Love Medicine

by Louise Erdrich

  I saw this, mouth hanging open, gazing off into the flagged boughs of trees.

  “Get up!” she cried. “Stop dreaming. It is time to bake.”

  Two other Sisters had come in with her, wide women with hands like paddles. They were evening and smoothing out the firebox beneath the great jaws of the oven.

  L

  PP

  “Who is this one?” they asked Leopolda. “Is she yours?”

  “She is mine,” said Leopolda. “A very good girl.”

  “What is your name?” one asked me.

  “Marie.”

  “Marie. Star (if the Sea.”

  “She will shine,” said Leopolda, “when we have burned off the dark corrosion.

  The others laughed, but uncertainly. They were mild and sturdy French, who did not understand Leopolda’s twisted jokes, although they muttered respectfully at things she said. I knew they wouldn’t believe what she had done with the kettle. There was no question. So I kept quiet.

  “Elle est docile,” they said approvingly as they left to starch the linens.

  “Does it pain?” Leopolda asked me as soon as they were out the door.

  I did not answer. I felt sick with the hurt.

  “Come along,” she said.

  The building was wholly quiet now. I followed her up the narrow staircase into a hall of little rooms, many doors. Her cell was the quietest, at the very end. Inside, the air smelled stale, as if the door had not been opened for years. There was a crude straw mattress, a tiny bookcase with a picture of Saint Francis hanging over it, a ragged palm, a stool for sitting on, a crucifix.

  She told me to remove my blouse and sit on the stool. I did so.

  She took a pot of salve from the bookcase and began to smooth it upon my burns. Her hands made slow, wide circles, stopping the pain. I closed my eyes. I expected-to see blackness. Peace. But instead the vision reared up again. My chest was still tipped with diamonds. I was walking through windows. She was chewing up the broken litter I left behind.

  “I am going,” I said. “Let me go.”

  But she held me down.

  “Don’t go,” she said quickly. “Don’t. We have just begun.”

  …. …. ……. I was weakening. My thoughts were whirling pitifully. The pain had kept me strong, and as it left me I began to forget it; I couldn’t hold on. I began to wonder if she’d really scalded me with the kefflc. I could not remember. To remember this seemed the most important thing in the world. But I was losing the memory. The scalding. The pouring. It began to vanish. I felt like my mind was coming off its hinge, flapping in the breeze, hanging by the hair of my own pain. I wrenched out of her grip.

  “He was always in you,” I said. “Even more than in me. He wanted you even more. And now he’s got you. Get thee behind me!”

  I shouted that, grabbed my shirt, and ran through the door throwing it on my body. I got down the stairs and into the kitchen, even, but no matter what I told myself, I couldn’t get out the door. It wasn’t finished. And she knew I would not leave. Her quiet step was immediately behind me.

  “We must take the bread from the oven now,” she said.

  She was pretending nothing happened. But for the first time I had gotten through some chink she’d left in her darkness.

  Touched some doubt. Her voice was so low and brittle it cracked off at the end of her sentence.

  “Help me, Marie,” she said slowly.

  But I was not going to help her, even though she had calmly buttoned the back of my shirt up and put the big cloth mittens in my hands for taking out the loaves. I could have bolted for it then. But I didn’t.

  I knew that something was nearing completion. Something was about to happen. My back was a wall of singing flame. I was turning. I watched her take the long fork in one hand, to tap the loaves. In the other hand she gripped the black poker to hook the pans.

  “Help me,” she said again, and I thought, Yes, this is part of it.

  I put the mittens on my hands and swung the door open on its hinges.

  The oven gaped. She stood back a moment, letting the—ANA first blast of heat rush by. I moved behind her. I could feel the heat at my front and at my back. Before, behind. My skin was turning to beaten gold. It was coming quicker than I thought.

  The oven was like the gate of a personal hell. just big enough and hot enough for one person, and that was her. One kick and Leopolda would fly in headfirst. And that would be one-millionth of the heat she would feel when she finally collapsed in his hellish embrace.

  Saints know these numbers.

  She bent forward with her fork held out. I kicked her with all my might. She flew in. But the outstretched poker hit the back wall first, so she rebounded. The oven was not so deep as I had thought.

  There was a moment when I felt a sort of thin, hot disappointment, as when a fish slips off the line. Only I was the one going to be lost.

  She was fearfully silent. She whirled. Her veil had cutting edges.

  She had the poker in one hand. In the other she held that long sharp fork she used to tap the delicate crusts of loaves. Her face turned upside down on her shoulders. Her face turned blue. But saints are used to miracles. I felt no trace of fear.

  If I was going to be lost, let the diamonds cut! Let her eat ground glass!

  “Bitch of Jesus Christ!” I shouted. “Kneel and beg! Lick the floor!”

  That was when she stabbed me through the hand with the fork, then took the poker up alongside my head, and knocked me out.

  It must have been a half an hour later when I came around.

  Things were so strange. So strange I can hardly tell it for delight at the remembrance. For when I came around this was actually taking place.

  I was being worshiped. I had somehow gained the altar of a saint.

  –Okla bolt.I was laying back on the stiff couch in the Mother Superior’s office. I looked around me. It was as though my deepest dream had come to life. The Sisters of the convent were kneeling to me.

  Sister Bonaventure. Sister Dympna. Sister Cecilia Saint-Claire.

  The two French with hands like paddles. They were down on their knees.

  Black capes were slung over some of their heads. My name was buzzing up and down the room, like a fat auturrin fly lighting on the tips of their tongues between Latin, humming up the heavy blood-dark curtains, circling their little cosseted heads.

  Marie! Marie! A girl thrown in a closet. Who was afraid of a rubber over boot Who was half overcome. A girl who came in the back door where they threw their garbage. Marie! Who never found the cup.

  Who had to eat their cold mush. Marie! Leopolda had her face buried in her knuckles. Saint Marie of the Holy Slops! Saint Marie of the Bread Fork! Saint Marie of the Burnt Back and Scalded Butt!

  I broke out and laughed.

  They looked up. All holy hell burst loose when they saw I’d woke. I still did not understand what was happening. They were watching, talking, but not to me.

  “The marks … ” “She has her hand closed.”

  lethe peux pas voir. ” I was not stupid enough to ask what they were talking about. I couldn’t tell why I was laying in white sheets.

  I couldn’t tell why they were praying to me. But I’ll tell you this: it seemed entirely natural. It was me. I lifted up my hand as in my dream. It was completely limp with sacredness.

  “Peace be with you.”

  My arm was dried blood from the wrist down to the elbow. And it hurt.

  Their faces turned like flat flowers of adoration to follow that hand’s movements. I let it swing through the air, imparting a saints blessing.

  I had practiced. I knew exactly how to act.

  MA

  They murmured. I heaved a sigh, and a golden beam of light suddenly broke through the clouded window and flooded down directly on my face. A stroke of perfect luck! They had to be convinced.

  Leopolda still knelt in the back of the room. Her knuckles were crammed halfway down her throat. Let me t
ell you, a saint has senses honed keen as a wolf. I knew that she was over my barrel now. How it happened did not matter. The last thing I remembered was how she flew from the oven and stabbed me. That one thing was most certainly true.

  “Come forward, Sister Leopolda. ” I gestured with my heavenly wound.

  Oh, it hurt. It bled when I reopened the slight heal.

  “Kneel beside me,” I said.

  She kneeled, but her voice box evidently did not work, for her mouth opened, shut, opened, but no sound came out. My throat clenched in noble delight I had read of as befitting a saint. She could not speak.

  But she was beaten. It was in her eyes. She stared at me now with all the deep hate of the wheel of devilish dust that rolled wild within her emptiness.

  “What is it you want to tell me?” I asked. And at last she spoke.

  “I have told my Sisters of your passion,” she managed to choke out.

  “How the stigmata … the marks of the nails … appeared in your palm and you swooned at the holy vision …… “Yes,” I said curiously.

  And then, after a moment, I understood.

  Leopolda had saved herself with her quick brain. She had witnessed a miracle. She had hid the fork and told this to the others.

  And of course they believed her, because they never knew how Satan came and went or where he took refuge.

  “I saw it from the first,” said the large one who put the bread in the oven. “Humility of the spirit. So rare in these girls.”

  “I saw it too,” said the other one with great satisfaction. She sighed quietly. “If only it was me.”

  now N Leopolda was kneeling bolt upright, face blazing and twitching, a barely held fountain of blasting poison.

  “Christ has marked me,” I agreed.

  I smiled the saint’s smirk into her face. And then I looked at her.

  That was my mistake.

  For I saw her kneeling there. Leopolda with her soul like a rubber over boot With her face of a starved rat. With the desperate eyes drowning in the deep wells of her wrongness. There would be no one else after me. And I would leave. I saw Leopolda kneeling within the shambles of her love.

  My heart had been about to surge from my chest with the blackness of my joyous heat. Now it dropped. I pitied her. I pitied her. Pity twisted in my stomach like that hook-pole was driven through me. I was caught. It was a feeling more terrible than any amount of boiling water and worse than being forked. Still, still, I could not help what I did.

  I had already smiled in a saint’s mealy forgiveness. I heard myself speaking gently.

  “Receive the dispensation of my sacred blood,” I whispered.

  But there was no heart in it. No joy when she bent to touch the floor.

  No dark leaping. I fell back into the white pillows. Blank dust was whirling through the light shafts. My skin was dust.

  Dust my lips. Dust the dirty spoons on the ends of my feet.

  Rise up! I thought. Rise up and walk! There is no limit to this dust!

  L WILD GEESE Gr (1934)

  NECTOR KASHPAW

  On Friday mornings, I go down to the sloughs with my brother Eli and wait for the birds to land. We have built ourselves a little blind.

  Eli has second sense and an aim I cannot match, but he is shy and doesn’t like to talk. In this way it is a good partnership.

  Because I got sent to school, I am the one who always walks into town and sells what we shoot. I get the price from the Sisters, who cook for the priests, and then I come home and split the money in half Eli usually takes his bottle off into the woods, while I go into town, to the fiddle dance, and spark the girls.

  So there is a Friday near sundown, the summer I am out of school, that finds me walking up the hill with two geese slung from either wrist, tied with leather bands. just to set the record clear, I am a good-looking boy, tall and slim, without my father’s belly hanging in the way. I can have the pick of girls, is what I’m saying. But that doesn’t matter anyhow, because I have already decided that Lulu Nanapush is the one. She is the only one of them I want.

  I am thinking of her while I walk-those damn eyes of hers, sharp as ice picks, and the curl of her lips. Her figure is round and plush, yet just at the edge of slim. She is small, yet she will never be an armful or an eyeful because I’ll never get a bead on her. I know that even now. She never stops moving long enough for me to see her all in a piece. I catch the gleam on her hair, the flash of her arm, a sly turn of hip. Then she is gone. I think of her little wet tongue and I have to stop then and there, in my tracks, at the taste that floods into my mouth. She is a tart berry full of juice, and I know she is mine. I cannot wait for the night to start. She will be waiting in the bush.

  Because I am standing there, lost on the empty road, half drowned in the charms of Lulu, I never see Marie Lazarre barrel down. In fact, I never even hear her until it is too late. She comes straight down like a wagon unbraked, like a damn train. Her eye is on me, glaring under a stained strip of sheet. Her hand is wound tight in a pillowcase like a boxer’s fist.

  “Whoa,” I say, “slow down girl.”

  “Move aside,” she says.

  She tries to pass. Out of reflex I grab her arm, and then I see the initialed pillowcase. SHC is written on it in letters red as wine.

  Sacred Heart Convent. What is it doing on her arm? They say I am smart as a whip around here, but this time I am too smart for my own good.

  Marie Lazarre is the youngest daughter of a family of horse-thieving drunks. Stealing sacred linen fits what I know of that blood, so I assume she is running off with the Sisters’ pillowcase and other valuables. Who knows? I think a chalice might be hidden beneath her skirt. It occurs to me, next moment, I may get a money bonus if I bring her back.

  And so, because I am saving for the French-style wedding band I intend to put on the finger of Lulu Nanapush, I do not let Marie Lazarre go down the hill.

  Not that holding on to her is easy.

  “Lemme go, you damn Indian,” she hisses. Her teeth are strong looking, large and white. “You stink to hell!”

  I have to laugh. She is just a skinny white girl from a family so low you cannot even think they are in the same class as Kashpaws. I shake her arm. The dead geese tied to my wrist swing against her hip.

  I never move her. She is planted solid as a tree.

  She begins to struggle to get loose, and I look up the hill. No one coming from that direction, or down the road, so I let her try. I am playing with her. Then she kicks me with her hard-sole shoe.

  “Little girl,” I growl, “don’t play with fire!”

  Maybe I shouldn’t do this, but I twist her arm and screw it up tight.

  Then I am ashamed of myself because tears come, suddenly, from her eyes and hang bitter and gleaming from her lashes. So I let up for a moment.

  She moves away from me. But it is just to take aim. Her brown eyes glaze over like a wounded mink’s, hurt but still fighting vicious. She launches herself forward and rams her knee in my stomach.

  I lose my balance and pitch over. The geese pull me down.

  Somehow in falling I grip the puffed sleeve of her blouse and tear it from her shoulder.

  There I am, on the ground, sprawled and burdened by the geese, clutching that sky-color bit of cloth. I think at first she will do me more damage with her shoes. But she just stands glaring down on me, rail-tough and pale as birch, her face loose and raging beneath the white cloth. I think that now the tears will spurt out. She will sob.

  But Marie is the kind of tree that doubles back and springs up, whips singing.

  She bends over lightly and snatches the sleeve from my grip.

  “Lay there you ugly sonofabitch,” she says.

  I never answer, never say one word, just surge forward, knock dd her: over and roll on top of her and hold her pinned down underneath my whole length.

  “Now we’ll talk, skinny white girl, dirty Lazarre!” I yell in her face.

  The geese are to
my advantage now; their weight on my arms helps pin her; their dead wings flap around us; their necks loll, and their black eyes stare, frozen. But Marie is not the kind of girl to act frightened of a few dead geese.

  She stares into my eyes, furious and silent, her lips clenched white.

  “Just give me that pillowcase,” I say, “and I’ll let you go. I’m gonna bring that cloth back to the nuns.”

  She burns up at me with such fierceness, then, that I think she hasn’t understood what a little thing I am asking. Her eyes are tense and wild, animal eyes. My neck chills.

  “There now,” I say in a more reasonable voice, “quit clutching it and I’ll let you up and go. You shouldn’t have stole it.”

  “Stole it!” she spits. “Stole!”

  Her mouth drops wide open. If I want I could look all the way down her throat. Then she makes an odd rasp file noise, cawing like a crow.

  She is laughing! It is too much. The Lazarre is laughing in my face!

  “Stop that.” I put my hand across her mouth. Her slick white teeth click, harmless, against my palm, but I am not satisfied.

  “Lemme up,” she mumbles.

  “No,” I say.

  She lays still, then goes stiller. I look into her eyes and see the hard tears have frozen in the corners. She moves her legs. I keep her down. Something happens. The bones of her hips lock to either side’ of my hips, and I am held in a light vise. I stiffen like I am shocked. It hits me then I am lying full length across a woman, not a girl. Her breasts graze my chest, soft and pointed. I bow cannot help but lower myself the slightest bit to feel them better.

  And then I am caught. I give way. I cannot help myself, because, to my everlasting wonder, Marie is all tight plush acceptance, graceful movements, little ‘abs that lead me underneath her skirt where she is slick, warm, silk.

  When I come back, and when I look down on her, I know how badly I have been weakened. Her tongue flattens against my palm. I know that when I take my hand away the girl will smile, because somehow I have been beaten at what I started on this hill. And sure enough, when I take my hand away she speaks.