Louise Erdrich: Four Souls

Barefooted, removed from the deceptive brilliance, Fleur was a cipher, a sorry-looking piece of flotsam, I thought, in her coarse brown sack. She didn’t even own a proper shawl or a coat, this woman, when she came to us. Desperate, deserted by my Irish-woman the day before (and drubbed low, insulted, she threw my own money in my face!), I hired Fleur Pillager for the laundry, gave to her in the bargain a pair of shoes and the promise of a new-made uniform.

Who could have known?

She would come into the house and before a day was over she would unbow her shoulders and stand up straight. She would look so very different. Who could have guessed that brother-in-law would be sitting in his wooden steamer chair out in the conservatory, and she’d pass by with a bucket in her hands? They would glance at each other, turn away, and look again. I thought her stupid, quite harmless, much quieter than the Irishwoman. I was trying to spare brother-in-law’s nerves, as well. I was pleased that this Indian woman had no family connections. Nothing in the look of her and the ignorant silence told me she could possibly end up connected to me.

My brother-in-law, John Mauser, was the cause and perpetrator — I should say the victim as well, though he surely would not countenance that statement. After his war year, my brother-in-law had acquired a specific and demanding need for fresh-pressed clean linen. He sweat, to put it indelicately. Sweat. Once, twice, then three or four times a night, his man-nurse, Fantan, was required to change him from the soaked skin out, to strip the bed down and make it up fresh, with sheets starched smooth and scented with sandalwood. Then, and only then, could my brother-in-law fall asleep. It got to be so we couldn’t keep up with the demand. And although quite a number of doctors had attempted to solve the riddle of his symptoms, their lack of progress in other matters quite convinced me that, in regard to this problem, looking to the future was wisest. The sweating would be permanent. And so I was anxious to hire. I wanted a woman specifically to launder, to live in the basement and use the soapstone tubs and iron taps to scald and renew the sheets as Fantan carted them down, and up, and down again from my brother-in-law’s closed chamber.

“Good,” she answered, when I had explained the position.

“I’m most pleased.” I conveyed my satisfaction with professional rigor, although inside I was vastly relieved. I asked how soon she might be able to begin.

“Now,” she said.

The emphatic answer filled me with hope. Though she spoke almost not at all, the fact that she understood English was thereby established. Also, the linen had collected. Below my feet, in the basement, a pile that would have scorched my mother’s heart lay twisted and towering over the scrub boards and wringers.

“We have a hot water heater and pump, a Maytag, a system that Mrs. Testor will teach you to use.”

I offered a proper sum of payment, to which she nodded. Then I told her that although she might hear Fantan occasionally address me by my Christian name, and although out of acceptance of his mental infirmity I’d given up correcting him every time he did so, I absolutely required that she address me as Miss Gheen.

Again, she nodded. How much she understood, I cannot tell. I pointed to myself, tapping my chest.

“Miss Gheen, not Elizabeth.”

“Not Elizabeth,” she repeated, looking straight into my eyes. Not Elizabeth it was after that.

I SUPPOSE it was my fault, then, for not being more specific, but the look she gave me wasn’t covered in Miss Katherine Hammond’s courses on the hiring and retaining of help. I could not in honesty have categorized the gaze as impertinence, a thing to be dealt with in a spirit of “calm, firm dispatch.” None of Fantan’s melancholy or Mrs. Testor’s occasional sneers were evident. Perhaps it is true that Indians are unintelligible, to the civilized mind I mean, as far removed in habit of thought and behavior as wild wolves from bred hounds. That comparison is one my brother-in-law made, to opposite effect I believe, when speaking of the people among whom he lived in the northern wilds for a time in his youth. Although, as I’ve since learned, he plundered their land and took advantage of young women, he still had a higher opinion of their intellect and capacities than I. Soon enough, my views on their talents — for duplicity at least — would change.

The pupil so dark it matched the iris. The gaze a steady beam that shook the air between us with a subtle motion. It was a curious feeling, almost as though I’d been gazed upon by a predator and assessed. Through a strong cage, however. I was once again in charge. As Mother would have, I turned and swept out the massive door expecting her to follow, her in her wood-smoke tatters, her with that piteous bundle. By Monday morning I could order a uniform made up for her. A black dress. An apron, with pinstripes, small gussets, a bow to be tied just so at the small of her back.

Past the kitchen and pantry, past Mrs. Testor, whose eyes flicked back and forth at the sight of my captive. Mrs. Testor clapped at her bosom with one raw pink hand as though to beat back a fluttering bird. We descended. A pleasant stairway led to the base level of the house, a feature of our dwelling in which Mother took her pride. You see, it was her absolute conviction that from the ground up details mattered. She never did things simply for appearance. The interfacing of a dress, the trimmed hem, the well-organized interior of a closet, the underpinnings of a cake. Fresh ingredients, pristine undergarments, a cellar so clean and light it was a pleasure, no, really, an honor for our help to live there, these were things important to the late Demeter Hewes Gheen. She always had the tires of our automobile washed before an important engagement in town. Before a gathering in our own house, she had the backs of the clocks and the hung portraits dusted upstairs, even in rooms no one would visit. Down here, the rough stone walls, whitened with a lime base paint, sparkled in the slanting sheets of sun admitted by the generous windows built into the foundation. The floor was brick, laid with runners cut from old carpet.

“Mind the steam pipes,” I said, pointing out the scalding copper pipes that ran from the boilers and climbed up two, three floors to the topmost encircled little tower, where Placide maintained her artist’s studio. “No touch”—I gestured, wrung my finger, made a face—“very hot!”

Her face grew solemn, as though she understood.

“Voilà!” I opened a small, thick door. “Your living quarters.”

She was gratified, I could see right off, manifestly pleased by what she saw. The room was austere but comfortable, peaceable and pleasantly dim. The bedding, several blankets deep, boasted not one but two pillows, and a quilt. Beside the bed, not that she’d make use of it for its intended purpose, stood a writing table, the shut drawer containing a Bible, and an old-fashioned lamp with beads and tassels. A cushioned chair, the rose-patterned sleeves polished thin with use, took up a corner. There was a window through which, as we looked up, we saw the face of Fantan, absorbed and serene, as he stooped to briefly watch us.

“We’ll just draw these little curtains,” I said, running my hand along the brass rod. “Don’t you mind him!”

But Fantan’s interest did not cause the slightest wobble of composure in this Pillager woman, who smoothed one long-fingered dark hand along the quilt and then deposited her bundle at the baseboard — where her head would rest, according to Mrs. Testor’s later testimony, as in Fleur’s mind the bed was incorrectly situated.

A SCENE, days later. I am posing for my sister, who is painting me as Nebuchadnezzar. To oblige her talent I have taken on hosts of mythological disguises over the years, and her studio is filled with my representation and figure in classical and biblical settings. She is working on a large-scale triptych called Knowledge and Godlessness , in which my face appears as almost every scowling pagan from Marx to Salomé, “occluded by veils.” Mother was Semiramus. I am desperate to scratch my chin.