Love Medicine

by Louise Erdrich

  “Booshoo, Father,” I said. “I got a slight request to make of you this afternoon. ” “What is it?” he said.

  “Would you bless this package?” I held out the hankie with the hearts tied inside it.

  He looked at the package, questioning it.

  “It’s turkey hearts,” I honestly had to reply.

  A look of annoyance crossed his face.

  “Why don’t you bring this matter over to Sister Martin,” he said. “I have duties.”

  And so, although the blessing wouldn’t be as powerful, I went over to the Sisters with the package.

  I rung the bell, and they brought Sister Martin to the door. I had her as a music teacher, but I was always so shy then. I never talked out loud. Now, I had grown taller than Sister Martin.

  Looking down, I saw that she was not feeling up to snuff. Brown circles hung under her eyes.

  “What’s the matter?” she said, not noticing who I was.

  “Remember me, Sister?”

  She squinted up at me.

  “Oh yes,” she said after a moment. “I’m sorry, you’re the youngest of the Kashpaws. Gordie’s brother.”

  Her face warmed up.

  “Lipsha,” I said, “that’s my name.”

  “Well, Lipsha,” she said, smiling broad at me now, “what can I do for you?”

  They always said she was the kindest-hearted of the Sisters up the hill, and she was. She brought me back into their own kitchen and made me take a big yellow wedge of cake and a glass of milk.

  “Now tell me,” she said, nodding at my package. “What have you got wrapped up so carefully in those handkerchiefs?”

  Like before, I answered honestly.

  “Ah, ” said Sister Martin. “Turkey hearts.” She waited.

  “I hoped you could bless them.”

  She waited some more, smiling with her eyes. Kindhearted though she was, I began to sweat. A person could not pull the wool down over Sister Martin. I stumbled through my mind for an explanation, quick, that wouldn’t scare her off.

  “They’re a present,” I said, “for Saint Kateri’s statue.”

  “She’s not a saint yet.”

  “I know,” I stuttered on, “in the hopes they will crown her.”

  “Lipsha,” she said,

  “I never heard of such a thing.”

  So I told her. “Well the truth is,” I said, “it’s a kind of medicine. ” “For what?”

  “Love. ” “Oh Lipsha,” she said after a moment, “you don’t need any medicine. I’m sure any girl would like you exactly the way you are.

  I just sat there. I felt miserable, caught in my pack of lies.

  “Tell you what,” she said, seeing how bad I felt, “my blessing’ll make any difference anyway. But there is something you won I can do.”

  I looked up at her, hopeless.

  “Just be yourself ” I looked down at my plate. I knew I wasn’t much to brag about right then, and I shortly became even less. For as I walked out the door I stuck my fingers in the cup of holy water that was sacred from their touches. I put my fingers in and blessed the hearts, quick, with my own hand.

  I went back to Grandma and sat down in her little kitchen at the Senior Citizens. I unwrapped them hearts on the table, and her hard agate eyes went soft. She said she wasn’t even going to cook those hearts up but eat them raw so their power would go down strong as possible.

  I couldn’t hardly watch when she munch cd hers. Now that’s true love.

  I was worried about how she would get Grandpa to eat his, but she told me she’d think of something and don’t worry. So I did not. I was supposed to hide off in her bedroom while she put dinner on a plate for Grandpa and fixed up the heart so he’d eat it. I caught a glint of the plate she was making for him. She put that heart smack on a piece of lettuce like in a restaurant and then attached to it a little heap of boiled peas.

  He sat down. I was listening in the next room.

  She said,

  “Why don’t you have some mash potato?” So he had some mash potato. Then she gave him a little piece of boiled meat. He ate that.

  Then she said,

  “Why you didn’t never touch your salad yet. See that heart? I’m feeding you it because the doctor said your blood needs building up.”

  I couldn’t help it, at that point I peeked through a crack in the door.

  I saw Grandpa picking at that heart on his plate with a certain look.

  He didn’t look appetized at all, is what I’m saying. I doubted our plan was going to work. Grandma was getting worried, too. She told him one more time, loudly, that he had to eat that heart.

  “Swallow it down,” she said. “You’ll hardly notice it.”

  He just looked at her straight on. The way he looked at her made me think I was going to see the smokescreen drop a second time, and sure enough it happened.

  “What you want me to eat this for so bad?” he asked her uncannily.

  Now Grandma knew the jig was up. She knew that he knew—dad she was working medicine. He put his fork down. He rolled the heart around his saucer plate.

  “I don’t want to eat this,” he said to Grandma. “It don’t look good.

  ” “Why it’s fresh grade-A,” she told him. “One hundred percent. ” He didn’t ask percent what, but his eyes took on an even more warier look.

  “Just go on and try it, ” she said, taking the salt shaker up in her hand. She was getting annoyed. “Not tasty enough? You want me to salt it for you?” She waved the shaker over his plate.

  “All right, skinny white girl!” She had got Grandpa mad.

  Oopsy-daisy, he popped the heart into his mouth. I was about to yawn loudly and come out of the bedroom. I was about ready for this crash of wills to be over, when I saw He was still up to his old tricks.

  First he rolled it into one side of his cheek. “Mirmunrn, he said.

  Then he rolled it into the other side of his cheek.

  “Mmmmmirim,” again. Then he stuck his tongue out with the heart on it and put it back, and there was no time to react. He had pulled Grandma’s leg once too far. Her goat was got. She was so mad she hopped up quick as a wink and slugged him between the shoulderblades to make him swallow.

  Only thing is, he choked.

  He choked real bad. A person can choke to death. You ever sit down at a restaurant table and up above you there is a list of instructions what to do if something slides down the wrong pipe?

  It sure makes you chew slow, that’s for damn sure. When Grandpa fell off his chair better believe me that little graphic illustrated poster fled into my mind. I jumped out the bedroom. I done everything within my power that I could do to un lodge what was choking him. I squeezed underneath his ribcage. I socked him in the back. I was desperate.

  But here’s the factor of decision: he wasn’t choking on the heart alone.

  There was more to it than that. It was other things that choked him as well. It didn’t seem like he wanted to struggle or fight. Death came and tapped his chest, so he went just like that. I’m sorry all through my body at what I done to him with that heart, and there’s those who will say Lipsha Morrissey is just excusing himself off the hook by giving song and dance about how Grandpa gave up.

  Maybe I can’t admit what I did. My touch had gone worthless, that is true. But here is what I seen while he lay in my arms.

  You hear a person’s life will flash before their eyes when they’re in danger. It was him in danger, not me, but it was his life come over me.

  I saw him dying, and it was like someone pulled the shade down in a room. His eyes clouded over and squeezed shut, but just before that I looked in. He was still fishing in the middle of Lake Turcot. Big thoughts was on his line and he had half a case of beer in the boat.

  He waved at me, grinned, and then the bobber went under.

  Grandma had gone out of the room crying for help. I bunched my force up in my hands and I held him. I was so wound up I couldn’t even breathe.
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  All the moments he had spent with me, all the times he had hoisted me on his shoulders or pointed into the leaves was concentrated in that moment. Time was flashing back and forth like a pinball machine. Lights blinked and balls hopped and rubber bands chirped, until suddenly I realized the last ball had gone down the drain and there was nothing. I felt his force leaving him, flowing out of Grandpa never to return. I felt his mind weakening. The bobber going under in the lake. And I felt the touch retreat back into the darkness inside my body, from where it came.

  One time, long ago, both of us were fishing together. We caught a big old snapper what started towing us around like it was a motor.

  “This here fishline is pretty damn good,” Grandpa said.

  “Let’s keep this turtle on and see where be takes us.” So we rode along behind that turtle, watching as from time to time it surfaced.

  The thing was just about the size of a washtub. It took us all around the lake twice, and as it was traveling, Grandpa said something as a joke. “Lipsha,” he said, “we are glad your mother didn’t want you because we was always looking for a boy like you who would tow us around the lake.”

  “I ain’t no snapper. Snappers is so stupid they stay alive when their head’s chopped off,” I said.

  “That ain’t stupidity,” said Grandpa. “Their brain’s just in their heart, like yours is.”

  When I looked up, I knew the fuse had blown between my heart and my mind and that a terrible understanding was to be given.

  Grandma got back into the room and I saw her stumble. And then she went down too. It was like a house you can’t hardly believe has stood so long, through years of record weather, suddenly goes down in the worst yet. It makes sense, is what I’m saying, but you still can’t hardly believe it. You think a person you know has got through death and illness and being broke and living on commodity rice will get through anything. Then they fold and you see how fragile were the stones that underpinned them. You see how instantly the ground can shift you thought was solid. You see the stop signs and the yellow dividing markers of roads you traveled and all the instructions you had played according to vanish. You see how all the everyday things you counted on was just a dream you had been having by which you run your whole life.

  She had been over me, like a sheer overhang of rock dividing Lipsha Morrissey from outer space. And now she went underneath. It was as though the banks gave way on the shores of Lake Turcot, and where Grandpa’s passing was just the bobber swallowed tinder by his biggest thought, her fall was the house and the rock under it sliding after, sending half the lake splashing up to the clouds.

  Where there was nothing.

  You play them games never knowing what you see. When I fell into the dream alongside of both of them I saw that the dominions I had defended myself from anciently was but delusions of the screen. Blips of light.

  And I was scot-free now, whistling through space.

  I don’t know how I come back. I don’t know from where. They was slapping my face when I arrived back at Senior Citizens and they was oxygenating her. I saw her chest move, almost unwilling. She sighed the way she would when somebody bothered her in the middle of a row of beads she was counting. I think it irritated her to no end that they brought her back. I knew from the way she looked after they took the mask off, she was not going to forgive them disturbing her restful peace. Nor was she forgiving Lipsha Morrissey. She had been stepping out onto the road of death, she told the children later at the funeral.

  I asked was there any stop signs or dividing markers on that road, but she clamped her lips in a vise the way she always done when she was mad.

  Which didn’t bother me. I knew when things had cleared out she wouldn’t have no choice. I was not going to speculate where the blame was put for Grandpa’s death. We was in it together.

  She had slugged him between the shoulders, My touch had failed him, never to return.

  All the blood children and the took-ins, like me, came home from Minneapolis and Chicago, where they had relocated years ago. They stayed with friends on the reservation or with Aurelia or slept on Grandma’s floor. They were struck down with grief and bereavement to be sure, every one of them. At the funeral I sat down in the back of the church with Albertine. She had gotten all skinny and ragged haired from cramming all her years of study into two or three. She had decided that to be a nurse was not enough for her so she was going to be a doctor.

  But the way she was straining her mind didn’t look too hopeful. Her eyes were hefty, bloodshot from driving and crying. She took my hand.

  From the back we watched all the children and the mourners as they hunched over their prayers, their hands stuffed full of Kleenex. It was someplace in that long sad service that my vision shifted. I began to see things different, more clear. The family kneeling down turned to rocks in a field. It struck me how strong and reliable grief was, and death. Until the end of time, death would be our rock.

  So I had perspective on it all, for death gives you that. All the Kashpaw children had done various things to me in their lives shared their folks with me, loaned me cash, beat me up in secret-and I decided, because of death, then and there I’d call it quits. If I ever saw King again, I’d shake his hand. Forgiving somebody else made the whole thing easier to bear.

  Everybody saw Grandpa off into the next world. And then the Kashpaws had to get back to their jobs, which was numerous and impressive. I had a few beers with them and I went back to Grandma, who had sort of got lost in the shuffle of everybody being sad about Grandpa and glad to see one another.

  Zelda had sat beside her the whole time and was sitting with her now.

  I wanted to talk to Grandma, say how sorry I was, that it wasn’t her fault, but only mine. I would have, but Zelda gave me one of her looks of strict warning as if to say,

  “I’ll take care of Grandma. Don’t horn in on the women.”

  If only Zelda knew, I thought, the sad realities would change her.

  But of course I couldn’t tell the dark truth.

  It was evening, late. Grandma’s light was on underneath a crack in the door. About a week had passed since we buried Grandpa. I knocked first but there wasn’t no answer, so I went right in. The door was unlocked.

  She was there but she didn’t notice me at first. Her hands were tied up in her rosary, and her gaze was fully absorbed in the easy chair opposite her, the one that had always been Grandpa’s favorite. I stood there, staring with her, at the little green nubs in the cloth and plastic armrest covers and the sad little hair-tonic stain he had made on the white dolly where he laid his head.

  For the life of me I couldn’t figure what she was staring at. Thin space. Then she turned.

  “He ain’t gone yet,” she said.

  Remember that chill I luckily didn’t get from waiting in the slough?

  I got it now. I felt it start from the very center of me, where fear hides, waiting to attack. It spiraled outward so that in minutes my fingers and teeth were shaking and clattering. I knew she told the truth. She seen Grandpa. Whether or not he had been there is not the point. She had seen him, and that meant anybody else could see him, too. Not only that but, as is usually the case with these here ghosts, he had a certain uneasy reason to come back. And of course Grandma Kashpaw had scanned it out.

  I sat down. We sat together on the co-Lich watching his chair out of the corncr of our eyes. She had found him sitting in his chair when she walked in the door.

  “It’s the love medicine, my Lipsha,” she said. “It was stronger than we thought. He came back even after death to claim me to his side.”

  I was afraid. “We shouldn’t have tampered with it,” I said. She agreed. For a while we sat still. I don’t know what she thought, but my head felt screwed on backward. I couldn’t accurately consider the situation, so I told Grandma to go to bed. I would sleep on the couch keeping my eye on Grandpa’s chair. Maybe he would come back and maybe he wouldn’t. I guess I feared the one as much as the o
ther, but I got to thinking, see, as I lay there in darkness, that perhaps even through my terrible mistakes some good might come. If Grandpa did come back, I thought he’d return in his right mind. I could talk with him. I could tell him it was all my fault for playing with power I did not understand.

  Maybe he’d forgive me and rest in peace. I hoped this. I calmed myself and waited for him all night.

  He fooled me though. He knew what I was waiting for, and it wasn’t what he was looking to hear. Come dawn I heard a blood splitting cry from the bedroom and I rushed in there. Grandma turnt the lights on.

  She was sitting on the edge of the bed and her face looked harsh, pinched-up, gray.

  “He was here,” she said. “He came and laid down next to me in bed.

  And he touched me.”

  Her heart broke down. She cried. His touch was so cold. She laid back in bed after a while, as it was morning, and I went to the couch.

  As I lay there, falling asleep, I suddenly felt Grandpa’s presence and the barrier between us like a swollen river. I felt how I had wronged him, How awful was the place where I had sent him. Behind the wall of death, he’d watched the living eat and cry and get drunk. He was lonesome, but I understood he meant no harm.

  “Go back,” I said to the dark, afraid and yet full of pity. “You got to be with your own kind now,” I said. I felt him retreating, like a sigh, growing less. I felt his spirit as it shrunk back through the walls, the blinds, the brick courtyard of Senior Citizens.

  “Look up Aunt June,” I whispered as he left.

  I slept late the next morning, a good hard sleep allowing the sun to rise and warm the earth. It was past noon when I awoke. There is nothing, to my mind, like a long sleep to make those hard decisions that you neglect under stress of wakefulness. Soon as I woke up that morning, I saw exactly what I’d say to Grandma. I had gotten humble in the past week, not just losing the touch but getting jolted into the understanding that would prey on me from here on out. Your life feels different on you, once you greet death and understand your heart’s position. You wear your life like a garment from the mission bundle sale ever after-lightly because you realize you never paid nothing for it, cherishing because you know you won’t ever come by such a bargain again. Also you have the feeling someone wore it before you and someone will after. I can’t explain that, not yet, but I’m putting my mind to it.