Louise Erdrich - The Painted Drum

Ira knew or was related to some of the nurses who had trained on special IHS scholarships and then come back home. One, her cousin Honey, had always said that she was going to be a nun, but ended up as a nurse. She was a strict Catholic. As Ira helped Honey and the other nurses tend to one and another of her children, they talked to her and got the story. No one blamed her outright. But the Indian Child Welfare was going to conduct an interview with her, no question, and then speak separately with each of her children. The head of that department had scheduled a case worker from ICW to come by the hospital.

Honey brought fresh clothes, and Ira showered in the bare tile bathroom next to Shawnee’s bed. The water washed down black at first, and Ira remembered the soot and it seemed very long ago. She turned the water up as hot as she could stand it. There was a big plastic bottle of all-over body-wash shampoo fixed to the wall of the shower. She used a lot of it, and then stood under the hot dribble like a grateful dog, she thought, just like a grateful animal. The bathroom was full of steam as she dried off with a tiny, thin hand towel. She hadn’t wanted to ask about getting a real bath towel. She skimmed her hair back in a ponytail and checked her purse, but she didn’t put on makeup. Looking plain was good, she thought. She never could look good again. She would never leave her children for a minute.

Once she was clean, it felt like she really lived at the hospital now. She still felt fuzzy—too much had happened. She wished she had a cup of coffee. A woman came into the girls’ room. She carried a briefcase and held a clipboard, and she wore a full-length down coat, mukluks, and St. James Bay woolen mitts. Looking straight at her, Ira’s heart jumped. It was the wife of John, the woman with the neat white scar that cut across her lips. Her name surged into Ira’s mind. “Seraphine!”

“Yes, boozhoo! We’re getting a blizzard sometime today,” she informed Ira. “We’re really lucky it wasn’t yesterday.”

Ira was glad she’d said we ; it would have been an accusation if she’d said you . Seraphine left the room and Ira followed her silently, numb in her thoughts. They went down the hall and entered a little office with a wall of gray shelves and cabinets, stacks of papers and boxes of tongue depressors and rubber gloves. A dead computer and a fake plant were on the desk.

“Let’s just squeeze in here, it’s private,” said Seraphine.

There was a padded desk chair and metal folding chair. Seraphine swept her hand at them both and let Ira choose where to sit. Ira took the metal folding chair.

“Now let’s go over things,” Seraphine said. There was a pen chained to the top of her clipboard. A tribal ID hung from her neck on a bright pink, canvas ribbon. Her dress was stone gray with soft little sage-green flowers on it. Seraphine’s face was extraordinarily beautiful, finely made, a haughty Michif face. Her skin was the pale gold color that white people broil themselves on tanning machines to achieve. John was right, thought Ira, his wife is very good-looking. He had also said that she knew medicines, and Ira wondered if she would act all spiritual. But Seraphine was quietly matter-of-fact.

“First of all,” she said, after she had confirmed Ira’s basic information, “what are you now doing for a living?”

“I sew a lot. Quilts and powwow outfits. And I bead. I had a thousand-dollar men’s fancy regalia burn up with my house,” Ira said, remembering and missing, as she would now for years, something lost in the fire.

“That’s a chancy living.”

“True.”

“I think I saw one of your bead yokes—I know your style.”

“All my dad’s things are gone now, too,” Ira went on, and a strange feeling overtook her momentarily. Those things that had burned were all that her father had left behind in his life. Now there was nothing to remember him by but his grave. “Oh, no,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing.” Ira touched her face.

“Tell me what happened the day before yesterday,” said Seraphine. “Can you explain why your children were left alone for an extended period? I have to set this down in my report, so take it slow.”

“They weren’t alone,” said Ira, “they were with Shawnee.”

“Shawnee is a minor. The law says you can’t leave your children with a minor overnight. Of course, you’re under tribal jurisdiction, but the judge usually upholds the same standard.”

“I didn’t know it was against the law.”

“Have you done this often?”

“Never, no, maybe once. This was an emergency. I went to the office to get some heating assistance and a food voucher or whatever. You can ask the personnel, Itchy Boyer, some others. I hitched in but I had trouble getting a ride back.”

Seraphine made some notes on her pad of paper, then rested her clipboard on her knees.

“Look,” she said, “I know all about it. John told me.”

Heat flooded Ira’s face. How much was told? What had John said?

“Morris gave me a ride out to my place.”

“And John and you walked to Morris’s place.”

Ira hesitated. “Yeah.”

Seraphine frowned at her paper, then shook her pen to get the ink to flood into the tip.

“Hey,” said Ira suddenly. “I met John at a bar, but he was only interested in getting me to Morris’s place. He gave me money for groceries.”

Ira rubbed her hands together. Her skin was tender.

“Okay,” Seraphine said, writing down some words. “So far your stories match.” She was only joking, and she smiled as she wrote, but Ira felt her throat go dry and scratchy. If Seraphine wrote up a bad report on her, what? Could they take her children? Her breath snagged in her chest. Seraphine kept talking. “So you met John at a bar and he gave you money for groceries and then left you over at Morris’s house.”

Ira nodded. The red cotton placket-front blouse she was wearing, the too large bra, the baggy black pants, and the hospital slippers made her feel poor and beggarly. But I am poor and beggarly, she thought. Everything I have is burnt. She remembered Shawnee’s school pictures. Her breath caught. And now this woman is going to ask me if I had sex to get the money. But I can honestly tell her that I did not, though I would have, but would have doesn’t matter. And Morris can tell her, too.

“Morris knows,” Ira blurted.

“Morris knows what?”

“I’m really tired,” said Ira, wiping her hand across her face. “Can I go back to my kids? I lost my daughter’s school pictures in the fire.”

“I just have a few more questions.”

Ira leaned across the desk, put her head on her fist. “Okay.”

But Seraphine didn’t ask about why John gave her money or why Morris gave her a ride. She was more interested in where Ira thought she might stay while she applied for emergency housing and got on the waiting list for permanent housing.

“I don’t know yet,” said Ira.

“Well, you’ve got to find somewhere,” said Seraphine. “We can put you and your children in the women’s shelter for a month, maybe, starting in a couple of weeks, but before that we’d have to put them in foster care and you, I don’t know…” She touched the scar on her lips.

“I’ll find a place,” Ira said. “Bernard maybe. He might let us stay with him. I don’t know. It’s pretty far out there.”

“That’s a problem.” Seraphine nodded. “You with no transportation. I’m going to ask your daughters some questions now. I need to find out how the fire started.”

And do you need to check my story out, Ira wondered, see if they saw me getting high on drugs or I beat them up or fucked Morris on the living room rug while they were eating breakfast, not that we have a rug anymore, or a living room, and the whole thing that started it was there was only breakfast, only oatmeal.