Louise Erdrich - The Antelope Wife

FRANK ISN’T CRAZY about his birthday. So he decides he’ll ignore it and give Rozin a party instead. She will plan something for him, sure — but he’ll do her one better by surprising her.

On a bit of cash register paper he makes a list of gifts and possibilities. Jewelry. Little luxuries. A private, exquisite dinner he can cook. A night of solitude in some remote place or just a camp-out on the kitchen floor. He thinks of her, what she will like, however, and then he thinks of her again, understanding what she really wants. After all, he’s heard her mention the party with longing, out loud.

Friends, family, reunited enemies, survivors of the last six months. They’d meet. They’d have a party — where… here. Frank looks around him. Here! In the house. Here, where the locust trees shed that fluttering shade, he will string lights. Speakers. He sighs, resigned to it. There will be music. Dancing. Beer. Kool-Aid. Pastries. Cake and barbecue. He’ll make the cake of cakes once more, again, from the refined recipe. They’ll all be there. It will be generous, big, loud, and best of all, a smile slowly dawns in him, exquisite, he will make it a surprise.

THE WEEK BEFORE, she panics. Thinks of buying him a watch. A name bracelet. Shoes. Something he can look at every day. Neither one of them mentions the birthday, and its avoided bulk grows between them — bigger and bigger like a twice-risen bread, and then a vast wild-yeasted dough. It doubles and redoubles itself — and the tipping load of it grows flimsy and the two grow shy. They can’t touch, retreat after work; isolated in their plans, they neglect each other’s company and brood. Make secret phone calls. Each cultivates a convincing memory loss. They mention little as the date approaches, then less, then nothing. It is as though they are both secretly adulterous.

The Birthday

The air is dusty and faintly golden, but the morning has been cold so that the scent of the lilacs newly blossoming hangs here and there in pockets of sweetness. All day, Rozin glances at the index card that holds her plan — the twins with Cecille, a supposed dinner out. After the store closes he will come home. She will be setting flowers in vases. Unwrapping candles. Sautéing mushrooms. Changing the sheets on their saggy double-bed mattress. As he nears the predictable end of his routine she’ll light the candles upstairs in the bedroom. Doff her clothes. Apply perfume. She will cover, or rather decorate, herself strategically with stick-on bows. Two bright pink ones on her tawny nipples. One below.

That evening, she does all exactly as she has envisioned. Last thing, she peels the waxy paper off the stick-on rectangle and applies the bows. The two pink. Below her navel, she smacks on a frilly expensive bow, white and silver, bought at a Hallmark shop. She pins her hair up and presses another tiny hot pink bow on over her ear, a white one on her shoulder. A tiny spice-brown bow on each earlobe. She wedges her feet into silver high-heeled pumps. Picks up a match, a sparkler, a cupcake. Nothing else. Her heart drums as she smoothes on her lipstick and touches an extra dab of perfume to each temple.

DOWNSTAIRS IN THE HOUSE, sliding through the front door from which Frank has removed the creak, and from the back alley through the wild yard, the wedding party guests come whispering, tiptoeing, sneaking childishly, huddling together. In the big room below, where the staircase from the upstairs gives out into the kitchen, there is a wider step, almost a landing, next to which Frank stands with his hand on the light switch. He has informed them all of the routine. When Rozin comes down the stairs and reaches the landing, placed almost like a small stage at the entrance to the kitchen, when she pauses in the gloom, he’ll hit the switch. They’ll all yell….

WALKING DOWN THE STAIRCASE through the hush of the evening toward Frank’s voice, hollow at the bottom of the steps, Rozin is preoccupied with balance and timing. The heels are higher than she is used to. Naked but for the bows, she shivers. She comes down slowly so as not to stumble. That would ruin it all. She plans that she will stand at the bottom of the stairs, where light will catch the satin in the ribbons of the stick-on bows. In one hand, the cupcake with the sparkler in it. In the other hand, the match she will strike on the rough wood of the door frame…

THE SCRAPE OF the match, the flame, and her uncertain voice. Frank flips on the lights. The packed crowd shouts on cue. Surprise!

And everybody is surprised.

Rozin blinks. She stands, heels together, mouth open. She is naked, but for the trembling bows. The sparkler sparks on the cupcake she holds. For an endless moment, the party of friends and family stand paralyzed, gaping. Then Rozin stumbles backward, gasping, as Frank with extraordinary presence of mind whips a starched white apron off the hook behind him and drapes it over her. He bends close to her in concern. Face working, she waves him off. Tears sting his eyes. Nobody has the presence of mind to speak. The silence holds until it is broken by one solitary hiccup from Rozin. Huddled over the apron, the cupcake smoldering and smashed at the silver tip of her shoe, she hiccups again.

The party waits. The hiccups sound like the prelude to a bout of hysteria. Though she is no weeper, Frank nonetheless expects her to cry. Her shoulders shake. Her forehead is red in her hands. But when she lifts her face, her small laugh lights a string of firecracker laughs through the kitchen so that Frank’s own scratchy, hoarse, unfamiliar laughing croak is part of the general roar.

GRANDMAS GIIZIS AND NOODIN enter the early morning kitchen stealthily, hungry for leftover birthday cake. Knowing their habit, their love of sweets, the girls have risen to entrap them. Cally is already pouring coffee. Deanna is already cutting the remains of the twelve-layer chocolate raspberry cake that Frank nearly pulled off his ponytail in frustration to get right.

The grandmas accept the thick, uneven slices of cake and look at Cally and Deanna quizzically, with a slow and doggy quiet regard. Giizis takes a burning sip of hot coffee.

“You girls are up early,” she observes. “What do you want?”

Cally and Deanna shoot a look at each other, bite their lips. Each takes a huge deep breath. Cally elbows Deanna. She elbows her sister back.

“Nookoo?” says Deanna.

“Grandma?” says Cally.

“Eya’?” says Giizis.

“Eya’?” says Noodin.

“We want to know something.”

Giizis and Noodin shoot a look at each other, bite their lips, and each takes her own huge deep breath. They hope it will not be about those things that their mother should talk about. They hope they will not have to plan a menstrual moon-lodge ceremony or a berry feast or talk about the old ways and the new, regarding woman matters, not yet!

“About our names. We want to know.”

The grandmothers’ crooked, hungry smiles grow softly indulgent and even delighted. Here their granddaughters are asking for the names that have frightened their mother off. The names that came so powerfully in dreams. History scared Rozin, but history is what her daughters want. The right ones are asking for their names here, the young ones, and their mother can just go whistle up a tree trunk.

“How do we get them? What do we do? Do you know them? Mama said you dreamed them once. We tried to get her to tell us. She wouldn’t tell us. She said there had to be a ceremony. What ceremony. How does it go? Do we have to get married? We hate boys. They are so gross. Dogs are better. But Sweetheart Calico took her dog. And how do we get our names?”

The grandmas take big bites of unhealthy chocolate raspberry sugar cake, chew it, and enjoy the taste. Their smiles appear. A sunny moment of startling peace. In walks Rozin wearing her fuzzy pink bathrobe, yawning.