Louise Erdrich - The Painted Drum

The next day she stepped onto that rock with her baby and allowed all that was unbearable to rush around her—Ziigwan’aage’s colliding outrages of love and hate, the daughter’s black, interior purpose, the little requests and petitions of visitors who needed something of Simon Jack, the younger son’s lively innocence, her own baby’s needs. She performed patternless, absorbing, hectic, trying tasks with steady calm. She slowed her movements, allowed her whole body to become a contained absence. She was so conscious of keeping a close check on herself that she did not notice that when she did this, her effect upon others was something like Simon Jack’s. Ziigwan’aage’s attention unwillingly turned toward her, as did the frozen spirit of her daughter. Simon Jack tried to hide his uneasy curiosity. But the presence of a woman who did not belong where she was and yet kept herself keenly occupied, displaying no hint of uneasiness, disturbed them. Anaquot neither desired to please nor seemed anxious not to offend, yet she did both. Nobody could tell how hard that was. Anaquot considered each act and weighed each word before she uttered it. She found within herself a deep reserve. She exercised control only over herself, and was unaware that to do so can often cause others to lose theirs.

Which is why Simon Jack tried to slip beneath her blanket one night. It was a rash act and Simon Jack had desperately resisted it. Anaquot had only imagined that he might come, but when she felt his hands on her, she did not what she wanted to do, but what would save her life.

“Get away from me! Go play with yourself! Leave me alone!” she hissed, pushing at him violently, waking the baby to cry and to wake the others. Rejecting Simon Jack was one of the most difficult things she had ever done, but it had the desired result. Ziigwan’aage, who was of course awake, stared up into the freezing black air of the cabin and allowed a slow smile to creep across her face. She had been tempted to kill Anaquot ever since her husband had returned. Simon Jack crept to the coldest corner of the cabin and curled in his blanket, alone. Then he chopped wood all the next day with a hard, specific fury. Ziigwan’aage sang as she cooked. When she served the food, Anaquot ate heartily and without fear for the first time since she’d come to the cabin.

The two women never discussed what they would do to take away their man’s power and divide it between the two of them. But after that night it began to happen that Simon Jack felt a little dizzy in the evenings and went to his blankets in the corner before they turned the lamps out, and fell asleep there while the women sat at the table working. They were beading something. They did not know what it was yet, what was taking shape beneath their hands. They placed each bead just so on the velvet and the beads turned into four-petaled flowers that told stories and held great meaning. These flowers lay along white vines that writhed like snakes across the velvet, and there were horns on the vines and leaves of impossible shapes springing off here and there. What they worked on had the most amazing vitality. It grew between them. And still they could not tell what it was until one day Simon Jack walked in and saw that they were making him a dance outfit, either that or an elaborate set of clothes to be buried in, but as the dance outfit was far the better option he mentioned it out loud.

“Oh yes,” said one of them—they could never remember which—“you will dance in these handsome clothes. You will dance your heart out, little husband.”

The last part was spoken beneath her breath, so he didn’t hear it, but the other woman smiled and their needles flashed, spearing beads and affixing them. And so the outfit took its shape. The horned white vine twisted like a snake down the two front pieces and coiled itself around the back. Sometimes they ran out of thread and continued to sew with grasses or wolf sinew or even with their own hair. It was only from necessity that they did this. They did not mean to bind him to them in an evil way. They did not mean any evil at all. They were only caught in what the story did to them. The story Simon Jack had set into motion. No, if anybody was responsible for the elegant armbands and wrist guards, the leggings, or the too ornate breech clout, it was Simon Jack. And if each woman beaded the bottom of one of his makizinan the way grieving widows bead the soles of their dead husband’s, it was only the fault of Simon Jack again. For it was he who played with Ziigwan’aage’s toothed and closely guarded heart. He who had raked his eyes down Anaquot’s breasts and kindled the heat that flowed up and licked through every sense until she couldn’t think and let things happen that shouldn’t ever have taken place. So although they didn’t understand where the outfit was going or what would happen to Simon Jack once he put it on, they sewed. And it could even be said that they enjoyed their work and found the doing of it an act of love, though not exactly love of Simon Jack.

The two women stitched each other still closer, became true sisters. Anaquot had left her family behind and was hungry for connection. And Ziigwan’aage, though surrounded by family, was set apart because of the nature of her fierce personality and knowledge of medicines. She began to appreciate and then rely on Anaquot, who was almost as smooth and efficient a worker as she. A deer carcass vanished between them in no time, for instance, reduced to its respective parts, as did any animals trapped. The skins were quickly removed and beautifully stretched on frames. Ziigwan’aage had more time to do things, even to enjoy herself. And so did Anaquot. They went to town, brought Doosh along. Bartered bitterly and happily. Anaquot always bought a ribbon or a string of licorice for Doosh. One day they met a mission teacher in the store. He told them he was taking students to a place where they would get educated better than white people. “Your daughter is intelligent” was all Anaquot said to Ziigwan’aage. But Doosh would not let up on the idea that the girl with the cold eyes, Niibin’aage, should go.

They went home. Between them they carved up a bear killed in its winter den. Soon its thick, perfectly tanned fur coat lay before the warm stove and the baby rolled and played on it and cooed with that engaging and astonished recognition that occurs halfway through a baby’s first year and makes everybody laugh. For it was spring now. Some days the snow dripped and melted and Ziigwan’aage let the children go without their daily bear-grease rubdown, and then without their heavy, scratchy, woolen underwear. The ice on the lake was dull gray, soft, and porous looking. They were not allowed to cross it anymore on the way to school, but had to go the long way around, through the woods. Ziigwan’aage walked with them. That was another reason that she valued Anaquot’s presence in the house—she could leave Anaquot with her own baby and Ziigwan’aage’s youngest, and Ziigwan’aage could walk with the children to make sure nothing happened to them. Anaquot observed that if the girl went to the boarding school, she, at least, would not have to face that walk every day. Spring weather could be treacherous, and the animals were gaunt and hungry. Ziigwan’aage always carried the gun.

One day, when Ziigwan’aage returned from walking the children to school, she was hauling a dead wolf behind her on a toboggan she’d improvised from tree bark and some vines. It was the biggest wolf either of the women had ever seen. The fur was a light glossy gray and the brush of its tail longer than a grown man’s arm. The creature’s face was calm and almost smiling. Anaquot placed tobacco on its throat and all four paws. It could well have been one of the wolves that killed her daughter. That pack was known here and it was mostly grays.