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

Father Jude Miller had always loved to read about saints — the first and oldest of course somewhat apocryphal, the stories structured to end with ingenious tortures, the saints even in agony making clever retorts to butchers and emperors. As well, he loved the more contemporary saints whose lives obtained of more possibility of emulation — he marveled at their sense of sacrifice and fervor. He found himself dwelling on the symmetry of the saints’ passions, or stories, on their simplicity of line. He was having trouble with passion, from the Latin pati , to suffer, defined in the Catholic Dictionary as a written account of the sufferings and death of one who laid down his life for the faith . He was persuaded that the God he knew, at least, wanted him to write a passion, a recognition for this very complex person, Leopolda.

Besides that, he wanted to get the whole thing over with, this mission. As soon as possible, he would then leave the priesthood, immediately marry Lulu, get old with her. Wait, they were old already. They would die in each other’s arms, then. He must concentrate. He turned back to the task of describing Leopolda.

With some dismay, in the welter of files and note cards in fans and toppling stacks, Father Jude understood that to tell the story as a story was to pull a single thread, only, from the pattern of this woman’s life, leaving the rest — the beautiful and brutal tapestry of contradictions — to persist in the form of a lie.

Still, he tried.

Sister Leopolda of Little No Horse was born in extremely humble circumstances and during a time when accurate birth and death records were not kept, especially for families of wanderers among the Ojibwe, Cree, and

métis

families of the plains frontier. Although only sporadically exposed to the teachings of the Church, her piety was marked from a very young age.

Here, he stopped, shuffling through his papers for examples noted during the brief period, especially, when she had lived in Argus with relatives. She was spared during a tornado that had ripped the town apart. Though she attributed her survival to prayer and to the rigid defense of her virginity, an elderly man who, as a child in that family, had been lifted with her into the roil of air that same day, said otherwise: She used to cuff me around, slap me, scream, if that’s what you call praying. Yet there had also been stories of her fervid attendance at Holy Mass. She was unflaggingly pious. Though Father Damien remembered their first encounter in the church as disturbing, others reported a dull metallic glow surrounded her when she was lost in prayer, and the strong, resinous scent of burning pine pitch, not unpleasant, filled the air when she spoke out loud the sincere act of contrition.

She had a great deal to be contrite about, Father Jude thought, so why was she then rewarded with spiritual favors? Not his place to figure out, he told himself, and continued writing.

Many conversions took place as a result of her example of continual prayer. During what others have called her “marathon adorations,” in which she knelt for hours, sometimes whole days, eventually consecutive days, before the Blessed Host, she was in a state of ecstasy almost tangible to those who approached to touch her. Many reported that they were overwhelmed with a poignant sense of peacefulness, or that, holding a hand lightly on her shoulder, they were able to close their eyes and clearly visualize the answers to their problems and follow the progress of their prayers out the stovepipe and over the roof of the church, off the tips of the leaves, dodging the clouds and away into the sky.

Father Jude Miller put down his pen and dropped his head into his hands. True, but others had said she left a black stain like oil where her knees pressed for all of those days. During the time of her longest confinement or trance, the rigid fast that Father Damien had revealed as no visionary journey of the spirit but a dangerous case of lockjaw, he had been told, this from Dympna, that voices were heard behind the closed door of her cell. Voices arguing, low demonic growls, hideous moans. And yet when the door was opened there would be only Leopolda, bones and skin underneath the coverlet, eyes staring through the roof.

She was accepted as a novice at the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Little No Horse, and there she proceeded to raise great sums of money for the improved comfort of her sisters by giving missionary talks throughout the region. During these speeches, she would often become inspired to such a degree that others were moved to extreme acts of generosity. When she did return to the convent, she was physically and mentally exhausted, but tried her best to continue her studies in Church history and catechism, and to work toward the improvement of her soul.

He had to note, somewhere, what a trial she was to others and where her piety became terrific and strange. And, too, what to say about the deadly conversion she had effected with Quill, the useless baptisms she’d wrought on the defenseless dead, not to mention her amalgam of ancient practice with Catholic tradition and the skulls she dragged for years behind the Virgin of the Serpents, dragged by way of pierced back and arms, until they pulled free, shredding her….

In an attempt to reconcile the two worlds from which Leopolda drew spiritual sustenance, the young novice mistakenly, but with a fervent heart and pure intentions, attempted to graft new branches onto the tree of Catholic tradition.

Father Jude hummed with approval for his metaphor, imagined the great rooted base of an oak spreading wide and the branches reaching hungrily toward light, one among them boldly colored, beaded entirely, and ribboned. He leaned back into the supports of his wooden chair and closed his eyes. Suddenly, he saw that he was mistaken. The picture shifted. The tree was beaded all the way down to the center of the earth and the branch of his own beliefs, the dogma and history of the Catholic Church not even a branch but a twig not strong enough for a bird to perch on, just a weak and slender shoot. He rubbed his eyes and resumed his place in Leopolda’s story.

When her efforts to meld the two cultures failed, she chose decisively for the one true church and diverted the fever in her soul to the zeal of conversion. She was assiduous in her attempts to lead her people to the knowledge of the Holy Trinity, and used whatever means were at hand to effect enlightenment. Sometimes, it is true, she overstepped the bounds that may be termed proper. These were crimes of passion for the faith, however, and as she continued in her growth she began to understand just how to channel the great zeal she felt into more effective ploys. While in Argus, North Dakota, she took her perpetual vows and then returned to Little No Horse to continue her missionary work among her own people, one of whom she had murdered—

Father Jude paused, blinked at the word, then shook himself, stared fixedly at his pen, and continued writing fiercely.

Granted, she killed out of revenge for his unwanted sexual attentions, but she actually used a sacred rosary to strangle him. Plus she bore his child and then repudiated the girl — no — lived near and tortured her! Leopolda poured boiling water from a kettle onto the girl’s back and then, in an act of shocking viciousness she brained the child with an iron poker and stabbed a hole—

He jumped out of his chair in extreme agitation and began to pace back and forth behind his desk. All this even without Lulu’s testimony, without the children Leopolda had bruised and, maybe worse, grievously humiliated in her classroom, the barbarous use she made of shame, anger, sarcasm — all poisons of the spirit, which she possessed every bit as much as the spirit’s gifts. Because of Sister Leopolda, and Lulu had laughed saying this about her teacher, she’d bathed for six weeks in Hilex water to see if her skin would bleach. Because of Leopolda, children endured memories of ear-ringing slaps, of uglier blows, of the jeering fun she made of their poverty and innocence.