The Antelope Wife

by Louise Erdrich

  What follows from above is frightful, the riders understanding now that something has gone most horrifically wrong and the ride, a killer to begin with, now juiced up to unbearable, is whipping them mercilessly through time and space. They’re roaring. Puking. Blurred. They’re like those tigers turned to butter. They’re all one face of horror smeared across the inner circle of the Gravitron. They’ll die. Brain damage, inner organs turned to mush. The girls are so terrified they grab a railing and begin, with another desperate and grounded loved one, to wrench the bar from the walkway. They think they will use it to batter in the Plexiglas window, flail against the door, somehow jam the mechanism. But no, someone is there before them. With a tire iron swung with swordlike precision, Cecille smashes the window. People jump to the marked controls and now, at last, the ride is slowing. Each rider, coming into focus, is the very picture of sick and dazzled terror except for one.

  Rozin. She steps out of her cage, doesn’t falter, not a single misstep. She helps a wobbly, limp, gray-green-faced, sweating Frank off and leads him to a place in the grass where he sits in grateful wonder with his eyes still spinning. She strokes his hand. She holds his shoulder, puts her arm around him, and holds him lovingly, the way the girls cannot ever remember her holding their father. The way she acts is so different, so natural, so real, so warm and naked that they suddenly have this picture of what has just happened to her.

  Their mother has been scaled. All the scales of convention and ironic distance have been scuffed off her. All the boney armor she affects against the world. She has been stripped by centrifugal force and jumbled up inside. The wrench of gravity has undone all her strings.

  HE CALLS, THAT night. The twins hear them long on the phone and put their pillows over their heads, laughing at them. Juvenile! The next day is Saturday and he calls again. She’s jumping up and pacing back and forth. Strewn with a blasted weight of emotion. The girls can sense waves of feeling, banners with cutting edges, huge sensations ranging from her, all set loose. Dressed, but awkwardly, her collar turned inside, she bats away their hands when they try to fix it. Goes to a corner of the room. And it is there from watching her back and shoulders tremble that the girls understand it is too big for her, too much. It is pulling at her with inexorable weight. She’s falling into it. Gravity. They don’t know what to do. Already in the other room, the phone is ringing. As their mother walks toward the receiver with her hand outstretched, she seems to shrink and fall into the steady pull.

  Chapter 11

  Yellow Pickup Truck

  ROZIN WAITS FOR the school bus alongside her daughters. They stand close together on the street corner, watching traffic. Her hand brushes down her daughters’ slippery brown hair. The girls ask about the deer husband and Blue Prairie Woman. Is it true?

  “That old story,” says Rozin. She holds their slim shoulders against her. Their heavy backpacks clunk against her hips on each side. The bus bumbles to a stop and the doors sigh open.

  “Is it true?” Both of the girls look back as they are getting on. They pause on the black school-bus steps.

  “Don’t worry,” says Rozin. “It will be all right. It will be okay.”

  “What will?”

  “The divorce,” hisses Cally.

  Deanna halts as the door swishes shut and the bus drives off before they sit down, completely against safety regulations. Now they are waving from the backseat. Rozin watches until the bus turns down the street and then she walks into the kitchen and puts the old blue kettle on to boil. Standing tall in her black yoga pants, in which she will do the same jumping jacks and sit-ups she learned in high school, hands pressed on the pale tiles of the counter, unsmiling, she gazes out the window into the festooned yard. She leans forward and frowns as though looking for something hidden.

  When her husband steps into the kitchen, yawning, rubbing his chest, and pulling down a thick sweatshirt, she drops her gaze. Unspeaking, she sets out spoons, milk, slices a grapefruit, rattles a cereal box, takes down a pair of white lotus bowls. Richard pours the steaming water into the plunger coffeepot and then he stands with her in a drowsy suspension.

  “Klaus and me are going to take a lot of heat on this. Bad stuff is going down,” he says.

  “You never talk like that anymore,” says Rozin. “Why are you talking like that again?”

  They fell in love at an American Indian Movement protest and her mother told her she had a sinister feeling about the future. But did Rozin listen? No, she ran off with those people and lived here and there, but fortunately not on Pine Ridge during the years it had the highest per capita murder rate in the USA. Being in AIM was frustrating since the old ways were taken up again, the ceremonies and the pipes and the berets . . . wait, those berets were French?—but they looked cool. AIM was complicated for women because for instance if you had your period you couldn’t be around any of the good-looking men and couldn’t cook or touch their pipes or any sacred objects but had to stay in a moon lodge, which was usually the apartment of a sympathetic white person. Rozin had rebelled against her mother’s traditional ways, but once they were AIM ways she felt spiritual.

  Richard cheated on her many times while she was in the moon lodge. She never knew it at the time, but it later became a reason she felt justified in drinking coffee with Frank.

  Eventually, Rozin tried to put her politics into practice. She went to school to be a social worker but didn’t finish her degree. Sometimes she does community work. Other times she’s laid off and works at the supermarket, or for temp agencies. Anyway, she is steady and was able to buy and rehabilitate this very old house. As for Richard, all he’s got left of AIM is the ponytail.

  Richard is always participating in some scam or another. She has gotten used to this. He was the treasurer for AIM for one month and money vanished. He was actually kicked out, but things were getting very dangerous and he felt lucky not to have been executed by some former friend whose mind was poisoned by Cointelpro agents. Handsomely, charismatically, he flunked out of college and cast about for other ways to live. Once he was a telemarketer, he said, but he was actually part of a group that invested old people’s money in a nonexistent Indian hot springs resort. Another time he took a casino job and commuted. That worked out pretty well and he made enough to buy the yellow pickup truck that everybody knows him for driving.

  “That pickup truck was never a good idea. So easy to spot,” says Rozin.

  “Easy to repo,” says Richard.

  She nods, but does not answer.

  As always, she pours the coffee into his pottery cup. As always, he takes his first drink and winces at the stinging heat.

  “Does it even bother you that I am going underground?”

  “Underground, isn’t that for radicals? You’re an illegal carpet dumper.”

  “I suppose you’re glad. I suppose that you’ll be messing around with Frank.”

  “Yes,” sighs Rozin. “I suppose so.”

  During a recent receptionist break she read a magazine article about the brain chemicals that are released in the beginning of romantic love. Wow, has she ever got them, and to spare.

  “Are you in love?” says Richard poisonously.

  “Madly,” says Rozin flatly. She succeeds in tamping down a warm flutter.

  Her matter-of-factness deflates Richard. He thinks of how he could refer to Frank’s unhealthily sweet pastries and tell her he hopes they both get diabetes. But he just doesn’t have the energy. Maybe once he and Klaus are on the move his outlook will improve. He will call her on the phone with a slashing comeback. He will leave eloquent and withering messages.

  “Are you changing your identity?” asks Rozin. “I’ll want to know when I get the divorce papers. I’ll want to know so I can serve you with divorce papers.”

  “Make those guys who bring the papers wear neckties. And of course we’re changing our identities. We are going to masquerade as homeless guys who can’t remember who we are.”

  Rozin is alarmed and s
its down across from him, frowning.

  “That’s stupid, Richard, and so dangerous.”

  “What do you care?”

  “I still care for you.”

  “You won’t have sex with me.”

  “That would be crossing a boundary.”

  “It was a boundary we once loved to cross, like the state line, like the Forty-fifth Parallel, like the line between Central and Mountain time.”

  They are both very quiet and sadly sit drinking their coffee and remembering that they’d had many good and crazy years before these bad years.

  “Aren’t you worried about Cally and Deanna, about how they’ll take this?”

  “I have the grandmas here.”

  “They never liked me. They’ll talk bad about me.”

  “No, I won’t let them.”

  But they both know the grandmas are out of anyone’s control and that they have always said that Richard would end up homeless in the streets being hunted down by the authorities. Sure enough, that afternoon, the grandmas are watching when two of those very authorities come up to the house and repossess the yellow pickup truck. The repo men ask for Richard, but he is gone, because by that time Richard and Klaus are crawling around in the bushes down by the Mississippi River. They flip for who will buy the first bottle and Klaus loses. They roll out their sleeping bags and take the first burning swig. The sky is clear, slate blue. Soon enough, the air chills, dusk comes on, the brightest stars show, and the moon is nearly full.

  “It’s not so bad,” says Richard.

  There are deer in the leaves. A head pokes through once; a young doe stares at them meltingly and disappears.

  Chapter 12

  The Ojibwe Holidays

  GRANDMA NOODIN AND Grandma Giizis call the city Mishiimin Oodenang, Apple Town, because of the sound of the word—Minneapolis. Many Apple Us. They call Thanksgiving Day Gitchimiigwechiwegiizhigad, which means the Day When We Give the Big Thanks. It is not an original holiday, but the Ojibwe are big on feasts. Noodin and Giizis still live on the reservation homestead, the allotment that belonged to their grandmother, now a farmed patch of earth and woods and mashkiig from which they gather their teas and cut bark for baskets. The tribe gave them a brand-new prefabricated house, two bedrooms, slate blue. They can sit on the deck with their backs to the lake, and watch the road. Noodin can fold and sew a ricing tray or a makak without looking at her hands, but both she and Giizis prefer to construct and quill fancy boxes bearing animal icons—bear, loon, deer, and bear. They are hard-packed women with wise nimble fingers, heavy ankles, and legs that run straight down like fence posts into their shoes. Their faces originally had the same wide, plain soft beauty, but as twins will they have grown into their differences. They are like two cookie sheets. Noodin’s is the newer sheet, relatively unmarred, while Giizis’s is a pan baked on, burnt, shaded into character.

  Noodin and Giizis are arriving early because Rozin has made a doctor’s appointment. This was made for Noodin because she confided a set of feminine symptoms to her daughter, the sort of thing for which it was felt that she should be seen by what she calls “a woman’s expert.” Noodin is furious that she must see a doctor. But none of her own medicines work.

  Sitting in a rocker

  Eating Betty Crocker

  Watching the clock go

  Tick, tock, tick, tock

  Shawallawalla

  Tick, tock, tick, tock

  Shawallawalla

  ABCDEFG

  Wash those boy germs off of me!

  The twins are smacking their hands together and singing and rubbing off boy germs. They are not interested in what the grandmas will be angry about or what foods they will tell everyone they prefer—the burnt heart of the turkey to the white breast meat, cranberry sauce made from fresh berries only. Mincemeat pie gives Giizis the runs. Pumpkin stops Noodin’s bowels. Wild rice must be prepared with no salt, and garlic gives both an instant cramp.

  Misty snow, plump clouds, occasional breaks of sun. Ice on the sidewalks slick and treacherous under the white dusting. Rozin is just returning from a long emergency run to a convenience mart, when she sees her cousin Cecille back Frank’s delivery truck with expert care into a space across the street. Inside the truck, both grandmas are sitting high and proud on grass-blue vinyl, their stunning Miss Indian America profiles on display in the watery dark of the window. The truck is white. The snow is neat, a new fall outlining the shoveled walk and steps. Rozin breathes blue air stepping out of her car to meet them.

  “Take this. Here!”

  Giizis opens the truck door. She holds a casserole pan in her lap, a meat-fragrant oblong warming her knees through her red-and-white trader’s-blanket coat. Rozin takes the food carefully. There is the night before Thanksgiving meal to feed everyone and Giizis has arrived with her famous wild rice and duck hot-dish. The grandmas don’t even get out of the truck—they’re too busy reminding Booch Jr., Cecille, and Rozin of their complex digestive needs, which change every year.

  “Noodin takes no salt. I eat the whites of eggs only, yolks will kill me. Plus Noodin’s got that sugar in her blood. She craves it, though. Try not to tempt her,” Giizis whispers. “Don’t leave the cookie plate alone in the kitchen. She’ll make a pig of herself behind your back and then she’ll lapse into a coma. Me, you know I’ll eat whatever.”

  “No you won’t,” Cecille tells her. “You’re picky as your whole family put together. And the yolks of eggs will not kill you! Rozin has already fried the onions and celery for tomorrow’s stuffing. You’ll have to divide it out.”

  “She is making the stuffing already? That’s ours to make.”

  Noodin is nervous about her appointment and scurries into the house. She locks herself in the bathroom. She only has a few minutes, Rozin calls through the door. They are going to be late unless she hurries.

  “I am hurrying,” shouts Noodin, her voice thin with anxiety.

  “Don’t pressure her,” says Cecille. “After all, she’s never been to a gynecologist before. She’s very upset about this.”

  “It’s unbelievable,” says Rozin. “Well, I’m taking her to Doctor Carr. He’s very nice, really. I have seen him a couple of times.”

  “Him? I would never have a him.”

  “How ridiculous,” says Rozin sharply. “They are professionals. They’ve seen a million of ’em.”

  “ ’Em?” Cecille laughs. “And isn’t he young?”

  “Okay, he’s seen thousands of ’em.”

  “ ’Em.” Cecille walks off. “Booch,” she calls, “how many of ’em have you seen?”

  “How many of what?” Booch asks.

  “ ’Em,” says Cecille.

  “Oh stop it,” says Rozin.

  Noodin is still in the bathroom. The water is gushing and there are frantic sounds of hurry.

  “Just relax,” says Cecille. “I’ll call and say you’re running fifteen minutes late.”

  But they are at least half an hour late by the time they get Noodin into the car.

  AN HOUR PASSES. Noodin slams into the house and Rozin follows.

  “What’s the problem?” asks Cecille, her hands deep in flour.

  “She won’t tell me.”

  Noodin throws her purse in the corner, glares at everyone, and then thumps into the kitchen. She microwaves a heaping bowl of her own hot-dish, eats it. Without a word to anybody else she begins to tear up loaves of bread for her own stuffing and to chop apples. She likes apples and raisins and sausage in her stuffing. She takes a big package of sausage from the refrigerator and dumps it into a frying pan. Noodin broods as she cooks it, breaking it with the edge of a spatula.

  “What’s wrong with you?” asks Cecille.

  No answer. Cecille shrugs. “What’s wrong with her?” she asks Giizis.

  “She’s like that,” says Giizis.

  Eventually Noodin stomps off to bed, still without a word to anyone.

  “What was the diagnosis?” asks Cecille once Noodin is
sealed in the bedroom.

  “Normal,” says Rozin. “Everything benign! Except her! Maybe she’s just mad because she went to the doctor for nothing?”

  ROZIN’S KITCHEN IS a long, sunny galley with three windows over the sink and a chopping board built into the side opposite the stove, underneath the cupboards of dishes. Out in the other room Cecille sets the table with Rozin’s holiday cloth—turkeys, pilgrims, and golden-eyed deer—and plates with the border of twined green leaves. Cecille has brought her own special water glasses. Beautiful rummage-sale cut glass of an elemental blue that does not match anything.

  Just like her, Rozin thinks, annoyed but also obscurely pleased. Everything else on the table is red, orange, or gold. I’ve set it carefully, and here comes Cecille insisting on her blue water goblets.

  Cecille is slender as a dancer. She shows off her breasts and shoulders by wearing leotard tops. Her eyes are wide, deer-brown, caramel-cream, and she has grown her hair long, thick, and wild. She likes to streak it with henna. The twins are proud of her. Sometimes her earnest and pedantic air as she discusses her martial arts annoys everyone. But she is a second-degree black belt now, tae kwan do, she is going to school to become a drug counselor and holding down a regular job selling food supplements. Cecille is a success. Her apartment over Frank’s shop is filled with textbooks, meditation mats, and bowls that sing when struck with a wooden mallet.

  Rozin sugars the rhubarb Noodin brought, frozen from last June. Following Frank’s recipe, she spreads it on the bottom of a baking pan with strawberries and then mixes the butter, oatmeal, brown sugar, and crushed walnuts for the topping. Spreads the sweet stuff evenly across. She slides the pan into the space below the turkey, which is almost ready, its small red-plastic timer button half extended. Cally and Deanna hold out spoons to baste the tender, crackling skin. The heat fans their faces and they suddenly think of their mother’s face brushing against Frank’s. They put down the spoons and flee.