Louise Erdrich - LaRose

Emmaline sat up. Can I take it off now?

Maggie took the tea bags off her eyes. Mine’s dry.

Ow! Don’t smile, said Josette. But she laughed. The dried egg white on Snow’s face had cracked in a web of tiny lines.

Get it off!

They washed off the egg white and admired the smoothness of one another’s skin. They unwound the turbans, washed their hair, and couldn’t get the mayonnaise out. Maggie looked into the mirror and saw that the tea had left raccoon marks around her eyes. Within the stains, her eyes gleamed as if with fever. She looked mysteriously ill. She examined the porcelain finish on her cheeks.

Wow, said Emmaline. My face is all dried out. It feels like my skin is going to fall off.

Me too, said LaRose.

She stared into the mirror and started rubbing Oil of Olay onto her forehead.

Now the manicures!

Josette brought out a tray of nail enamels.

I’m leaving for town to get Coochy. Do your homework, said Emmaline to the girls. And this egg-white mask? I think it aged me ten years. Her skin was still tight and strange.

I’m going with you, said LaRose.

You’re from the olden days, said Josette suddenly, bending over to hug LaRose. You got an old spirit.

Just that egg white, said LaRose.

Know what he said? You guys, know what he said? He said what we used for TV in the olden time was stories.

Come on, said Emmaline.

No, really, he said that!

I mean come on — let’s go.

Maggie and Snow jumped in the car and got a ride into town. They wanted to buy cinnamon for the lip treatment, and they had to get more shampoo.

We smell like freakin’ sandwiches, said Snow.

Whose idea was this, the mayo?

Mine.

Really?

Actually, Josette’s, but she’s sensitive, you know?

Maggie hadn’t thought of Josette as the sensitive one.

My mom’s sensitive, said Maggie, and wished she hadn’t. Anyway, they were both sitting in the backseat of the car, where Emmaline couldn’t hear. Snow was silent, but Maggie could tell she was thinking of what to say. After a while, Snow spoke.

Your mom, she’s okay. I mean, she’s done pretty well, don’t you think, considering?

Mom’s hard to deal with, said Maggie. She stopped herself from chipping at her new nail color. Pale sky blue.

Snow didn’t tell her how she and Josette had recoiled from that witchy vibe Nola had given off those first years. She said that Josette liked how Nola planted flowers.

She’s into that, said Maggie.

Snow’s approval of something that her mother did had a strange effect on Maggie. Her stomach seemed to float inside her body. Yet there was a jealous itch in her brain. She looked at Snow, at the elegant way she held her mayonnaise-smelling head, the slim flex of her shoulders, the perfectly layered T-shirts. She needed Snow to understand.

My mother actually doesn’t like me, you know, said Maggie. She loves LaRose.

Snow’s eyebrows drew together, her lips parted; she stared into Maggie’s face. Just when Maggie was about to shoot her mouth off, say something tough, swear to stop what she saw in Snow’s eyes might turn to pity, Snow reached an arm around Maggie’s shoulders and said, Oh shit, baby-girl, we gotta stick together. Look.

Nicking her head toward the front seat, she shaped her face to indicate LaRose and Emmaline.

He doesn’t even have to call shotgun anymore, said Snow. Guess who’s always stuck in the backseat whenever Mom’s got time with LaRose?

Maggie stuttered; it was like an unexpected present thrust into her hands.

I never knew.

It’s a fact of life, said Snow. We call her out on it all the time. She doesn’t get it. Hollis and Coochy, they’re tight. And we got each other, me, Josette. And, hey.

She rocked Maggie toward her comically.

We got you covered too.

After they left, Josette started prying up the packed powdery dirt beside the front steps of their house. The rest of the yard was damp, but this part stayed dry because of the overhang of the roof. Maybe it wasn’t the best place to plant because of that, but her vision demanded fulfillment. Her parents had no feel for gardening, for home beautification. They were focused on the human side of things — medical, social, humanitarian, and all that. But over the past year, whenever she had picked up LaRose, Josette had seen how Nola got some new flower to bloom every week or so. They weren’t just ordinary flowers, and Josette didn’t know their names. Somehow they bloomed one right after the other, all summer and even into fall. Between these unusual plants were the constant marigolds and petunias, which she did know. Nola was growing vegetables out back of her house, too, climbing vines that twined up chicken wire. Rows of plants were set off by straw paths where the chickens pecked. It all looked to Josette like a magazine house. Of course, Nola had a part-time job only. Anyway not like her mother. Emmaline’s job was endless. Josette would take charge.

Yesterday, she had brought home seeds and some tiny, droopy marigolds from the grocery store. They were in a bin marked FREE. This was her vision. There would be colorful bursts of flowers beside the door to their house instead of a junked bicycle and rusted scooter that could not be used by a kid on a gravel road. Those things, she had hauled back into the woods.

The dirt, though, was not like the dirt at Maggie’s house. It was filled with tiny rocks and the color was gray. The water just turned it to soup.

Dirt’s dirt, right?

Josette sat back on her heels.

She put the seeds in, gingerly pulled the marigolds from their sectioned plastic pot. She set each one gently into a hole and sifted the gray dust from beneath the eaves over the roots. She watered everything, nearly washing the plants away until she learned to trickle the water from the bucket. She leaned back on her heels again.

Grow, little flowers, grow.

She loved the scent of them, pungent and warm. She heard Hollis’s car from a long way off, struggling toward the house. The engine was plaintive, but patient with the slight hill. Soon he pulled up in the driveway, got out.

Hey, he said.

Hey, she said back.

What’s that?

Oh, just making a garden, said Josette. Thought I’d brighten things up.

He admired it from every angle. He praised the marigolds. He didn’t tell her that the first frost would kill them off and they wouldn’t come back the second year. Or that planting seeds was useless in the fall. But he wondered how it was she didn’t know that. Why hadn’t she picked up on these pieces of knowledge in her life? The air was warming, but the spindly plants with their leaves yellowing already were doomed.

So, he said when she brushed herself off and stood and looked at him.

So what’s there to eat?

Is there any soup left?

They walked inside and rifled through the refrigerator, lifted the tops off stove pots, found the hidden cookies, leftover bannock. Josette smelled intensely of something that made Hollis hungry. He tried to make a sandwich, but there wasn’t any mayonnaise. Josette toasted some bannock in the iron skillet. They sat down to eat.

Hollis sprinkled a spoon of sugar on his bannock. Josette tried to chat.

This old sugar bowl, you know? It belonged to this house from way back. My great-great-et-cetera-grandpa from olden times used to keep a key in it.

Although Hollis already knew about the no-handle sugar bowl, he said nothing. Josette kept talking.

It was something from the first LaRose. She lived here when it was still a cabin-shack. All we have of hers is this little sugar bowl, I guess, except some letters and records. Grandma’s got those.

Your family goes way back, huh.

Josette looked at Hollis and because of the way he said this, in a softened voice, staring at her with a peculiar serious regard, she remembered what Snow had said about Hollis liking her. Which was disturbing. A stormy sense of this moment’s weird potential gripped her and she screeched, making him jump.