Louise Erdrich - LaRose

She and her family, missionaries, brought the pair into a warm kitchen. They were given water and rags to wash with, and then a tasteless porridge of boiled wild rice. They were allowed to sleep with blankets, on the floor behind the woodstove. The dog, left outside, sniffed the missionaries’ dog and followed it to the barn, where the two coupled in the steam of the cow’s great body. The next morning, speaking earnestly to the girl, whose clean face was too beautiful to look at, Wolfred asked if she would marry him.

When you grow up, he said.

She smiled and nodded.

He asked her name.

She laughed, not wanting him to own her, and drew a flower.

The missionary was sending a few young Ojibwe to a Presbyterian boarding school that had recently been established for Indians only. It was located out in territory that had become the state of Michigan, and the girl could travel there, too, if she wanted to become educated. Only, as she had no family, she would become indentured to the place. Although she did not understand what that meant, she agreed to it.

At the school, everything was taken from her. Losing her mother’s drum was like losing Mink all over again. At night, she asked the drum to fly back to her. But it never did. She soon learned how to fall asleep. Or let the part of myself they call hateful fall asleep, she thought. But it never did. Her whole being was Anishinaabe. She was Illusion. She was Mirage. Ombanitemagad. Or what they called her now — Indian. As in, Do not speak Indian , when she had been speaking her own language. It was hard to divide off parts of herself and let them go. At night, she flew up through the ceiling and soared as she had been taught. She stored pieces of her being in the tops of the trees. She’d retrieve them later, when the bells stopped. But the bells would never stop. There were so many bells. Her head ached, at first, because of the bells. My thoughts are all tangled up, she said out loud to herself, Inbiimiskwendam. However, there was very little time to consider what was happening.

The other children smelled like old people, but she got used to it. Soon she did too. Her wool dress and corset pinched, and the woolen underwear itched like mad. Her feet were shot through with pain, and stank from sweating in hard leather. Her hands chapped. She was always cold, but she was already used to that. The food was usually salt pork and cabbage, which cooked foul and turned the dormitory rank with farts, as did the milk they were forced to drink. But no matter how raw, or rotten, or strange, she must eat, so she got used to it. It was hard to understand the teachers or say what she needed in their language, but she learned. The crying up and down the rows of beds at night kept her awake, but soon she cried and farted herself to sleep with everyone else.

She missed her mother, even though Mink had sold her. She missed Wolfred, the only person left for her. She kept his finely written letters. When she was weak or tired, she read them over. That he called her Flower made her uneasy. Girls were not named for flowers, as flowers died so quickly. Girls were named for deathless things — forms of light, forms of clouds, shapes of stars, that which appears and disappears like an island on the horizon. Sometimes the school seemed like a dream that could not be true, and she fell asleep hoping to wake in another world.

She never got used to the bells, but she got used to other children coming and going. They died of measles, scarlet fever, flu, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and other diseases that did not have a name. But she was already accustomed to everybody around her dying. Once, she got a fever and thought that she would also die. But in the night her pale-blue spirit came, sat on the bed, spoke to her kindly, placed her soul back into her body, and told her that she would live.

Nobody got drunk. Nobody slashed her mother’s face and nose, ruining her. Nobody took a knife and stabbed an uncle who held your foot and died as the blood gushed from his mouth. Another good thing she thought of while the other children wept was that the journey to the school had been arduous and far. Much too far for a head to roll.

WOLFRED TOLD THE story of Mackinnon’s sudden illness and how he and the girl had plunged into the wilderness seeking help, which was dispatched. The Indians had already found Mackinnon scattered outside the trading post, and they reported that in his fever he’d sought cold snow, died there, and been torn apart by dogs. His head? Wolfred wanted to ask, but fear stopped his tongue. Wolfred was authorized to take up Mackinnon’s position, and so he left the settlement and traveled north. He left Mackinnon’s gold watch, wedding ring, and money in their hiding place. He did well at the post, though the heart of the trade had moved on. Sometimes at night perhaps he heard Mackinnon’s hoarse breath. Sometimes he whiffed the rank odor that used to swell from Mackinnon’s feet when he removed his boots. Wolfred kept beautifully detailed books of transactions. Often, he wrote to the girl in Michigan, My Flower, Chère LaRose. He was influenced by French and Metis descendants of the voyageurs he came to know. They tried to persuade him to forget her. He did not, at any rate, take a wife. Although he helped himself liberally to women’s charms, there was no forgetting her.

He kept writing letters so that she would remember her promise. He wrote of their experiences, for as they had traveled he had marveled at her skills and authority. Wolfred spent longer periods of time living with, hunting with, speaking with, and sharing ceremonies with her people. They gave him medicine to get rid of Mackinnon, which seemed to work. He stopped hearing the breath rasp at night, stopped smelling the feet. He was turning into an Indian while she was turning into a white woman. But how could he know.

THE DAY DID come, the death day. One year had passed already. Landreaux and Emmaline had no idea how the Ravich family would spend that day. LaRose was with the Iron family, as Peter had planned. They did what they could the night before, gathering the children for a pipe ceremony in the living room, and everyone talked. They passed the sacred pipe, one to another. The children turned the pipe to each direction when it came to them. They were careful. They knew to handle the pipe. Hollis said that because LaRose went over to the Raviches he saved them. Willard said he missed LaRose. Josette said both things her brothers said were true, and that she was glad he’d brought Maggie closer. Snow said LaRose had saved both families. He was a little healer. Emmaline could not speak. Landreaux said nothing, but a demonic sadness in him grew and grew.

On the very day of it, Landreaux found that he could not get out of bed. All strength and will had left his body. A black weight of sleep pressed down. The boys came to the door of their parents’ little bedroom right off the kitchen. Dad, they said. Dad?

He heard their feet shuffle at the foot of the bed. Then the girls came in. They touched his hair, his hands. He kept his eyes shut. When they left, tears leaked down the lines along his mouth, down his neck, and pooled along his collarbone. The heat of his body dried them. He was unusually hot, he found. To his joy, he had a fever. He was really ill. After the older children left on the school bus, Emmaline sat beside him.

She thought of lying down beside him, but something had gone out of her. She searched her heart, and found only weary calculation of the difficulties that his misery would make for her that day.

I have to go to work, she said. LaRose is here. Can you take him to school in an hour?