Future Home of the Living God

by Louise Erdrich

  December 8

  “You’re due for your ultrasound,” says the round dark woman at my door. Her eyebrows are thick and bushy. Her hair is braided down her back. She smiles at me and sits down beside my cot. She takes my hand.

  “Some of my ladies hate ultrasounds. I promise there will only be this one.”

  “They always say that.”

  “It won’t harm your baby.”

  “That’s not true.”

  She smiles indulgently.

  This morning, I saw that the redheaded woman’s portrait had been put up onto the wall during the night. I forced myself to look carefully, then, at all of the other pictures, in case I had missed one. I closed my eyes when I was finished. Started breathing again. No Tia Jackson.

  “Shall we go then?”

  So now it comes. I get up and follow the attendant down the hall, nodding at the women I’ve spoken to before, catching the eyes of others. I remember the long sage green corridor I walked when you had your first ultrasound, the one where I saw the fire of life course through your body. I am not afraid—or I might be afraid, but I can’t feel the fear. I’m numb to everything but each instant that my footfall sounds. I brush my fingers along the smooth painted wallboard in the hallway, and although I’m clumsy, I can still climb up on the table when we get to the examining room. The dark-haired attendant sits by the door. The technician covers the end of the wand with clear gel and tells me that it will feel cold. I take deep breaths and block out Mother’s voice. The technician touches out the baby’s brain, clicking and moving the wand. But then she shakes the wand, frowning in irritation. The lights flicker, and the attendant leaves to investigate.

  “Shit,” the technician says. “The equipment, the screens, the electrical, it sucks.”

  “That’s okay. I’ve had a million of these.”

  “I hate my job,” she says.

  “Why don’t you quit?”

  The lights are still dimmed out. The screen has gone entirely dark.

  “I’m doing time too. I tried to bribe my way out, but nobody dares take money.”

  “How did you get caught?”

  “Expired tabs.”

  “Maybe you’ll tell me the truth. Why is it so dangerous?”

  “Giving birth?”

  I nod, unable to speak.

  “It has to do with your immune system. You know how the danger in getting a heart transplant or whatever is tissue rejection, well it’s like that. Even in your normal old-fashioned pregnancy your body dropped some immunity in order to accept the baby. For some reason—possibly because we’ve gone into the unknown here, biologically—your immune system mounts an attack against the baby during birth and that can become an autoimmune attack as well. We’ve tried putting women on medication with some success, for them. But it seems to limit the baby’s chances, so . . .”

  We wait a few minutes longer, and then at last she calls the attendant back to bring me to my cell. The lights are flickering all through the corridors. Any small reprieve at this point seems like a miracle, so in spite of my disillusionment I relent and thank Kateri. Maybe God has some plan for me. I crawl back onto my cot, and at the very notion of God Has a Plan, I start laughing so hard I have to stuff the edge of my blanket in my mouth.

  The lights are too bright in here. The saints step away from me in the brilliant white glare. I know they’re out there, but I can’t see the multitude of beings, voiceless, rippling, hushed in the giant space, their tiny coughs and moans distorted by the booming of empty air. One spirit shouts, then others, then sound rises up all around me in a vast white wall. I am so blind and small in the cataract, and yes, I am alone, except for you.

  December 11

  Hildegard of Bingen spent her youth locked in a stone hut. Hildegard’s parents decided that she should be an anchoress, and in a funereal ceremony she entered complete enclosure, probably at the age of seven. At least she had her mentor, Jutta. There was a window for food to be given. And an opening for a waste bucket to pass in and out. No wonder Hildegard was subject to shattering visions.

  Everything is penetrated with connectedness, penetrated with relatedness.

  My good spirit visits me nearly every night, settling at the foot of the bed. And this time, there is a song that I also hear, and it is not the women’s song. It is a baby’s song, maybe Eddy’s song, for it is high, repetitive, and comforting, like a lullaby. I hum it to you as we drift through the night, together now only for a short time.

  There is the prison yard, an exercise area where we are allowed to walk in circles or aimlessly shift around. Estrella and I walk together, not speaking. Holding hands. Sometimes they try to stop us from holding hands with each other, or draping our arms over each other, or hugging, or touching each other’s hair. But they give up. Even to the guards it feels mean to stop us. I see it in their eyes. They look away. We are all frightened children.

  It surprises me, though, how even though the women are passing through with only a slim chance of survival, they have tried to make beauty. Here and there inside the prison, pots are set out, filled with plants with arrow-shaped leaves, waxy purple blossoms, bulbous stalks I’ve never seen before, nameless plants, all numbered with fascinated attention, as though someone has kept track of how they grow. I see that other accidental plants are pushing into the prison as well. Mold against the reinforced window glass, tiny vines creeping from the cracks in the stairs. Motelike insects sometimes spring from the leaves I brush. They are only visible as motion.

  Once, as I’m walking by the window, a vibrating shadow stops me. Behind the shatterproof glass a dragonfly hovers just at eye level. Not a normal dragonfly. This one is giant—a three-foot wingspan, golden green eyes the size of softballs.

  Inside, the plants are spreading from the pots of soil. Some vines are thin as threads, others are green ropes that loop against the windows and up the stairways, always toward the light. The leaves proliferate and already in some places here you can walk in the shade of the understory. A fern tree has shot up, giant leaves curling out like feathers. And segmented bamboolike poles of purple and green are rising out of the stairwells. Every day there is an ever thicker green profusion. When I walk around the yard, I see that even in December vines burst from the stomped ground and catch hold of the slightest ridge or frame to travel, almost visibly upward, thrusting skeins of waving leaves across the fences, across the razor wire, even along the glass towers of the guards, rearing into the ferocious sunlight.

  I am the fiery life of the essence of God. I am the flame above the beauty of the fields. I shine in the waters. I burn in the sun, the moon, and the stars. And with the airy wind, I quicken all things vitally by an unseen, all-sustaining life.

  Hildegard.

  December 12

  Every so often, a woman survives her pregnancy. A few times they’ve let her out, but more often, they keep her. From our exercise yard we can see a vast field filling with tiny white crosses. One cross for both mother and baby. Past the field of crosses, two more fences, more razor wire. In spite of the slipshod feeling of how it is run, there is no rescue from this place, in case you wonder why I never mention it. I know that even with all of their combined ingenuity my family is not going to get me out of here. When I miss them to an unbearable degree, I sing the song for you, baby. Or I untuck a page of Eddy’s manuscript from my pack. It helps.

  Page 3034

  The Pebble

  I live yet because of a common pebble.

  Yesterday the bubble burst. Once again, I saw into the depth of things; only it was worse because things are so much deeper now. Not one aspect of the world could appeal to me or affect me. Not the end of things and not the beginning. There were no colors. Everything was neutral. From this I know that hell is not black or fiery. It is an unvaried gray without promise. And so the morning passed with its coffee and dry cereal. By noon, I was at the Superpumper, deciding which method to use.

  As I walked with a length of rope toward
the woods out back of the shop, a pebble flipped into my shoe. It hurt. Each step was painful. I stopped, and removed it. The stone was a bit of ferric oxide, earthy banded hematite, strayed from the Mesabi Range, where one-third of the world’s iron ore was at one time located. This piece of stone was laid down as a sediment in the Animikean sea sometime during the middle Precambrian period in Minnesota, and was probably between 2.6 and 1.6 billion years old. The pebble was a rich, deep, hot, clay red, striated and shaped like a tiny toaster.

  I tossed it over my shoulder and continued down the path. Another pebble. Ouch. This time it was pointed. This, too, was no ordinary rock, but a shard of graywacke or greenstone, a basaltic lava that was perhaps shoved to the surface of the earth 3.5 billion years ago during the Keewatin. Howah! Lotta time. I dropped the stone to the side of the path and kept walking toward a particular tree I’d picked out sometime before. A good strong branch jutted from the trunk. Perfect to swing a rope over.

  Oops, another. These low docksiders, whiteman’s shoes, seemed to scoop the rocks right in. This pebble was a dime-sized circle of black basalt shaped by lake waves and probably poured out at one time from a deep volcanic fissure under the sea that covered us. The lava cooled and was broken into bits that washed away, eventually to the shore, changing on the way to this lovely water-stroked smoothness. This one I placed carefully upon a stump. The youngest pebble, it was probably no more than several million years old.

  I had nearly reached the tree when a final rock cut me—actually cut me as I stepped down upon it. An agate, inexplicably shattered, it showed the grain of the fossilized wood and algae that it had once been. What colors! A light bronze, gray, black, and deep red. There was a landscape within its features. Chert surrounded by jasper. A living thing. It would make, I thought, a beautiful necklace for Sweetie, were it only polished.

  I don’t know why they want me here on earth, the little rocks. I don’t know why they care about me as they do. I only know that by the time I reached the tree I had no choice but to fling the rope away from myself. I turned back, my fingers rubbing the little agate. All the way back to the store not a single rock slipped underfoot.

  December 14

  We’re in a gray spell—a week of clouded-over, indifferent weather. There isn’t even a patch of blue sky to lift a person’s thoughts. It feels to me like everything is sliding away. I am alone with the truth of my body—you are in it and I have to get you out.

  Baby, I love you but you are huge. Your exit is supposed to stretch, but ten centimeters isn’t that much wider than the mouth of a water glass. How stretchy am I? Not that stretchy. I’m rigid. I’ve always been a rigid thinker, and am lousy at yoga. You should stop growing right now, you are already too big, but you don’t care. You continue to grow and grow.

  My headaches, how I see bright spots, my spiking blood pressure, these could be signs that my body is having the allergic reaction to your presence. I tell nobody but Estrella. I’m puffing up. I push my finger into the flesh of my calf and the dent stays dented.

  “Look,” I say.

  She touches my calf with her fingertips, and frowns.

  December 15

  There are usually two doctors and a nurse in the room when I get a checkup. I go in every single day now. The ultrasound machines are still messed up. So I just get the regular sort of offhand check—my blood pressure is high, very high, which is why I’m being watched, my doctor says. There is something familiar about my doctor. Every time I see her, I feel that I’ve somehow seen her before, even known her, but there are always the others in the room so I never dare to ask. But then one day I am alone with the doctor for a moment. She’s wearing square blue eyeglasses.

  “Have I seen you before?”

  She smiles at me and bends over as if to tie her shoe. When she gets up, she grips my hand as if to comfort me. I feel a tiny bit of paper in my palm. I grasp it and turn over on the examining table, which is not easy, it’s a big deal at 38-plus weeks. I shake my hair as if I’m pouting, and read the paper inside the curtain of my hair. The dust around us listens, the walls see, the air pumped into this room tastes our emotions.

  It’s almost poetry. I hate to have to eat it. After a moment, I turn back over, my fist curled, my face stony. I try to still my heart, to breathe normally.

  The doctor gives a tense little smile, glances around, and folds her arms and drums her fingers. She writes something else down and gives me the bit of paper.

  Jessie, it says.

  I stare in wonder, mouth the words. “The hospital?”

  She nods.

  I described Jessie once as a pale, skinny, chinless, nerdy type of woman. I said she was mousy, bland, limp-haired, and cave-chested. I called her the Dweeb, but I remember she went from noodly to rock steady. She really did have the nerves of an outlaw, not a dweeb, whatever that is. Now she has completely changed her look. She’s chic, a leader, with tousled blond hair and fashionable blue eyeglasses. She has a chin. Where she got it, I don’t know. I soon find out a few things. Turns out Jessie was not a nurse, she was an OB-GYN posing as a nurse in order to get women out of the hospital, disguising and hiding them, past security. Turns out she nearly blew her cover getting Agnes Starr off the birthing table, out of the hospital, in a body bag punched with breathing holes.

  December 18

  I complain about the bright spots, exaggerate my headaches, and get sent back to the doctor. But this time, and the next time, the others stay in the room and Jessie can’t talk. At last, there is a moment, and I find out that Agnes used a box cutter blade that Jessie taped to her upper arm as she went into labor. Jessie pretended that Agnes had died when her baby was born, and laid her into the bag. Agnes slit the bag open in the deep of night. She made her way out of the morgue.

  I show a tiny note. It gives my old address, and where the money is still buried. And it asks:

  What are my chances, baby’s chances?

  Both of you 15 to 20 percent chance survival.

  Will you keep track of where they take my baby?

  Yes.

  December 23

  I know the Word. It is the oldest word in any language, first utterance. Ma, ah, oh, mama. Mother. Not the word uttered by God to make life, but spoken by the baby who recognizes the being on whom life depends.

  I will hear that word. I will know that word. I will stay alive.

  December 24

  For once in my life, I am right on time.

  9:25 p.m. It begins.

  December 25

  Estrella told me it was not going to matter, and it didn’t matter where I was giving birth. Or who was in the room, except that there was no Jessie. No outlaw. That mattered. But I forgot. I am the flame above the beauty of the fields. One by one the saints entered the room. Over the next hours thousands of spirits were admitted. We were surrounded by a jungle of plants. I shine in the waters. I burn in the sun, the moon, the stars. The saints were silent. All that mattered was getting through each contraction. Then the next. And the next. I could see myself reflected in the stainless steel panels. I was in an ocean shooting sparks of light. The waves were pain. I was flung up, dashed down. Over and over to infinity and then when I thought I must have died, I took a breath, and I was surprised. The ocean also took a deep breath. The day was gone. The night was dark, the light softened, and I realized that thousands of candles cast this glow and the gorgeous music that I heard was the thousands of spirits and human beings singing, The soul is not in the body. The body is in the soul. I heard the other song, the women’s song, between the contractions. I heard your baby song. And I pushed. The pushing went on forever, until, with a violence I didn’t know was in me, I pushed you out.

  You were blue, just a slight tinge. As you breathed you turned pinker and redder and the soft fuzz that covered your skin began to glow like copper. Your velvety limbs unfolded, tensile and strong. You tipped your head back. Your eyes were the newborn’s slaty blue, but darker, already burning to live. You held
my gaze and I put my finger into your hand. You stared at me, holding on with an implacable strength, and I looked into the soul of the world.

  It’s you, I said. It was always you.

  The sting of the needle stole my consciousness. As I slipped away, someone pried apart your fist and I felt you lifted from my arms.

  December

  Extremely weak. But still here.

  January

  They say my heart is damaged.

  February

  My dear son. I know you’re going to read this someday. I can tell that you’re going to wonder what it was like, in the before.

  My parents would tell me things about the world, the way it was before, the way they knew it and loved it although, they always said this, We didn’t know it was heaven.

  I would ask them, What was it like, years ago? The real cold, the deep cold?

  And they would tell me.

  Sometimes when the lake froze quickly and the wind was high, volumes of moving water were trapped beneath the ice, said Sera. Then you heard muffled explosions deep down, in the center, and rending moans where the ice met the islands. Cracks like gunshots. Hollow reverberating gulps. Sometimes there were the quick staccato reports of snare drums, fading in and out, as if a marching band wound its way back and forth below the ice.

  If the ice froze slowly, the lake made a different music. A delicate whisper as the frozen wave tips touched. If the cold waves drove hard, fracturing the edges of the ice sheets, the shards tinkled together or rang off-key. The lake was surrounded by haunted wind chimes. Sometimes the lake breathed a tortured sigh, its lungs full of broken glass. If the temperature dropped, 50 or even 60 degrees overnight, the lake might freeze clear, trapping leaves and even small fish. You walked out on the ice, threw yourself down in your snug nylon snowsuit, and peered into an altered world.