Louise Erdrich: Four Souls

“Geget. Mii nange.” Fleur emphatically agreed, but her eyes, as they rested on the spoiled child who sat mute as a stump at the edge of the yard, were anxious with sorrow.

“My son,” she called out. She never called him anything else but n’gozis. Addressed him as her son and never used his name— Christian or Ojibwe. As far as we were concerned, the boy was nameless. For sure, such a thing was no accident. I opened my mouth to ask Fleur to tell me his name, but then a thought stopped me, an answer. She had not named him. I knew this as sure as I knew my own name. Oh, he’d have a name for the records, for papers, surely. A name for chimookomaan law. He’d have a name for the whites to call him, but no name for his spirit.

“You haven’t named your own son,” I hissed at Fleur, outraged at her carelessness. “He’s strange in the head because the spirits don’t know him!”

“He’s not strange in the head,” Fleur said, but only half indignantly. She knew the truth. “How was I supposed to name him in that city? Who would dream a name for him? Who would smoke the pipe? Who would introduce his spirit to the name and help his spirit to embrace that name?”

“You,” I said. But she looked down at the ground.

“I tried, n’gah,” she said, calling me her mother, which hit me. Her voice was filled with tones of pain. “Nothing went right.”

“There’s more to it than that,” I said, and then I knew. I knew it all as I looked at her staring at the ground, she in her pristine white outfit, she of the old will, she with my childhood friend Anaquot’s bold eyes and Four Souls’s grin. I knew everything about who she came from and yet who Fleur was eluded me as much as it eluded all who felt the air stir and the leaves speak in her presence, those who could not look at her directly and yet could not look away from her. I had not known until that moment. But I know shame when I see it.

“Go away from here,” I said to my old man, “peel the fancy suit off that boy and take him out in your boat to fish.”

“It’s too early,” said Nanapush.

“Dunk your head in the cold water and go,” I insisted.

“No!” cried the boy, his teeth streaked brown. He stuck his red tongue out at me.

I leaned down, grabbed him by the ear, and spoke.

“I’ll gut you like a fish and throw your head to the dogs if you don’t obey me! Now get into the house. Change your clothes. There’s an old pants and shirt on the hook by the door.”

The boy was so surprised that he did as I told him, and Nana-push soon had the boat ready. They pulled away from shore, struck off onto the lake. When they were gone, I turned to Fleur. She sat on the stump by the door in her white suit, looking at the ground, her face almost as vacant of spirit and slack as her son’s.

“I can smell the liquor on you, n’dawnis,” I said. “You stay here. Don’t go anywhere.”

And so she sat quiet in the yard and let the sun beat down, let herself sweat and ruin the starch in the white cloth. The fabric wilted until it clung to her skin. I built up the fire underneath my big kettle. I went down to the lake ten times and filled a flour sack with water and hauled it to the kettle and dumped it in. I put fronds of white cedar into the water. I brought out my big tin bathing tub and set it up near the fire, filled it partly with more water from the lake. More cedar. When the tub was steaming full and fragrant, I went to Fleur. I raised her up.

“First the white-lady shoes and stockings,” I said. She nodded, neatly rolled the stockings down her legs, balled them up, and put them in the tips of her shoes.

“Next, the skirt.” That, she lowered to the ground. I picked it up and carefully folded it, set the skirt beside the shoes. Her slip was transparent panels with a hem of delicate lace. She took that off too, and the cleverly sewn satin-lined jacket, the blouse underneath, then everything. Fleur Pillager stood naked by the wash-tub, her hair down her back again but not so long as it was before, her slim legs reflecting the play of the sun in the cedar water.

Slowly, she lowered herself into the water. She sat in the tub and put both hands over her face. I used my copper dipper to pour the water over her. It fell in shining strings and rivers and streams. I wet her hair and soaped it, then rinsed every trace of soap from her hair and did the whole thing again. At last, I gave Fleur the final rinse with fresh hot water that I poured on her from a gourd dipper. I cleaned her face with a rag, washed her carefully, dabbing the cloth with great care around the beautiful shape of her eyes. I traced the curve of her ears, ran the rag down her neck then back up under her chin. I took her hand in mine, and then I washed up and down each arm. I washed each finger and polished each clear oval nail. Then I had her kneel in the tub as I scrubbed her lean back.

By then, Fleur Pillager was trying to hold herself back; but failing, she wept like a girl. Racking sobs built and died in her, violent and unashamed. “You should cry,” I said, “you deserve to cry.” I left her outside in the yard, let her finish washing herself with her own tears. I went into our cabin and I pulled the most precious thing I’d ever made from its hiding place under blankets, against the wall. I took my medicine dress from the box I had made for it out of birch bark.

I smoothed out the soft leather folds of the skirt, then lighted a braid of sweet grass, cleaned the dress off with the smoke. I brought the sweet grass to Fleur as she stood naked, drying off in the sun. The sun cast its warmth and leafy shadows across her back. The new young trees whispered and the waves slapped at the stone shore. I fanned the sweet grass smoke across her body with the wing of an eagle. I combed out her hair and fanned it also with the holy fragrance. As I purified Fleur, I sang to her. The song of return, the song of Four Souls, the song of her name. I sang an old lullaby that made her cry again as she’d last heard it from her long dead mother, Ogimaakwe, Anaquot, Four Souls — she was called all of those names. I sang the song belonging to the lake, which was taught to us in dreams by the lake itself, and I sang her mother’s song.

“You put the heart of an owl under your tongue,” I said. “You braved all the old wisdom. You scorned us. You did not listen. And yet we love you, n’dawnis. We have loved you all through this. Myself, old Margaret, who has the vanity to call herself Rushes Bear, loves you as does the crazy old man. Nanapush. Your mother’s spirit and her grandmother’s, all the way back through the generations, love you. Your father and his fathers, too. All of these spirits love you, and the spirits in the four layers of the earth and the four skies that exist above us. The crawlers, the fliers, the runners, the swimmers. You are loved in creation though you tried to destroy yourself.”

She held up her arms and I lowered my medicine dress upon her, helped her shrug into it, told her about the vision I had to make it and how I had followed that vision down to each detail. Then I explained to her what she must do.

“You can’t just drive back onto your home ground with a trunk of old bones,” I told her. “Yes, I know what you carried home in that whiteman’s car. Nor can you stab the earth with the high heels on your shoes or breathe your whiskey breath into home air. You know where the rock is by Matchimanito. That is the place where your mother’s people have suffered and cried out and fasted and begged for mercy from the spirits. You know your power and the earth in your Pillager blood is the result of generations of hard sacrifice behind you. The strength of your ancestors should not find an ending in your weakness.”

“Geget,” she said. “Mii nange. I know it.”