Louise Erdrich - Love Medicine

“Slap a malpractice suit on Lipsha Morrissey.”

I heard of those suits. I used to think it was a color clothing quack doctors had to wear so you could tell them from the good ones.

Now I know better that it’s law.

As I walked back from the Red Owl with the rock-hard, heavy turkeys, I argued to myself about malpractice. I thought of faith. I thought to myself that faith could be called belief against the odds and whether or not there’s any proof. How does that sound? I thought how we might have to yell to be heard by Higher Power, but that’s not saying it’s not there. And that is faith for you. It’s belief even when the goods don’t deliver. Higher Power makes promises we all know they can’t back up, but anybody ever go and slap an old malpractice suit on God? Or the U. S. government? No they don’t. Faith might be stupid, but it gets us through. So what I’m heading at is this. I finally convinced myself that the real actual power to the love medicine was not the goose heart itself but the faith in the cure.

I didn’t believe it, I knew it was wrong, but by then I had waded so far into my lie I was stuck there. And then I went one step further.

The next day, I cleaned the hearts away from the paper pack — dad ages of gizzards inside the turkeys. Then I wrapped them hearts with a clean hankie and brung them both to get blessed up at the mission. I wanted to get official blessings from the priest, but when Father answered the door to the rectory, wiping his hands on a little towel, I could tell he was a busy man.

“Booshoo, Father,” I said. “I got a slight request to make of you this afternoon. ” “What is it?” he said.

“Would you bless this package?” I held out the hankie with the hearts tied inside it.

He looked at the package, questioning it.

“It’s turkey hearts,” I honestly had to reply.

A look of annoyance crossed his face.

“Why don’t you bring this matter over to Sister Martin,” he said. “I have duties.”

And so, although the blessing wouldn’t be as powerful, I went over to the Sisters with the package.

I rung the bell, and they brought Sister Martin to the door. I had her as a music teacher, but I was always so shy then. I never talked out loud. Now, I had grown taller than Sister Martin.

Looking down, I saw that she was not feeling up to snuff. Brown circles hung under her eyes.

“What’s the matter?” she said, not noticing who I was.

“Remember me, Sister?”

She squinted up at me.

“Oh yes,” she said after a moment. “I’m sorry, you’re the youngest of the Kashpaws. Gordie’s brother.”

Her face warmed up.

“Lipsha,” I said, “that’s my name.”

“Well, Lipsha,” she said, smiling broad at me now, “what can I do for you?”

They always said she was the kindest-hearted of the Sisters up the hill, and she was. She brought me back into their own kitchen and made me take a big yellow wedge of cake and a glass of milk.

“Now tell me,” she said, nodding at my package. “What have you got wrapped up so carefully in those handkerchiefs?”

Like before, I answered honestly.

“Ah, ” said Sister Martin. “Turkey hearts.” She waited.

“I hoped you could bless them.”

She waited some more, smiling with her eyes. Kindhearted though she was, I began to sweat. A person could not pull the wool down over Sister Martin. I stumbled through my mind for an explanation, quick, that wouldn’t scare her off.

“They’re a present,” I said, “for Saint Kateri’s statue.”

“She’s not a saint yet.”

“I know,” I stuttered on, “in the hopes they will crown her.”

“Lipsha,” she said,

“I never heard of such a thing.”

So I told her. “Well the truth is,” I said, “it’s a kind of medicine. ” “For what?”

“Love. ” “Oh Lipsha,” she said after a moment, “you don’t need any medicine. I’m sure any girl would like you exactly the way you are.

I just sat there. I felt miserable, caught in my pack of lies.

“Tell you what,” she said, seeing how bad I felt, “my blessing’ll make any difference anyway. But there is something you won I can do.”

I looked up at her, hopeless.

“Just be yourself ” I looked down at my plate. I knew I wasn’t much to brag about right then, and I shortly became even less. For as I walked out the door I stuck my fingers in the cup of holy water that was sacred from their touches. I put my fingers in and blessed the hearts, quick, with my own hand.

I went back to Grandma and sat down in her little kitchen at the Senior Citizens. I unwrapped them hearts on the table, and her hard agate eyes went soft. She said she wasn’t even going to cook those hearts up but eat them raw so their power would go down strong as possible.

I couldn’t hardly watch when she munch cd hers. Now that’s true love.

I was worried about how she would get Grandpa to eat his, but she told me she’d think of something and don’t worry. So I did not. I was supposed to hide off in her bedroom while she put dinner on a plate for Grandpa and fixed up the heart so he’d eat it. I caught a glint of the plate she was making for him. She put that heart smack on a piece of lettuce like in a restaurant and then attached to it a little heap of boiled peas.

He sat down. I was listening in the next room.

She said,

“Why don’t you have some mash potato?” So he had some mash potato. Then she gave him a little piece of boiled meat. He ate that.

Then she said,

“Why you didn’t never touch your salad yet. See that heart? I’m feeding you it because the doctor said your blood needs building up.”

I couldn’t help it, at that point I peeked through a crack in the door.

I saw Grandpa picking at that heart on his plate with a certain look.

He didn’t look appetized at all, is what I’m saying. I doubted our plan was going to work. Grandma was getting worried, too. She told him one more time, loudly, that he had to eat that heart.

“Swallow it down,” she said. “You’ll hardly notice it.”

He just looked at her straight on. The way he looked at her made me think I was going to see the smokescreen drop a second time, and sure enough it happened.

“What you want me to eat this for so bad?” he asked her uncannily.

Now Grandma knew the jig was up. She knew that he knew — dad she was working medicine. He put his fork down. He rolled the heart around his saucer plate.

“I don’t want to eat this,” he said to Grandma. “It don’t look good.

” “Why it’s fresh grade-A,” she told him. “One hundred percent. ” He didn’t ask percent what, but his eyes took on an even more warier look.

“Just go on and try it, ” she said, taking the salt shaker up in her hand. She was getting annoyed. “Not tasty enough? You want me to salt it for you?” She waved the shaker over his plate.

“All right, skinny white girl!” She had got Grandpa mad.

Oopsy-daisy, he popped the heart into his mouth. I was about to yawn loudly and come out of the bedroom. I was about ready for this crash of wills to be over, when I saw He was still up to his old tricks.

First he rolled it into one side of his cheek. “Mirmunrn, he said.

Then he rolled it into the other side of his cheek.

“Mmmmmirim,” again. Then he stuck his tongue out with the heart on it and put it back, and there was no time to react. He had pulled Grandma’s leg once too far. Her goat was got. She was so mad she hopped up quick as a wink and slugged him between the shoulderblades to make him swallow.

Only thing is, he choked.

He choked real bad. A person can choke to death. You ever sit down at a restaurant table and up above you there is a list of instructions what to do if something slides down the wrong pipe?