Louise Erdrich

Rationale

You had twice lost your way and on top of that, vain girl, you wore your fancy shoes once you did not have to answer to your mother.

“Damn Eli for buying them!”Margaret yelled when she plucked off the pretty shoes.She was so mad she threw open the stove door and stuffed them into fire.But soon they began to melt and stink, so she snatched them from the flames with a meatfork and threw them smoking into the snow.

Margaret ordered me to sit on the bed, and I obeyed her.She laid you in my lap and piled clothes on until I feared you’d smother, but you still shivered so hard you rippled from one end to the other and could not be stilled.Margaret drew the covers away from your poor feet and put one on either side of my chest, tucked into the hollows beneath my arm.I hunched over in shock at their ice-hardness.Then I absorbed the cold into myself.

“Hold onto her,” said Margaret, layering herself in shawls, “No matter how hard she fights.”

She put water within my reach, two cups, a bit of bread, and spoon of grease.Then she headed for Matchimanito, left me to thaw my foolish, suffering granddaughter.

I’m sure you’ve forgotten what happened next, for if you remembered, you would not wear such shoes as you have on at this moment – those heels, like tiny knives, and your toes sticking through!You’d wear footwrappings made of rabbit fur for protection, and no fine stockings either.But I suppose you don’t recall how it was when the blood rushed back into those feet.It is thanks to me that they still grow on the ends of two legs that cut a fast jig at French fiddle dances.You howled like a wild cat.You cursed me in surprising words.You flung off your blankets, thrashed and fought my hands as though you were drowning. But I know certain cure songs, words that throw the sick one into a dream and cause a low dusk to fall across the mind.

Many times in my life, as my children were born, I wondered what it was like to be a woman, able to invent a human from the extra materials of her own body.In the terrible times, the evils I do not speak of, when the earth swallowed back all it had given me to love, I gave birth in loss.I was like a woman in my suffering, but my children were all delivered into death.It was contrary, backward, but now I had a chance to put things back into a proper order.

Eventually, my songs overcame the painful burning and you were suspended, eyes open, looking into mine.Once I had you I did not dare break the string between us and kept on moving my lips, holding you motionless with talking, just as at this moment.For the first time in my life, it was my duty as well as my pleasure to hold forth all night and long into the next morning.

My tongue grew thick in my mouth when I’d sipped all the water.My throat clutched and my eyes itched for sleep.I did not stop.I talked on and on until you lost yourself inside the flow of it, until you entered the swell and ebb and did not sink but were sustained.I talked beyond sense-by morning the sounds I made were stupid mumbles without meaning or connection.But you were lulled by the roll of my voice.

Later that day, Father Damien heard of our troubles and brought some butter which I spread on your frostbitten cheeks.He also brought along another something I did not want, the off-reservation doctor whom I could not trust.He was a busy man, especially since the returning hero Pukwan brought influenza, from the east, within the folds of his uniform.