Louise Erdrich - Love Medicine

killing: Sam” “Marie!” she said suddenly. Her voice went deep and hoarse.

“Star of the Sea! You’ll shine when we burn off the salt!”

“At least you have not forgot me.” I groped for a chair and sat.

Zelda stood at the foot of the bed watching the two of us. At first I was relieved. I was expecting that the nun would rave at us or have taken complete absence of her senses. But it seemed that her mind was still clear. just her body was affected. I started feeling sorry for her, so dried up and shriveled. That was always my mistake. For I grasped her hand like a common consoling friend and felt, immediately, the grim forbidding strength of her, undiminished all these years.

“Oh no, I never forgot you,” she said, and squeezed my hand still tighter. “I knew you would come back.”

I was not going to let her get a hold on me, especially as I knew she had her mind now. I pulled away.

“I felt sorry for you,” I said.

But this only made her laugh, a dry crackle like leaves crushed underfoot.

“I feel sorry for you too, now that I see.”

It was dim. She saw nothing, unless she had the vision of a night thing, which I doubted even with the miracle of her strength.

“Why?” I asked. Solid in my good dress, I was proud and could ask.

But the dress was what she picked up and threw in my face.

“So poor that you had to cut an old Easter shroud up and sew it,” she said, pointing. Her finger was a stick of glass.

“You’re blind,” I said. “It’s no shroud, it’s good wool.”

“It’s purple.”

How she noticed the color of it I don’t know. I guess she took me all in like I did her when the light came through the crack in the curtains.

“I suppose you had brats with the Indian,” she went on, ignoring Zelda, “sickly and mean. It turns out that way with them.”

“Look here,” I said, “this is my daughter.”

Anyone could see Zelda wasn’t sick, or mean, and she was perfectly dressed. The nun did seem to take a certain interest.

She turned to Zelda, who stood quietly at her feet in a soft shadow.

She looked at Zelda standing there. Moments passed.

Then Leopolda suddenly shifted and turned back to me.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Similar. Very much the same.”

“Of course,” I said, settling myself, although I knew Zelda and me were not the same at all. “And I have four more at home, just about full-grown like Zelda here. ” “How do you feed them?” The nun looked down the long spear of her nose.

I don’t have a problem with that,” I said. “My husband is chairman of this tribe.”

I paused to let that sink inside her skull.

“Sometimes they bring him to Washington,” I said.

The nun just watched me. Her eyes were two steady lightless beams.

“Once a senator came to our house,” I went on. “They went hunting in the woods, but they never got anything. Another time But she had already started making her dry noise, her laughter, and her mouth gaped black and wide.

he ate supper with the governor,” I said.

“So you’ve come up in the world,” she mocked, using my thoughts against me. “Or your husband has, it sounds like, not you, Marie Lazarre.”

“Marie Kashpaw,” I said. “He is what he is because I made him.

I felt my daughter’s gaze train on me, but what I said was true, and Zelda knew it. She had seen me drag him back from the bootlegger’s house. She had seen me sitting all night by the door with an ax handle so he would not wander off in search of liquor.

She had seen me ration him down, mixing his brandy with water, until he came clean. So she knew the truth of what I said.

M — mad

“No doubt,” said the nun. “You had a certain talent.” Her breath was like a small wind stirring the dust, and I remembered her hands on my back, rubbing a buttery ointment into the scalding burns that she herself had put there. The scar in my hand began to itch.

I’d had a talent, it was true.

“I got out of here alive,” I said. “I had to have a talent to do that.

I could feel Zelda stiffen in bewilderment at what I said.

This time when the nun laughed it was deep and harsh, like dry twigs breaking in her chest, and it ended in a coughing fit that turned her face bright blue as any time I’d seen her in a rage.

“You’re sick,” I said, pouring the pity in my voice, “sicker than a dog.

I’m sorry for you.”

“I’m sorry for you,” she said immediately, again, “now that I see you’re going to suffer in hell.”

But I had my answer on the tip of my tongue.

“Why should I go there?” I said. “I’ve been good to my neighbors.

I fed my children from my own mouth. I kept Nector from hurting himself “Ah-” she began. I cut her off.

“You’re the one. So proud of shredding your feet! Getting worshiped as a saint! While all the time you’re measly and stingy to the sick at your door. I heard!”

J Again her face was darkening. Zelda reached forward in alarm.

But I wasn’t finished.

“I quit that when I walked down the hill. Dust, it was dust. I saw that clear. The meek will inherit the earth!”

The nun drew a racking breath.

“I don’t want the earth,” she said.

Then she did something that showed me that, for all the conversation we had, she wasn’t right in the head after all. She pulled the bed sheet over her and dived beneath the covers. She surfaced quickly with the heavy black spoon in her fist. And then she began to beat on the spools of the iron bedstead, knocking Nil wool& flakes of white paint off, making an unholy racket. She beat and she beat. Zelda put her hands over her ears. I did also. We hollered at her to stop, but she beat the louder. No one came. I’d had enough. I reached over and grabbed the end of the spoon.

Again, I’d forgotten she had the strength of the grave. She snatched it easily back to herself.

“They all try that,” she said.

“Oh yes?”

And then I knew what I had come there for. It came to me with the touch of iron. I wanted that spoon.

I wanted that spoon because it was a hell-claw welded smooth.

It was the iron poker that she’d marked me with, flattened. It had power. It was like her soul boiled down and poured in a mold and hardened. That was the shape of it. If I had that spoon I’d have her to stir in my pot. I’d have her to whack the bar mock fry the fish, lift out the smoking meat. Every time I held the spoon handle I’d know that she was nothing but a ghost, a black wind. I’d have her helpless in the scar of my palm.

I would get that spoon.

I watched it. The spoon was large, black, seasoned, but I could still see myself turned upside down in its face, as if it was made of shining silver.

“I came here to get your blessing,” I told her.

Leopolda glared at me, the spoon tight in her claw. She looked suspiciously at Zelda, who smiled in her ignorance.

“Bless my girl too,” I said. “She might have a vocation.”

There was interest. I was certain. She was hooked by the thought.

“God will decide that.”

“Your blessing might help her.”

She finally nodded.

Here was my plan: I would let her give Zelda the blessing, and then I would kneel before her to receive my blessing too. But just as she prayed over my head, I would lunge forward, taking her off-balance. I would go straight for the spoon, snatch it from her, have it, take it back home up the sleeve of my royal-plum dress that was certainly no shroud.

Zelda went down on her knees, and the nun’s hand went up. I thought Leopolda would be a good half hour at her blessing prayer, so much did she enjoy this chance. Her right hand made numerous signs of the cross or rested skeletal on the hair of my girl. Her left hand gripped the spoon forgetfully. But she did not put it down.