junior year, with faihng grades and one of the lowest class ranks in her class, Alicia had an epiphany: she was only hurting herself With this realization came the ability to make progress. Alicia began mending a damaged relationship with her grandmother, who had taken the brunt of her resentment. She began working with the teachers who had been trying, so far without success, to help her bring up her grades. Even more importantly, Alicia found rehgion and a greater social calHng.

After years of uncertainty about how she should feel towards her father and the world in general, Ahcia achieved peace. She accepted the events of the past for what they were, a terrible tragedy, and began to see the reality of her present. " I reahzed a lot of people cared about me." says Donovan," Yeah, a lot of bad stuff happened but I have a good life now and I'm loved." She began singing in the church choir, got a job as a waitress at a local restaurant and took on a job as a volunteer counselor to battered women and troubled teens, something she regards as her greatest accomplishment. Today, she is able to draw strength from a turbulent past and use her experiences to help others. " It's great when someone comes in thinking the only way they can handle a problem is with violence and leaves realizing they can solve it with words because of something I've said. Or when a woman leaves a guy who might have killed her because I helped give her strength." Alicia observes, beaming with pride and satisfaction.

As she nears her eighteenth birthday, Alicia prepares for another hfe change: she will be inheriting a significant trust fimd consisting of her mother's hfe insurance, father's pension and anything willed to her. This is something Alicia's grandmother only revealed to her recently, having wanted her to learn a lesson about the importance of earning money. " Pretty much all my life my grandma and I have struggled with money. I really didn't think I'd be able to go to college because we couldn't afford it but now I have all kinds of opportunities which I'm really grateftil for. " As for her plans for the fixture, Alicia wants to put her passion for helping people to permanent use as a social worker " helping kids who can't help themselves."

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In her seventeen years, Alicia has been through trauma which in unimaginable to the average high schooler. Despite the difficulties of her early years, Ahcia has managed to turn her hfe around and find strength in her past experiences. As she rises, giving an exaggerated sigh of reUef that she made it through the interview, it is clear that she has finally won her inner struggles. Her fijture looks bright with potential opportunities which she plans to seize and appreciate. It is certain that others will benefit fi-om Ahcia Donovan's compassion and dedication as well. In her words," The best news stories to me are the ones that aren't on because I helped prevent them." But for now, Ahcia is a story in herself.