Louise Erdrich - The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

“Aaniin, nokomis,” I said and I felt the kindness of the moon shine down on me as I went back to sleep.

That was the first night.

That day was the first day.

I heard them running, yelling, herded off to the dining hall. Then I heard them from farther off calling again. Their sounds faded and the sounds of morning were above me. I had to pee. But I didn’t and then I forgot because I heard the buses. My heart thumped with shock. Then regret sliced me. I realized that I was missing a trip that the whole school was taking. It was a trip given to the children by a lady — a very big, doll-haired, red-cheeked lady with red fingernails and pointed red lips who spoke to us in the classroom — a trip to a circus. I knew all about the circus. Nanapush had once seen the circus. Ever after he had loved to describe its wonders. There was an animal called the anamibiigokoosh, the underwater pig. There was a horse with a long neck, genwaabiigigwed, which I had seen on the alphabet. The giraffe. There was a striped horse and little peoplelike creatures who constantly searched one another for lice. Nanapush had seen great brown panthers jump through circles of flame, and watched a woman launch through the air like a flying squirrel. Down in the hole, I went into a low grief. I had a black dejection , I would say when grown up, of my worst feelings. And it would mean I was again lost in my spirit, the way I’d felt in the bottom of the hole knowing I’d miss the circus, which was worse, much worse than wondering if I would ever get out.

My feet went numb from their old freezing, and my legs prickled. I danced up and down in the hole until I felt all warm again. That was how I made the time go, when my legs numbed. Or I sang. “Our Country” and other songs that I had just learned in school. Nanapush’s love songs and hunting songs. Songs that went with my mother’s name. My own songs. Then songs I’d made up for my dolls. Each of my dolls had their own names and songs. I knew every little thing about my dolls and their lives and I felt stricken all over again because I didn’t know where my dolls were now. Had my mother kept them? Did Nanapush have them? I missed my dolls more than I could allow myself, ever, to miss my mother. The sun passed over, briefly flinging down a pour of radiance, and then moving on.

The buses returned very late in the evening and the children were sent straight into the dorm. All of a sudden I heard a voice. “Lulu!” A cloud on a stick dropped into my lap. I was so shocked I couldn’t move. I touched the thing — pale, raspberry scented, sticky sweet, a balled-up spiderweb. I touched my fingers to my tongue, then I ate the stuff. After I ate every bit of it, a strange buzzing started just behind my eyes, as though my brain were a hive of bees. My thoughts kept flying in and out, impossible to catch. I danced, my feet moving in a quick floating flat-footed skip, and I sang a song to keep myself company and then curled up when I was warm.

I slept, woke. The moon was caught in a mist of secret spiderwebs, of circus floss, cottony and quick to vanish. The moon blazed at me, as though it were thirsty too.

“Ingitizima,” I softly said, words I had heard in prayers, I am pitiful.

“You are pitiful,” I heard in answer. “I am sorry for you.”

There was someone in the hole with me.

That someone turned out to be a spirit who kept me company from then on out. There were those who wondered at me, all through my life, starting when I stayed at the school and refused my mother, who came back rich. People thought Lulu Lamartine was heartless as a cat. And like a cat, too, in my mind’s limber strength and survival toughness. People thought I was too bold. Many resented how I had no fear, not enough to cause me any sensible concern for what people thought. I just did what I pleased. Married men and left them. Had my babies and brought them up. Raised my own money through my thrifty profit. Showed my breasts rude and shockingly. Wore my skirts tight and my heels tall. Wore makeup paint. True, I had land. True, I was clever leasing it. True, I was even more clever in the use to which I put my talents with men. But it was that spirit who taught me that to laugh or to cry was all the same, and who gave me the strength to spit pain in the face and love the world in joy. I sat with that spirit, who would never leave me. And the spirit said, Look around you and if you think all there is to see is a rotten hole, look again and see the color and the beauty and the constant life of the earth. I stayed two nights and two days in the hole before a big girl broke free of the line and sneaked out back to pull me out.

That big girl was a Pentecost. Rose Pentecost. Named as a family by a priest in the last century who tired of translating and just added feast days to the roll of names that year.

I got into the line with the other children and walked in to the morning meal. No dirt was on my face and no dirt was in my hair. I was neat and clean. My eyes were clear. I never told on the big girls, for which I was then a hero. None of the matrons ever knew. So even then, I did not get in trouble.

But later. Trouble? I ate trouble. I was trouble.

Being trouble started when they told me that I was not going home for the summer. Staying there, with the matrons, at school. At first I tipped sideways, as though the words pushed me over. Not going home was as much a shock as coming there in the first place. Not seeing my mother, my grandpa and grandma, the Yellowboy girls and the Anongs and again my mother — especially my mother, because in the beginning my skin ached for my mother’s touch and my ears kept straining. I hadn’t decided to hate her yet. And not that my mother exactly said, I’ll be back to get you , but I knew she would. When they told me I would not be going home, I staggered in a red zigzag and then sat by the bridal wreath bush outside the school office, there on the grass.

It was out-of-bounds to sit there, it was an offense. That’s why I did. I sat there for a while and then slowly edged myself into the shadows of the thousands of tiny leaves. Through the shadows, then, and farther back, until I was in the curved space between the bush and the wall of the building. A clean space completely hidden, a place where I could look into the crossed and baffled twigs, the timid green leaves, the sprays of white flowers, the petals, clouds of frail dots.

The idea first came to me when I boarded the school bus to visit the local school where we would do our yearly goodwill performance. I danced shawl and traditional. Rose Pentecost performed “The Lord’s Prayer” in sign language. I had got stuck on Rose after Rose came and got me. I learned “The Lord’s Prayer” in trade sign language, because Rose Pentecost always got so much applause. I thought I would like to have that, and to stand up there alone and silent, only my hands moving, my hand and arm making the upward spiral, so graceful, to indicate the spirit. I was thinking about that, and at the same time walking up the school bus steps when I dropped the little fan that I carried, on loan from our dance advisor. The fan flicked under the bus, blown by wind, and I lay flat on my stomach to get it. That was when I happened to look sideways and up, under the school bus, and noticed the little shelf.

The thin, black, metal shelf hung down from the body of the engine to support three exhaust pipes. It was just the right size for a child, an intriguing little place. I scrambled backward with the fan, a beautiful and cunning fan made of a prairie chicken tail. I caught up with the other dancers and I did my dance piece, but all the time that I danced, I was busy thinking something I could not define, something that had to do with the shelf and pipes underneath the bus.