Louise Erdrich - The Antelope Wife

“Cake!” She frowns at the grandmas and is about to scold them about their blood sugar when the girls grab her arms. Before she even pours herself a coffee, they tell her that they have asked their grandmas to give them names. The names she would not tell them. They are gloating. Rozin turns her back and chooses a tribal college ceramic cup in despair. It is chipped. She thinks of smashing it in the sink.

“I was afraid this would happen. I never should have said anything.”

“Don’t be afraid,” says Cally.

“It will be all right, Mom,” says Deanna, and brings her the carton of half-and-half from the refrigerator.

“Thanks,” says Rozin. It is odd how girls know everything about your habits. They have been watching and learning all about you. They know that you cannot take your first sip of coffee without cream-milk in the cup. They know that after your first sip of black medicine water you are a better person.

“Yes,” says Rozin, after the first taste. “Yes, I guess it is time.”

The Names

There will be a feast and a ceremony later. But at this moment, the grandmas feel they should proceed. Before Rozin drinks enough coffee to change her mind. First, the grandmas fill two cups for Rozin and make her promise not to open her mouth until they are done talking. Then Giizis settles herself, pulling at her big soft T-shirt. Frowning into her coffee cup, she speaks.

FIRST OF ALL the old woman came to me. Our ancestor who was killed by the bluecoat soldier. “During my time I made such beautiful things,” she said. “I wanted my children and grandchildren to know they were loved. Other people see those special dresses, moccasins, leggings, or a baby’s first dikinaagan, and know that child is cared for. I made that cradle board real special. I copied into velvet the flowers we love, the wild prairie roses. You can eat them if you are hungry. Those sweet petals keep you going. But we didn’t need them, for here we had killed a lot of buffalo, and we had dried the meat before we were attacked.

“I saw the soldier shoot at children and I ran at him with a stone. But he killed me on the end of his gun. Not so easy, however, because I stared at him in his eyes. I stared him back in time, to when he was defenseless, before his birth. And then I put my spirit into him as best I could.

“That long moment passed. I looked at the distance. Over his shoulder, I saw the dog running off with my baby granddaughter, the dikinaagan strapped on its back. Oh, I was happy. They were getting away. I was filled with joy and nothing hurt me. I had given that child my own name, a very old name that goes back for many generations, and would be carried forward now. I cried out that name, and fell away and held the earth, and melted into the earth, and am part of everything now. My spirit guided the other spirits who died with me on that day, for I was named after the band of radiant light we travel.

“Why is it given to us to see the colors and the power and the imperishable message? We are so limited, so small. Gaagigenagweyaabiikwe, I cried, and put the name into the soldier’s mind so he repeated it and repeated it. He scratched it into the sand the first time he sat down — whiteman’s letters, a name never written down — and eventually he carved it into his arm. My name killed him eventually, though he died by his own knife, it is true. But our people had pity on his spirit. We helped him to depart this earth. As he walked the road to the next life, the letters never melted from his arm, they guided him. And now they are part of everything, too. They are the name I give you. Everlasting Rainbow. The footbridge that connects us with the other world.”

“OF COURSE,” SAYS Giizis, sipping her coffee, “it is very difficult to translate a real Ojibwe name into the whiteman’s language. So often, our names include movement, the stirring of leaves, the glint of light on water, the trembling of color. English is so limited.”

“We do our best,” says Noodin with a critical sigh.

“Ombe omaa,” says Giizis to Deanna, and she places her hands on her grandniece’s head and says the name four times. She makes Deanna repeat it. Then Cally and Rozin. She writes it down.

“Not gonna carve it in my arm. Now you memorize this.”

She gives the paper to Deanna and then nods at Noodin. “Mi’iw minik, my sister, ginitam.”

“THERE ARE THESE beads I love,” says Noodin. “Deep ones, made of special glass. Hungarian beads called northwest trader blue. In them, you see the depth of the spirit life. See sky as through a hole in your body. Water. Life. See into the skin of the coming world.”

Cally nods, lets a long breath out, impatient to see how this bead talk connects with her name.

“Just a second,” Noodin says, “I’m getting it all fixed in my mind. My brain is soaking up the sugar. I have to let the cells energize before I go on telling you.”

Noodin draws a deep breath and continues.

“When I was a child,” says Noodin, “I wanted beads of that northwest trader blue, and I would do anything to get them. I first glimpsed this blue on the breast of a Pembina woman passing swiftly. I saw her hand rise to the beads and then touch the blue reflection on her throat. Ever after, I knew I must have that certain blueness which was like no other blue. I scored my fingers making quill baskets and when they were finished I went to the trader and sold them. I looked behind his glass and wood counter at the hanks of beads hanging there on nails — beads the ripe silk of prairie roses. Silver beads, black, cut-glass white. Beads the tan of pony hide and green, every green there is on earth. There were blues there, sky blue, water blue, the blue of the eyes of those people who took our trees. The blue of old pants and the blue of mean thoughts. I searched for the blue of those beads I had seen on the Pembina woman, but that blue was different from all the other blues on earth. Disappointed at the trader’s cache, I spent my money on sweet candy. There would come a time I would see the beads I needed, but I already knew they could not be bought.”

Grandma Noodin stares at Cally, looking through her, figuring.

“During my motherhood, when I was rocking or nursing my baby,” she went on, softly, “I had a lot of time to think about this blueness. I could see it before me, how it appeared and disappeared, the blue at the base of a flame, the blue in a fading line when I shut my eyes, the blue in one moment at the edge of the sky at dusk. There. Gone. That blue of those beads, I understood, was the blueness of time. Perhaps you don’t know that time has a color. You’ve seen that color but you were not watching, you were not aware. Time is blue. Or time is the blue in things. I came to understand that my search for the blueness called northwest trader blue was the search to hold time.

“Only twice in my life did I see that blue clear. I saw that blue when my daughter was born — as her life emerged from my life, that color flooded my mind. The other time, my girl, was the day I found your name. Or dreamed it. Or gambled for it. Here’s how it happened.”

Other Side of the Earth

I was a new mother-to-be, pregnant. Picking berries, I felt sleepy and lay on the ground. It was so soft underneath the tree, the grass long and fine as hair. I put down my bucket to rest and curled in the comfort. While sleeping, I saw the Pembina again — she came to me. I saw her as a tiny speck first, then bigger and bigger until she was down the road and standing right in front of me. Had those beads on. Still hanging from around her neck. They were made of that same blue I have described to you and I still wanted them with all my heart.

“Will you gamble for them?” the Pembina asked me, gently.