Love Medicine Read online

  That was one thing I had not expected of myself. Deciding that I’d bring the girl along with me, I realized another reason. I would visit Leopolda not just to see her, but to let her see me. I would let her see I had not been living on wafers of God’s flesh but the fruit of a man. Long ago she had tried for my devotion.

  Now I’d)et her see where my devotion had gone and where it had got me.

  For by now I was solid class. Nector was tribal chairman.

  My children were well behaved, and they were educated too.

  I went to the wardrobe and pulled out the good wool dress I would wear up the hill, even on a day this hot. Royal plum, they called the color of it in the Grand Forks clothing shop. I had paid down twenty dollars for it and worn it the day they swore Nector to the chair with me beside him.

  It was a good dress, manufactured, of a classic material. It was the kind of solid dress no Lazarre ever wore.

  Zelda was sixteen, older than I was when I took on the nun and pulled the demon from her sleeve. Zelda was older in age but not in mind; that is, she did not know what she wanted yet, whereas my mind had made itself up once I walked down the hill. Fourteen years, that was all the older I was at that time, yet I was a woman enough to snare Nector Kashpaw. But Zelda still floundered, even with her advantages, and sometimes I found her staring in a quiet mood across the field.

  This morning, however, she had been working in the garden as supervisor of the younger ones. As always, she had kept clean.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, coming in the door.

  “You’re wearing your dress.”

  “I’m wearing it,” I said, “to visit the nuns. I want you to come along with me, so hurry up and change.”

  “All right!” She was glad to go up there anytime. She was friendly with a few of them, and could be found at Holy Mass-MIA any day of the week. Yet she had not decided to go any special route.

  It did not take her long. She wore a pressed white blouse and plaid skirt. With her money from the potato fields she had bought herself anklets. Her saddle shoes were polished clean white. I would never have believed this was the granddaughter of Ignatius Lazarre, that sack of brew. There was even a ribbon in her hair, which she put up every night in pinned coils to get the curl.

  So we went. It was a long enough walk, and the road was hot when we came out of the woods. I had my dress on, so I did not let myself sweat. The hill was covered with dust. Dust hung gray, in shifting bands, around the white convent walls. There had been no rain that fall, and the fields were blowing through, the town. But we walked.

  We passed the place on the road where Nector had tried to throw me. We had passed this place many times before without me thinking of Nector, but today I was remembering everything.

  “This is where I met your father,” I told Zelda. For all I knew, it was the place we made Gordon as well, but I never exactly said that.

  “Your father could not keep away from me, ” I suddenly bragged. I suppose I said that to put some other expression on my daughter’s face.

  She was getting that serious glazed-over stare, as if she had to look down the well of her soul. But now she started, and went red.

  “Don’t give me that cow look,” I said to her shocked face.

  “Maybe you’re a little backwards about men, but your time will come.

  She wouldn’t look at me after that.

  “How come we’re visiting?” she asked, after we walked a bit farther.

  “Take them some apples,” I said. In my hand I held a jar of fresh canned crabs. I had planted the tree myself twelve years iL A

  before, and for a long time It was the only apple tree on the reservation. Then the nuns had planted two on their hill. But those trees hardly bore yet. Mine was established.

  “And also,” I told Zelda, “to see the old nun who was my teacher.

  That’s Leopolda.”

  “I never knew she was your teacher,” said Zelda. “She’s pretty old.

  “Well she’s sick now, too,” I said. “That’s why we’re going to see her.”

  We came to the door. The lawn had shrunk back, to make room for a parking lot. Large square hedges went off to either side. The walls still blazed with cheap whitewash as before, but now most of the cracks were filled and the birds’ nests were knocked down. The old convent had got a few fresh nuns and come up in the world.

  I rang the bell. It made a deep and costly sound in the hall. I heard the knock of thick black shoes, the rustle of heavy cloth, and a slight wind caught me. I had imagined coming back here many times to this door, and always it was the carved bone of Leopolda’s face that met me, not Dympna, who opened the door and plumply smiled. She had only three teeth left, now, in her wide pale face. Two were on the top and one was on the bottom.

  That, and her eyes so red and blank, gave her the look of a great rabbit.

  I realized the strangeness of what was happening. Over twenty years had passed since I’d set foot in this place and been worshiped on the couch of the Superior as a saint. Twenty years since Leopolda had speared me with her bread poker. Twenty years while I also came up in the world.

  “We are here to see Sister Leopolda”” I said.

  “Come in! Come in!” The rabbit seemed pleased and eyed my jar.

  “Are these apples from your tree?”

  “Yes. ” I offered them.

  “This must be your mother,” Dympna decided. Zelda nodded.

  The nun did not recognize me. “Please come upstairs.”

  She took the apples from my hands and led us down the hall.

  We went up a flight of brown tile stairs that I remembered. We went down a shorter hall and stopped at the very end. All her grown life, Leopolda had lived in the same room.

  Dympna tapped. There was silence.

  “Maybe she’s asleep,” said Zelda.

  I am not asleep,” the voice said, very low, so we hardly heard it from our side.

  “Please go in,” said Dympria, “she’ll be expecting you now.”

  So Dympna left us, and we stood by the door as it fell, opening slowly into the dim camphor-ball air of Leopolda’s room. I stepped in first, Zelda following. I saw nothing but the bed sheets, so white they almost glowed. Leopolda was among them.

  As my eyes grew accustomed to the light I made her out, a small pile of sticks wrapped in a white gown.

  Not even the kindling to start a fire, I thought.

  “its dark in here,” I said.

  She did not answer.

  I came to visit you.”

  Still, silence.

  I brought my daughter. Zelda Kashpaw.

  I don’t know who you are,” she finally said.

  “Marie.

  I opened the curtains a crack. A beam of light came through. I A saw her clearly, wrapped in sheets and shawls, and I was so surprised at what I saw that I let the curtain fall back. She had shriveled on the stick bones. Her arms were thin as ropes. And her hair. The hair shocked me first, because I never thought of nuns as having any, and then for the strangeness of it. Her hair was pure white and sprang out straight and thin from her skull like the floss of dandelions. I was almost afraid to breathe, as if the hair would float off. The rest of her, too, was frail as a dead plant.

  killing: Sam” “Marie!” she said suddenly. Her voice went deep and hoarse.

  “Star of the Sea! You’ll shine when we burn off the salt!”

  “At least you have not forgot me.” I groped for a chair and sat.

  Zelda stood at the foot of the bed watching the two of us. At first I was relieved. I was expecting that the nun would rave at us or have taken complete absence of her senses. But it seemed that her mind was still clear. just her body was affected. I started feeling sorry for her, so dried up and shriveled. That was always my mistake. For I grasped her hand like a common consoling friend and felt, immediately, the grim forbidding strength of her, undiminished all these years.

  “Oh no, I never forgot you
,” she said, and squeezed my hand still tighter. “I knew you would come back.”

  I was not going to let her get a hold on me, especially as I knew she had her mind now. I pulled away.

  “I felt sorry for you,” I said.

  But this only made her laugh, a dry crackle like leaves crushed underfoot.

  “I feel sorry for you too, now that I see.”

  It was dim. She saw nothing, unless she had the vision of a night thing, which I doubted even with the miracle of her strength.

  “Why?” I asked. Solid in my good dress, I was proud and could ask.

  But the dress was what she picked up and threw in my face.

  “So poor that you had to cut an old Easter shroud up and sew it,” she said, pointing. Her finger was a stick of glass.

  “You’re blind,” I said. “It’s no shroud, it’s good wool.”

  “It’s purple.”

  How she noticed the color of it I don’t know. I guess she took me all in like I did her when the light came through the crack in the curtains.

  “I suppose you had brats with the Indian,” she went on, ignoring Zelda, “sickly and mean. It turns out that way with them.”

  “Look here,” I said, “this is my daughter.”

  Anyone could see Zelda wasn’t sick, or mean, and she was perfectly dressed. The nun did seem to take a certain interest.

  She turned to Zelda, who stood quietly at her feet in a soft shadow.

  She looked at Zelda standing there. Moments passed.

  Then Leopolda suddenly shifted and turned back to me.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Similar. Very much the same.”

  “Of course,” I said, settling myself, although I knew Zelda and me were not the same at all. “And I have four more at home, just about full-grown like Zelda here. ” “How do you feed them?” The nun looked down the long spear of her nose.

  I don’t have a problem with that,” I said. “My husband is chairman of this tribe.”

  I paused to let that sink inside her skull.

  “Sometimes they bring him to Washington,” I said.

  The nun just watched me. Her eyes were two steady lightless beams.

  “Once a senator came to our house,” I went on. “They went hunting in the woods, but they never got anything. Another time But she had already started making her dry noise, her laughter, and her mouth gaped black and wide.

  he ate supper with the governor,” I said.

  “So you’ve come up in the world,” she mocked, using my thoughts against me. “Or your husband has, it sounds like, not you, Marie Lazarre.”

  “Marie Kashpaw,” I said. “He is what he is because I made him.

  I felt my daughter’s gaze train on me, but what I said was true, and Zelda knew it. She had seen me drag him back from the bootlegger’s house. She had seen me sitting all night by the door with an ax handle so he would not wander off in search of liquor.

  She had seen me ration him down, mixing his brandy with water, until he came clean. So she knew the truth of what I said.

  M -mad

  “No doubt,” said the nun. “You had a certain talent.” Her breath was like a small wind stirring the dust, and I remembered her hands on my back, rubbing a buttery ointment into the scalding burns that she herself had put there. The scar in my hand began to itch.

  I’d had a talent, it was true.

  “I got out of here alive,” I said. “I had to have a talent to do that.

  I could feel Zelda stiffen in bewilderment at what I said.

  This time when the nun laughed it was deep and harsh, like dry twigs breaking in her chest, and it ended in a coughing fit that turned her face bright blue as any time I’d seen her in a rage.

  “You’re sick,” I said, pouring the pity in my voice, “sicker than a dog.

  I’m sorry for you.”

  “I’m sorry for you,” she said immediately, again, “now that I see you’re going to suffer in hell.”

  But I had my answer on the tip of my tongue.

  “Why should I go there?” I said. “I’ve been good to my neighbors.

  I fed my children from my own mouth. I kept Nector from hurting himself “Ah-” she began. I cut her off.

  “You’re the one. So proud of shredding your feet! Getting worshiped as a saint! While all the time you’re measly and stingy to the sick at your door. I heard!”

  J Again her face was darkening. Zelda reached forward in alarm.

  But I wasn’t finished.

  “I quit that when I walked down the hill. Dust, it was dust. I saw that clear. The meek will inherit the earth!”

  The nun drew a racking breath.

  “I don’t want the earth,” she said.

  Then she did something that showed me that, for all the conversation we had, she wasn’t right in the head after all. She pulled the bed sheet over her and dived beneath the covers. She surfaced quickly with the heavy black spoon in her fist. And then she began to beat on the spools of the iron bedstead, knocking Nil wool& flakes of white paint off, making an unholy racket. She beat and she beat. Zelda put her hands over her ears. I did also. We hollered at her to stop, but she beat the louder. No one came. I’d had enough. I reached over and grabbed the end of the spoon.

  Again, I’d forgotten she had the strength of the grave. She snatched it easily back to herself.

  “They all try that,” she said.

  “Oh yes?”

  And then I knew what I had come there for. It came to me with the touch of iron. I wanted that spoon.

  I wanted that spoon because it was a hell-claw welded smooth.

  It was the iron poker that she’d marked me with, flattened. It had power. It was like her soul boiled down and poured in a mold and hardened. That was the shape of it. If I had that spoon I’d have her to stir in my pot. I’d have her to whack the bar mock fry the fish, lift out the smoking meat. Every time I held the spoon handle I’d know that she was nothing but a ghost, a black wind. I’d have her helpless in the scar of my palm.

  I would get that spoon.

  I watched it. The spoon was large, black, seasoned, but I could still see myself turned upside down in its face, as if it was made of shining silver.

  “I came here to get your blessing,” I told her.

  Leopolda glared at me, the spoon tight in her claw. She looked suspiciously at Zelda, who smiled in her ignorance.

  “Bless my girl too,” I said. “She might have a vocation.”

  There was interest. I was certain. She was hooked by the thought.

  “God will decide that.”

  “Your blessing might help her.”

  She finally nodded.

  Here was my plan: I would let her give Zelda the blessing, and then I would kneel before her to receive my blessing too. But just as she prayed over my head, I would lunge forward, taking her off-balance. I would go straight for the spoon, snatch it from her, have it, take it back home up the sleeve of my royal-plum dress that was certainly no shroud.

  Zelda went down on her knees, and the nun’s hand went up. I thought Leopolda would be a good half hour at her blessing prayer, so much did she enjoy this chance. Her right hand made numerous signs of the cross or rested skeletal on the hair of my girl. Her left hand gripped the spoon forgetfully. But she did not put it down.

  I was about to make some move to get this over, when Leopolda came to the end of her speech and wound it up. She made a few parting waves overhead, and Zelda staggered to her feet. I kneeled down then, at the side of the bed, and rested my folded hands on the coverlet in good reaching distance.

  Kneeling there, I was surprised how it affected me.

  My heart was beating in my throat. It was like I had gone back years and years to the old Marie who was spoken to by the dark. It was like I had come full circle to that rough girl, again, for one last fight with Leopolda before she swirled off and was nothing.

  When I smiled into her face she smiled back. It was the huge bleached grin of a skull.
She lifted her hand.

  But it was not the right hand of her blessing she lifted. It was the other hand, the left hand, still gripping the iron spoon. The hand went up. Our eyesights locked. She lifted half out of bed, with her deathly strength, to give herself the leverage she needed to connect a heavy blow.

  I went up with her, drawn by her gaze, knowing her intention she spoke it. The arm smacked down, but I somehow had as I I grasped her wrist, and now we leaned into each other, balanced by hate.

  “Down!” she said.

  “No!”

  And then, with my other hand, I tried to take the spoon from her weakened grip. But she clung to the iron handle with both hands and kept grinning into my face. I grinned back at her, just to even things, and that was when I felt she got the better of me, for suddenly my face stretched and the air around me flattened.

  On her breath, in which I kneeled, was the smell of turned earth.

  Her gaze, in which I struggled, was a deep square hole. Her strength was the strict progress of darkness.

  “Hold on!” I yelled, frightened, for it seemed just as if I was falling fast into her eyes and would be covered up by flowers and clods of earth unless she pulled me back.

  And she did pull. She stood me up, and then I sat down on the bed with her. Once I was there I let go of the spoon. It dropped heavily on her starved breast and lay as spent of power as she.

  Her body was so shallow I could hardly tell if she breathed, the covering of her bones so frail I could see the heart pumping in her breast.

  I sat with her a long while, in silence.

  The earth was so mild and deep. By spring she would be placed there, alone, and there was no rescue. There was nothing I could do after hating her all these years.

  We were quiet walking back down the hill, through the woods.

  The path in the trees was shadowy and almost cold after the blaze of road. The sun flickered in the brush. Each leaf balanced in the air.

  Watching Zelda walk in front of me, SO Sure of herself and thin, with a cutting edge, with a mind that wasn’t made up, with pure white anklets and careful curls, I felt an amazement. I remembered the year I carried her. It was summer. I sat under the clothesline, breathing quiet so she would move, feeling the hand or foot knock ‘just beneath my heart.