Future Home of the Living God

by Louise Erdrich

  Phil looks at me in surprise.

  “You don’t know?” he asks.

  “Know what?”

  He stops talking, and now I don’t want to hear it. But eventually I tell him, Say it.

  “You might be carrying one of the originals,” he says. “There aren’t very many so they put you in special security hospitals. You already escaped from one.”

  “Originals? What are you talking about?’’

  “Just a regular baby,’’ says Phil. “Like the ones before.”

  “So my baby’s okay.”

  He doesn’t answer for a while, then says, “Our baby. I’m the dad. Remember?”

  My voice is scratchy, my mouth has gone dry. My blood starts buzzing and I am sick, faint. Then you kick and roll as if to tell me that you’re healthy, you’re ready to be born. And that’s the moment I know, right there in the back of the Superpumper, that you’re somebody. Before, to be honest, no matter how I tried to talk to you, the truth is I felt that you were not altogether you. You were a fragment of me. That’s why I kept writing, to convince myself, to prepare myself for you to be a person, apart from who I am.

  Now I feel you listening.

  Phil is talking, musing, and his talking makes me ill.

  “After all, it’s a global crisis, it’s the future of humanity, so you can see why they need to keep an eye on women. Every living thing is changing, Cedar, it’s biological chaos, things going backward at an awkward rate.”

  Your kicks and rolls make me giddy. I am having trouble taking a deep breath. I am panting, quietly. The air is cold and sharp. Again, I think of Glen’s words so long ago, in the old world, over pancakes, when life was still golden. How Mother Earth had a perfect sense of justice.

  And you are still listening, under my hand, a peculiar new sensation. You seem to have tuned in to your father’s voice, but like me you seem suspended, alert to something bad beneath his words.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” says Phil. “I’m not with them, honey, I don’t believe in capital punishment for abortion, but I understand. They’re fucked up and scared. I’m with you like lots of decent guys! We’re on your side, we’re armed. But I sure could have used what you’re telling me was ammo in those walls.”

  His voice is wistful, childish, and I can’t even look at his damaged hands.

  “The thing is,” he says, very softly, “you have a treasure, Cedar, if our baby is normal. We would be in charge of things. Rich. Super rich! We’d be safe. If we somehow worked out genetically, I mean, to have a normal child the sky’s the limit for us.”

  “We could seize power and found a dynasty,” I say, meaning it sarcastically.

  “That’s right,” says Phil softly, reaching for me. I bat away his hand and call Eddy.

  Thanksgiving

  There never was a raid. Mother did not come back. Perhaps I hallucinated her. And maybe, let’s hope, in the throes of eighth month’s hormones I hallucinated Phil. But no, Phil was out the door once I called Eddy. The silver car backed out of the brush and Phil pulled out onto the highway. I wish he hadn’t come here and hadn’t disappeared. I’m hoping that when I wouldn’t agree to his plan, he went off to figure out another way to found his dynasty. I’m trying not to think about him. We are sitting in the garage, guards posted just outside the door. The cement floor is covered with wild turkey feathers.

  “Honey, I hunted,” calls Eddy for the hundredth time, to Sweetie.

  “You should have shot their damn feathers off,” she complains.

  I am wearing rubber gloves, so I’m happy with my raw smelly job. Dead bird, blood, feathers, a rich gamey odor. There are six turkeys to clean. I’m way too big and heavy to do much more than sit and pull feathers. I have to shift my weight constantly—one butt cheek is pins and needles, the other aches.

  “Eddy’s always got a plan with his turkeys,” says Sweetie. “Some years he brines them. Some years he uses this green egg-shaped cooker. Some years he deep-fries the whole damn bird.”

  “Do we have to have the pilgrims?” says Mary.

  Sweetie groans. Transcendence seekers have been passing through the reservation in tattered campers bearing Tibetan prayer flags. They are often looking for protection, or fleeing, and have put a burden on the militia. It is difficult to sort the mere yearning from the darkness that some of them bring. And then there are the Catholic pilgrims—neatly dressed, devout, setting up their Target tents, hibachi grills, and collapsible aluminum chairs near the statue of Kateri.

  “They are on their own,” says Eddy. “We’ll feed our elders, our children, and our warriors. Maybe not strictly traditional, but hey, learn from experience. First Thanksgiving, we ended up with our heads on pikes.”

  But of course we end up making all of the food on the reservation, and feeding absolutely everyone.

  November 30

  In the dead of night, the only time we feel invisible, Sweetie brings me to pray at the statue of Kateri. I wear a blanket, a huge sleeping bag, and pads on my knees. Other people around me are praying too, keeping vigil, and the peace of it all, the stillness, the great pointed stars overhead in the blackest night, are of such comfort to us. As I pray along with the others, rosaries, Hail Marys, I keep my hand on my belly. Again, I know you are listening. I can feel you listening, breathing, puzzling out the sounds. I can feel you thinking.

  In the middle of a prayer, I am hoisted onto my feet. I am wearing my backpack, which makes me awkward, and I can’t see who’s behind me. I put my arms up to try and pull hair, but it is a big guy with no hair. A squeaky-breathed woman quickly zip-ties my wrists together. Yelling, I’m dragged straight into a van. The doors shut. After everything we’ve gone through, after all we’ve avoided, it seems like I am being hijacked by some random pilgrims. Sweetie’s running after the van, screaming. The other pilgrims are chasing after her. The statue dwindles. We turn onto the big highway. Home falls behind us.

  The woman in the seat next to me is nervous like her husband, with lopsided pale hair, soft hands. She reaches over and straps me in. I try to head-butt her. Anxiously, she folds a blanket over me.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “We’re broke, so dead broke, and we have kids. We need the money.”

  “For turning me in?”

  She doesn’t answer, just sniffles and groans.

  “Will you pray with me?” she asks in a hopeful voice.

  “Fuck you,” I answer.

  “Now don’t get all testy on us,” says the man in the driver’s seat.

  Saint Kateri really let me down.

  December 1

  I’m sure we all feel like this, every woman with a baby, because of the brain-bending hormones, but, dear child, I still have this stubborn notion we’ll be all right. Even here. A sign above the entrance says Stillwater Birthing Center, but it is only a painted piece of canvas that covers Minnesota Correctional Facility Stillwater.

  December 2

  Even though I have a thick piece of foam for a mattress and soft blue flannel sheets and a fuzzy pink blanket, I am still in a cinder-block cell. A disinfected cell, a nicely painted cell with an extra pillow, an extra-plush blanket, but a cell. There is a sink, a toilet, a fold-down cot, a wall shelf, a small plastic chair, and a bulletin board with pictures of babies taped on it. Which strikes me as sadistic, considering. The pregnant women roaming up and down the central walkway wear blazing neon-pink or peacock-blue jumpsuits. I have one of each. My blue suit has a dark round stain on the pants. It looks like old blood. You can never get it out once the stain sets. This time I got to keep everything inside of my backpack, and because I am now Mary Potts with a tribal ID I’ve evaded detection. It won’t be long. Once they find out who I am, we’re shit outta luck. So I’m writing to you before all that happens.

  Although, I have to say, everything here looks poorly organized. The faucets work, but the water is rusty. The lights work, but lots of the bulbs are dead. The floors are clean, but that’s because we clean them ourse
lves. The screens they use to watch us keep blinking out. Still, the doors upon doors to the outside are carefully locked. I can see people in the guard towers when I get to use the hallways.

  December 3

  Every morning at ten a.m. we’re seated in a room to practice for labor. The light goes down in the room. We sit on yoga mats. It is peaceful enough. We keep our eyes closed. We travel. This morning, while I am doing my counting and breathing, Orielee and Bernice come flying toward me. They are naked, moving fast, leaking coils of darkness from their mouths and ears. Smoke bleeds from their nipples, from their navels. Hot black steam flows out between their legs. A roaring noise beats from their bodies, like the sound of a vast crowd. I open my arms. They are alive! I am not afraid.

  December 4

  Today two male guards collect me from my cell. They are wearing brown uniforms, but there is something sloppy and tired about how they are dressed. You can see a ripped, dirty collar of a T-shirt between the missing buttons of one guy’s shirt. They bring me to a room that might have once been an office—there is a wall of bookshelves, a window, and a couple of fake plants—but now it is tricked out as a photography studio. Miguel, a slender man, curly headed, dressed in yellow, with melting eyes, reminds me of Prince.

  He greets me as though I’m the loveliest woman in the world. “Hello, my hummingbird! I’m your personal makeup artist. Wow. Hmmm. You could be anything. What you want to look like? Whitebread? Brownbread? House Mom? Street Babe?”

  He tousles my hair, pulls it up, lets it flop down. I ask him if I can be the Blessed Virgin. His eyes flicker with interest, his face goes solemn. He puts his hands on my shoulders and bends over so we stare at ourselves together in the mirror. The sadness in his face chills me.

  “I see blue. I’ll add some blue extensions. We want the sensation of blue. Your face is sweet. I’ll make it sweeter. Your hair is . . . I won’t do much . . . fabulous.”

  He parts my hair in the middle and strokes it down around my shoulders.

  “It spreads out nice, like a cape.”

  “A veil.”

  “Like a veil.”

  He opens a fishing tackle box covered with stickers, filled with bottles of foundation, eyeliner, fake lashes, lipstick. It is soothing to have him study my face, touch my cheeks with his fingertips, dab here, dab there. He combs my hair out so gently that it feels like I am being touched by butterflies. I close my eyes and let him brush shadow across my lids. He then has me look up and flicks mascara onto my lashes.

  “We’ll go with a very light natural color,” he says as he tenderly outlines my mouth with matte lipstick. He thriftily tears a Kleenex in half, uses the end. “Now blot.”

  He makes drama of pulling off my makeup gown, puffing it like a cloud, flinging it away and replacing it with a blue scarf draped around my shoulders. He leads me to a chair with a backdrop that is painted with a sunny circle of radiance. The glow surrounds my head once I am eased onto the chair.

  “I’m the photographer, too, right? You’re divine. You’re special. You’re a giver of life. That’s right. Let all the beauty inside of you rush to the surface. Let your beauty into your eyes, your face.”

  Lunch is fried sweet potatoes and chicken soup, although apparently chickens are not chickens anymore—they look like pale iguanas.

  “What’s that?”

  “A piece of skin.”

  The woman next to me dislodges the scaly skin from her finger and goes on eating her soup. There is a salad with odd thick leaves and gnarled tomatolike vegetables. Halfway through the meal, I notice the dining room wall. It is filled with portraits of women. They all have the same glow around their heads. As I walk up to the wall to see if my portrait is there, a burly redheaded woman stops me. Her face and arms are covered with tiny cinnamon dots of freckles. Her kinky red Botticelli hair is twisted up in a bun. She’s about eight months.

  “Don’t go up to the wall,” she says. “Don’t look.”

  “How come?”

  She purses her lips, like she has a lot to say, but she only gives a terse growl. “It’s bad luck.” Which is enough to keep me away from the wall, for now. I sleep away the afternoon under my fuzzy pink blanket. Dinner is a mushy glop of brown paste, plus a cup of sour berries.

  “I miss food,” I say to the women on either side of me. One is a thin woman with a medium-sized seven-month belly.

  “I miss food, too.”

  The other is a brown-haired woman in her forties with pink cheeks and purple eyeglasses. She says that she is carrying baby number three.

  “Third time’s the charm,” I say. It is involuntary. She stares at me. Her eyes fill. She looks down at her plate.

  “I hope so,” she mumbles.

  “Me too,” says the thin girl. Her eyes are huge, haunting. Her name is Estrella. “I used to love roasted chicken. I made it with lemon. Won’t catch me roasting a lizard.”

  “Maybe cows will stay the same, just tougher,” I say. “What . . . what happens in here?”

  “Where did you use to live?” the brown-haired woman asks me, loudly, looking around us. Then she leans close and whispers, “They used to just take pregnant woman. Now any woman who’s childbearing age. You can get picked up for running a stoplight or jaywalking. I’m here for shoplifting, which was stupid, but I needed food. Any mistake and you end up here.”

  “A nice little house in South Minneapolis?” she says brightly. “I lived in Northeast. The art district. I worked in clay.” She flexes her hands. “But my work was sculptural. I didn’t throw pots.”

  “I was a teller at Wells Fargo,” says Estrella. Then she whispers. “At least you’re already inseminated. When I came here I had to go through it, over and over. They leave you alone afterward with your hips up. See if you take.”

  There is a rustle of whispers all through the dining room, a swirl of motion in one corner. The burly redheaded woman is standing up in front of the wall of women. She is holding her belly. Her silence commands everyone’s attention. Tears shining in her eyes, she nods and all at once, all together, the women start to hum. It is a beautiful, powerful, all-knowing sound. They open their mouths to sing a song that I already know. The song must be in me. Is it the song I sang to Tia? Maybe we all learned it in former lives, deep places, gathering grounds, caves and huts of sticks, skin houses, prisons, and graves. It is a wordless melody that only women sing. Slow, beautiful, sad, ecstatic, we sing a hymn of war and a march of peace. Over and over, many times, we continue singing as the guards take away the redheaded woman.

  Mother moon and sister night, I think.

  Saint Kateri. You owe me. So get busy and pray for us.

  After we sing we file out in rows.

  “What just happened?” I ask Estrella.

  “Ask somebody else,” she says, her face strained and desperate. “Please? Just ask somebody else.”

  But I don’t have to ask.

  After all of the other women leave, I slip back and stand before the wall. The women in the photographs are alert, smiling, hopeful, perfectly made up. Thanks to Miguel. There are women of every coloring and age, many younger than me, others older, some wear hats, head scarves, or a hijab, some wear a glittery barrette, even an old-school scrunchie. I step closer to read their names. Lily-Ann. Idris. Janella. Senchal. Megan. Vendra. Beneath each name are two dates. Birth. Death. And below that a line that says: She served the future.

  I step back from the wall of martyrs.

  December 6

  During mandatory Watching Hour, we sit on wobbly plastic chairs crammed together in the viewing room. Mother is the only channel. Sometimes she brings on Papa, a sunken-eyed man with stiff white side-parted hair and the same lipless hatch of angry whitened teeth. Mother surges into view, round cake-pan face, busy calm.

  “Hello, my dears. Today I want to talk about the divinely infused eternal soul that you carry within you, and I want to say that I understand how difficult it can be to nurture this soul in your body. Maybe
you didn’t feel it was your time. However, you are blessed. Because God felt it was your time!”

  “Here’s the part where she’s going to ask us to hold hands,” says Estrella.

  “Please reach out to your sister, and pray, pray along with me. Please reach out and hold hands.”

  On one side, Estrella’s hand is dry and thin. A fuming black teenager on the other side of me grabs my hand. Her hand is restless and strong. As Mother talks, we hold on harder.

  “Jesus, please get me the fuck out of here,” the teenager whispers.

  “Amen,” we say together.

  The huge fingers of a baby’s hand splay behind Mother like a plump star. She gives a busybody nose twitch before she starts. Mother lifts her arms mechanically, up and down, working out her words like water from an old-fashioned iron pump. Her bangs are pasted in a smooth curve today. Her bright brown eyes peep out from underneath the fringe. When she gets excited her hair flops hound-eared to each side of her rough large-pored cheeks.

  “You are here because you did something wrong,” she says, “but this is a place of forgiveness. Open your heart! Your mind! Your body and your soul! Accept life. You can be absolved of anything you did, you can completely win back God’s love, by contributing to the future of humanity. Your happy sentence is only nine months.”

  Her chins wobble and her thin lips blow her words out like bubbles as she enters her prayer.

  “Always know that I care about each and every one of you. Women are powerful. You are empowered to the max. Women are heroes. Superheroes, in fact. You can talk to me anytime. You can bring me your worries, your concerns. I am all about communication, my dears. I care about each and every one of you one hundred percent forever.”

  We are not allowed to look away.

  “These nine months will pass like a few weeks,” she says in her thick voice. And to think, I could have killed her. My finger squeezes an imaginary trigger as she begins another endless prayer. A waterfall of burning syrup. I try to sleep with my eyes open. Nobody gets out of here in nine months. I’m positive. Nobody gets out of here at all.