BINGO NIGHT by Linda LeGarde Grover
“Good girl. She’s a good old girl, Bineshii; gets us where we want to go.” Earl’s car, a green Falcon, was coated with red taconite dust from the road to Mesabi, where he had driven Alice earlier in the day to buy new winter boots, a Harlequin romance, a Soldier of Fortune magazine, and a pink toilet seat like her friend Beryl’s, at Pamida. He patted the dash. “Miigwa-yaak, ina? Isn’t that so?” This to Alice, who didn’t reply. “Oh, gi-nibaa, little girl. Well, you have a good nap. Bineshii will keep me company; she’s good company. Bineshii will just fly us home, won’t you, pretty bird?”
He had bought the car used, nearly ten years earlier, from a young guy in Mesabi who worked on it himself, and kept it clean and purring. The shocks were new on that first drive back to the reservation from Mesabi, the engine running so quietly and so smoothly that it felt to Earl as though the car barely skimmed the road, all but flying right over the red dust without hardly touching ground, it seemed to Earl. When he had pressed his foot a little harder on the gas pedal, the sound from the Falcon was that of a rush of wings.
A decade and fifty thousand miles later, after trips every week or so back and forth from Mozhay Point Reservation to Mesabi and back, and through the wilds of reservation back roads to bingo night at the tribal school, age had altered the Falcon’s appearance. Red road dust and rust spots had mottled the green paint to Army camouflage. The front and rear bumpers had bent and rippled. Because of the vertical crease right below the rearview mirror (from the time Earl took the door off, backing up with it open because the rear window was covered with ice), the driver’s side door closed with a half-inch gap. Yet, Earl thought to himself, Bineshii ran as prettily as she ever had. “You’ve been a good friend, old aa-da-baan,” he mumbled.
As the sun set, the popple leaves along the side of the road let go of their captured yellow green light, leaving car’s interior to twilight, that time of day when seeing became difficult. Earl’s face, drawing a gray-lavender out of the dusk, peered forward, nose above the wheel, then left, then right.
Getting harder to see, he thought to himself. “Ye-e-s, sir; she’s been a good old car, old Bineshii, the old girl,” he said aloud. Maybe Alice would wake up, help him out.
“Hmmmm,” she sighed in her sleep.
The road darkened to maroon and curved more than seemed familiar; the popple trees, their leaves darkened to deep green, were taller and denser than he remembered.
Where the heck were they, he wondered. Earl had been certain enough of the direction home when he’d turned out of the parking lot at Chi Waabik bingo hall that he hadn’t felt the need to look for any landmarks. How many times had he driven that way, how many times had he left Reservation Road for the dirt road cutoff, knowing by feel and habit the direction towards the Mozhay Point Elder Housing at Lost Lake. The blacktop had ended approximately where it felt it should for the cutoff, and the left arm of the Y turn had felt right. How many times had he driven that way, first from going to watch the school building going up, to the day they hauled the pull-tab boxes on the back of Buck’s truck, over the Res Road. Remember that day, he beat Buck to school, leaving Lost Lake at the same time but gaining three or four minutes by way of the cutoff. He could drive that way from the parking lot of his apartment building to school with his eyes closed, he bet.
Now, though, he couldn’t recognize anything they drove past. In the darkening, green damp shapes familiar by daylight began to seem foreign, ominous, vaguely a repetition of something uneasy from the past, or was it of sometime to come. Or was it something from the here and now. Who knew what lived in the woods, that came out after dark? Who would remember what came before, from what consciousness embedded in not only the stories but the very lives and levels of consciousness, of the generations that heard and cared for the stories, holding them for the next generation of listeners and when the time was right, when it was meant to be? Amanj . . . amanj i dash. He began to remember parts of ghost stories his grandfather and those old friends of his, long dead, no doubt about it, told when he was, what, not even ten years old and supposed to be asleep. They were real stories, he could remember that was for sure, each one that happened to a person that somebody knew, or had happened to a person long ago, an event so extraordinary that the details were noted and carried by men and women whose job it was to pass the experience and the lesson on at the right time and in the right way. Remember those sisters, with elbows sharper than mokomanan, who stood as sentries where men younger and faster than Earl bravely tried to pass and were cut to shreds. And what else? Windigog, monsters not alive or dead, half again the size of a man, who craved flesh and blood. Balls of flame spinning across the sky above a person’s head. He blinked away a horse galloping towards the car, red eyes, open mouth full of teeth and ears streaming smoke, and wondered if he should ask Alice if she knew where they were.
“Any gaw-pii left?” Alice, wake up. Wake me up, Alice; was I dreaming? “Alice, gi wi makademashkiki waboo, ina?”
“I’ll get you a cup, Earl.”
Lordy, her knees hurt, and her middle was too thick to be turning and bending over the seat like that without grunting a little (and her heart ached a little more but only for a second, remembering it felt just that way when young Alice carried the baby, strong and kicking her in the ribs, so she couldn’t turn and bend over without grunting a little; how could a person remember how it felt just that way all those years ago?) but she managed to reach down into the cardboard box on the floor behind her to find the canning jar of coffee wrapped in a dish towel, and to lift it over the seatback still a little warm and pour some into the tin cup. She pulled a couple of little paper envelopes of sugar from the coffee cart at Chi Waabik out of her dress pocket and sprinkled a little into the coffee, sloshing the cup in little circles to mix some sweetness into Earl’s drink, keep him awake and in a nice mood. Lordy, it’s getting dark earlier these days, she thought. You can hardly see. Almost fall. For years, she had dreaded the long dark nights of winter.
Earl put the car into first and kept it there to free his right hand for his coffee, which spilled over onto his pants when he went over a rut but those old wool pants he wore were so thick it didn’t even soak through to his skin, and the coffee wasn’t hot anymore so it wouldn’t hurt anyway. When he was done with it she’d remind him to put on the headlamps, since it was getting dark so fast. Lordy, he wasn’t paying much attention to the road, more to his coffee and to whatever was going round in his head. Wondering what it could be he was thinking about could just about drive a person crazy, she knew; she’d tried it from time to time over the years. With Earl it could be the color of the night sky that reminded him of that dark blue dress they buried his mother in, then the distraction of the very light scent of skunk in the air that was nice in a way, then the thought of that little rabbit just sitting at the side of the road earlier in the day, like it was in the city waiting to cross the street; lots of rabbits this year, last year it was skunks; hasn’t smelled one in awhile, just a little in the air was nice in a way. Or he might be remembering how an aspirin bottle looked sitting on the window sill with the light shining through it so blue just the color of the night sky tonight that reminded him of that dark blue dress they buried his mother in, and so his mind walked and wandered. Earl. And him just sipping and swallowing that coffee like he’s sitting in a chair in the front room, maybe going to set it down and sleep a little. Instead of driving a car. Lordy, when would that coffee kick in?
“Earl, we keep going west there, we’ll hit the Tweeten road, eh?”
He tipped the cup up and his head back to catch the last drop with a little slurp and handed the cup back. “S’ good. Mino pugwud.” He felt better, with Alice awake.
“Earl, we need to go towards west there, we want to hit the Tweeten road.”
Earl hummed, hitting about every third note out loud like he always did, so you couldn’t know what song he had in mind til he got to a part he liked. “Hm . . . hm, hm, hm . . . hm . . . hm, hm . . . hon-ih, let me be your sowl-ty dowg.”
“Earl!”
“What’s that, little girl, Kwesens?” He looked over at her and laughed. Alice, she was always the one watching what was going on, and looking out for what might be going to happen; her, so he never really had to; she’d be calling his attention to so many things he didn’t even need to know but that was Alice, always looking and pointing things out. Pretty little thing, she was looking some like her mother used to these days, but his eyesight was going a little, both what his eyes saw and what his mind saw, and at times he saw one Alice, or another Alice and sometimes he wondered whether he was really seeing her, or her mother, or Alice when she was twenty, or fifty. Tonight at Early Bird he’d looked around for her, losing track of his two cards when he couldn’t see her anywhere. He’d asked Sissy and Girlie, where’s Alice, where’d she go, and Girlie said, she’s right there, Uncle, she’s sitting right there next to you, and he looked and there was this little old lady with her nose all but stuck to her bingo cards, and he turned back and said to Girlie, that ain’t her. Sure it is Uncle Earl, that’s Auntie Alice right there Girlie said, and he said again no it ain’t, which made her and Sissy laugh a little and he got all embarrassed. When he looked again sure enough it was Alice all busy with her four lucky cards so she didn’t notice anything.
“Earl, where’s that Tweeten road? Do you know where we are?”
“Little girl, I always know where we are. Don’t you worry.”
“It’s getting dark out. Get your headlamps on so you can see out.”
The old couple faced forward, the woman in the blue flowered housedress intent, staring, concentrating on memorizing each big tree and dip, watching for a marked crossroad, the man in the wool hunting pants and plaid flannel shirt mildly watching the scenery, waiting to have his attention called to a road sign, or an intersection. He turned to his wife from time to time, taking in her dress as part of the scenery, fading with the day as the lupines did from pastel to silver-gray, then to the same dusky color as the upholstery. Her face and her hair, turned to the moon, lightened and whitened, face to silver-gray, hair to a brilliant sterling, stray front hairs loosened from the pinned‑up braid waving around her face glowing like a row of electric filaments. Pretty little thing, Alice.
Earl always got sleepy when he drove, so she had to force herself to try to stay wide awake, especially when he drove in the dark, and think of things to say. Oh, now wouldn’t it be good sometime, to be one of those old ladies who slept while her husband drove, she thought. Instead, she had to think of one thing after another that would keep his mind perked up but not so much that he drove right off the road. Let’s see; next week was her cousin’s birthday and they were going to drive down to the county home at Duluth; what else, oh yes, Earl liked chocolate cake.
“Next week, let’s bring a cake for Lisette’s birthday . . . that’ll be Tuesday, won’t it? . . . You think she could eat a chocolate cake?”
“Sure.” Earl peered over the dash, squinting. “You see that old shack there, see that? That look like that old Dommage place to you?”
“Dunno, Earl; amanj. It’s all fallen down; don’t look like it. We can’t be anywheres near there, I don’t think.”
“Well, if that was the place, I think we’re pretty close to the lumber road . . . ya, I think I know it now. Ya, we should be there pretty soon.” He bent slightly forward from the shoulders and nodded his head up and down a few times to find which he could see better through, the tops of his lenses or the tiny bifocal chips below, small as a child’s fingernail, and continued the Falcon’s slow and unvarying speed through the darkening dusty road, around curves and over potholes and on the straightaway at twenty mph, leaning the top layer of his consciousness on Alice’s voice talking about her cousin’s birthday coming up.
“Well, she could eat just a little. I got a lot of eggs, and flour, and that whole tin of cocoa. I could use the Bundt pan, and then I could just put some powder sugar on top, and she wouldn’t have to eat frosting.” Lisette. All her work and everybody letting her do all the work and be the matriarch of the family and whole damn bunch, at Lost Lake and at Duluth too, everybody always counting on Mary, and now look, spending the end of her life in the nursing home having to let other people cut her toenails and feed her and put in her teeth for company and even tying her up so she could sit for awhile in a chair. And her still with her mind all there, stuck inside that bed . . . that Lisette. She’d outlived a husband and a gentleman friend and most of her children.
Where the hell were they? “I don’t think she can eat a lot of chocolate, or a lot of sugar, messes up her insides,” Alice was saying . . . “Maybe something else, then,” Earl knew to answer, to keep Alice from worrying that he wasn’t paying attention to the road. The thing was, he was paying attention; he’s always paying attention, and seeing all kinds of things that Alice just plain missed. Like now, for instance, just look over there, just a little to the right, and even though it’s dark a person really paying attention, a person who knew what she was looking for, which Alice wasn’t, could see the far end of the Harrod school property, the barbed wire fence that the older boys helped the handyman put up to keep the cows from getting too far away from the dairy barn. And further up the hill from that is the truck farm, and to the right of that is the classroom building, then boys’ dormitory. Or is the dormitory to the left? If he finds where the road forks off to the right, will they pass right in front of the boarding school, he wonders. Or are they already on the road now? It seems to be narrowing. Alice will sure be surprised when they get to the boarding school. She goes to the mission school up north, St. Veronica’s, and has never seen Harrod.
“The road is getting narrower, Earl; I don’t think we’re going to hit the Tweeten.”
Just a little further, just to see if they go past the school. What will the boys think, him driving a car, right up to the front of the school, with a pretty girl. Maybe Louis might want to go with them over to the Chi Waabik, play a couple of bingo games or buy some pull tabs; they’d get him back in time before the prefect even did bed check. “Ya, just a mile or so, then we’ll look for a place to turn around.” He slowed, in order to be able to see it if they should go by; be a shame to go right past.
The dark was making her feel a little jumpy. They’d left the bingo hall before the Saturday Night Fever games just so Earl wouldn’t have to drive in the dark, and now here they were someplace that didn’t look like the cutoff at all, God knew where on this road that was getting skinnier and skinnier so that there was only room for one car, not that they had seen another, and she wished they would. One thing, Earl didn’t look like he was going to fall asleep at the wheel; he was in fact looking through the windows like he might be recognizing where they were. Lordy, it was getting so dark, and the trees and scrub were so close to the car. She had always craved open space, and light; in winter the snow brightened up the roads at night and the trees seemed to recede from the road, but then it was so cold and the nights were so long. And Earl was going slower, but the shadows seemed to be moving as fast as they had been when the car was going faster, in their own shapes and directions, shades of gray indistinct and ominous, brown-gray blending to green-gray blending to black-gray.
And then through the gray she saw color, blue and ticking stripes, blinked and saw it again.
“Earl?”
“Hmmm?”
“Earl, did you see . . . ?” He couldn’t have seen it; she couldn’t have seen it herself. After all, it had been years. Years and years.
“What did you see, there? Something in the road?”
“Oh, I guess it wasn’t anything.” It had been a child, a little girl in a blue striped ticking dress, parting the bushes with her small hands to step through to the road, eyebrows raised and mouth open in her surprise to see Alice, old Alice, and her hair bound at the back of her neck in a long tail flew in an black arc as she turned to run back into the woods. The little wood spirit’s thin back couldn’t have been wider than the palm of Alice’s hand, but it would have taken two of Alice’s small little-girl palms to span it the last time they had met. Alice had not seen the little people, little memegwesi-wag, in that many years. She had always thought that they could only be seen by children.
“Earl, I think we oughta turn around, go back the way we came; maybe we went out the wrong end of the parking lot from Chi Waabik in the first place.”
What the heck was he thinking? The boarding school road wasn’t anywhere near here; how could it be? It was probably a hundred miles to Harrod from Lost Lake; remember, you used to have to take the train there. Look, now; Alice looks like she’s getting scared, and you’re good and lost. She’s got the right idea; turn around and go back, start over.
“Ya, let’s do that. I’m gonna turn around right here.” He slowed Bineshii in her night flight and turned the wheel to the left, til he felt the front wheels leave the dirt and sink into grass, muttering as brambles scratched across the windshield, then put the Falcon in reverse and cut it sharp to the right as he backed up across the dirt, sinking the rear wheels into a soft mud puddle. Shifting into first, he cut sharp to the left and slowly accelerated, stepping a little heavier on the gas as the rear wheels began to spin and whine.
Ai. Stuck.
He rocked the car from first to reverse, first to reverse (“c’mon, girl; come on, old car, you; c’mon”), cutting the steering wheel a little to the left, to the right, each time, as the Falcon’s tires spun deeper into the mud on each try. Her wings mud-spattered and dragging, Bineshii bowed her head.
“Jeez, Earl, what are we going to do now?”
On Friday afternoons the Mozhay Point Reservation School let out early in order to give the gaming workers time to turn the gymnasium/lunchroom into the Chi Waabik bingo hall. The bingo hall was the school’s source of income, and a source of employment and pride for the reservation community. Those lucky enough to have been hired for one of the part-time jobs showed up early on Fridays, and waited lined up outside the classrooms for the students to get on their buses. Then everybody got busy. Henry and his son Al hooked up the banner grommets to pegs on the wall so that under the painted picture of the school emblem, a soaring eagle with the “Mozhay Point Reservation School” above and “Young Eagles – Eagle Pride” hung the banner, “Chi Waabik $ $ $ $ $ Win Big Bucks!” The kitchen ladies started coffee and set donuts on plates, the callers set up the table with the cranked cage full of number balls below one of the basketball hoops, the pull-tab attendants brought the plastic cubes out of the closet, and the hall attendants lined up the tables and chairs. The janitors shined up the bathrooms and dust-mopped the floors. The teachers made sure that work from every student was taped to the walls outside the classrooms, from elementary classrooms that opened off the lunchroom/gym/bingo hall, to the high school classrooms in the basement. Break times at Chi Waabik were important to the entire reservation community, an opportunity for socializing and viewing students’ work, for parents and grandmas to walk past finger paintings and spelling tests and essays, taking pride in the work produced by the children of their own reservation school, run by their own reservation school board.
Beryl was keeping an eye on twenty bingo cards, nine on the table in front of her and eleven in her lap, with each number called passing her left hand quickly across the nine then quickly, fingers wiggling, flipping each card forward in her lap, right hand flicking the little plastic windows closed on the numbers that matched the caller’s. Her coffee cup was kept filled, complimentary for elders, and between each round she freed her right hand to take a small bite from the donut resting on the saucer. She was wearing her bingo outfit, a pair of black stretch pants and a sequined Mickey Mouse sweatshirt she got from her niece for Christmas. Just that afternoon Margie had touched up the roots of her very black hair, blacker than it had ever been when she was younger, used the curling iron to give it a little body, and teased it up into that French roll that Beryl had worn for the past thirty years, that set off her dangling beaded earrings brick-stitched into monarch butterflies. Her heavy black purse was on the floor in front of her chair, her right foot threaded through the handle and crossed at the ankle over her left. This was turning out to be Beryl’s night: Saturday Night Fever Bingo attracted a lot of younger people who spent so much of their time socializing that they must have been missing their bingos; how else could she have won four times so far? Beryl was almost forty bucks ahead and on the next chair Sis was getting cranky.
It’s one thing to be happy for your friend when she wins, but after four times and her acting like she’s doing something to deserve it, like she’s really good at it, and after all she did really was pick her lucky cards out of the pile, it gets on your nerves, thought Sissy. Sis had had four cups of coffee and finished her (big deal) complimentary elder donut, and that young girl with the coffee-donut cart acted like she couldn’t see Sis eyeing that bowl of donuts. There were plenty sitting there but was she going to bring one to Sis? No, she couldn’t be bothered and here Sis always left her a quarter at the end of the night whether she won or not. Well, there she was all decked out in her tight blue jeans and fancy cowboy boots with the silver caps on the toes, eyeing Beryl’s nephew, Little Bud, like Sis was eyeing those donuts and he was giving her the eye too every once in awhile so she wasn’t paying any attention to her job, which was to pay attention to people like Beryl and Sissy. Was she one of those Dommages? Lucky to have a job, if she was, and wouldn’t have it long, the way she was going. Bunch of bums.
Pretty girl over there, thought Beryl; looks like one of the Dommages, must be one of the granddaughters. She should pay more attention to her job, if she wanted to keep it; she’d never get anywhere with Little Bud, anyway; wherever he went he usually had some white girl following him around, one of those washed-out blondes from Mesabi whose fathers had those good jobs in the mines and who kitty-catted around with the Lost Lake boys, getting pregnant, getting married, having those little mixed-blood kids. Little Bud had two of them, himself, who lived with their mother, that skinny Kimberly with the gold tooth, her still in Lost Lake and still in tribal housing, even after she threw Bud out; you had to hand it to her, she seemed to get along fine with everybody else. And there were plenty of others just like her standing in line, it seemed like, to follow Bud around. Well, that’s just as well for that Dommage girl; she was too young for Little Bud and no skinny blonde with a father working in the mines, either, but still she was a pretty thing, and looking like she’d follow him home except for he was staying at Beryl’s. She wouldn’t keep her job if she couldn’t get her attention peeled off him.
“Excuse me, young woman,” Beryl spoke in her pleasant and ladylike voice, pitched so quietly that it cut through the smoke and hissed pleas for B4, c’mon, B4, B4. “Do you think my friend here could have another donut?” She daintily pointed her lips towards Sis.
Combined with Beryl’s position as the aunt of the irresistible Little Bud, the spell of that silvery voice attracted the Dommage girl like a dog whistle. She listened to the sound, cocked her head, and trotted on her cowboy boots (that caught a little under the back hems of her blue jeans) over to Sissy, her black hair long past her shoulder blades and flashing shiny red highlights, her teeth white as she smiled “you bet” and handed Sis and Beryl each a donut. “You want more coffee, want sugar and milk in it, want me to stir it up for you?” She glanced, smiling, over towards Little Bud as she took special care of his aunt and her ladyfriend. See? See how nice I am to these old ladies? See how much your auntie likes me?
“Earl and Alice went home, eh?” asked Sis. “Somebody else could of drove them, so they could of stayed for Saturday Night Fever.”
“Uncle Earl likes to get up so early, you know how it is,” answered Beryl. “I think he gets more tired out these days; besides, you know how him and Aunt Alice are: they always want to do things for themselves, don’t like to ask for anything.” Beryl was an expert with her cards, flipping, turning, using that left hand as her guide, never missing a number.
“We should go pick her up one of these days and take her to Mesabi for lunch. Alice hardly ever gets out by herself anymore. He’s just got to go everyplace she does; she never gets to go anyplace without him.” Sis fumbles, wondering if she missed a G there and let’s see now, are we on the picture frame set, or the letter X?
“Well, you know it’s always been like that with the both of them. I guess they just got that close with each other, you know, with not having any children . . . bingo!”
Ai! Five bingos that woman had, and all Sis had was the coffee shakes.
At break time Sis and Beryl walked arm in arm (Sis had a bad knee and needed help moving around til she walked out the kinks) over past the pull-tab counter to look over the display of pictures and papers from the students of the Mozhay Point Reservation school. Sissy didn’t say a word, of course; how could she without looking like she was bragging? Her grandchildren’s pictures were so much better than the other students’ that it was almost an embarrassment. Look at the colors, and look how little Fawn, just in kindergarten, drew that picture of herself with those four little dogs all on leashes, and those tulips, and the clouds up above, and the sun, too, all with smiling faces. And look how neat she printed her name! Sis maneuvered Beryl over towards the wall by the kindergarten room so that she would be sure to see it. Next to it was a picture with Girlie’s grandson Howie’s name in the lower corner, scratched so hard that the pencil had made holes in the paper. What crooked letters; and what in the sam hill was the picture supposed to be of? A potato? “Here’s a nice one,” she commented to Beryl, “that little kid sure must have worked hard on it.”
“It’s Little Howie’s,” Beryl cooed. “He is such a sweetheart.”
“. . . Oh, my!” Sis started at the beauty of the picture of the four little dogs all on leashes, and the tulips, and the clouds up above, and the sun, too, all with smiling faces. “Will you look at this one!” She peered at the neatly written name. “Why, it’s Fawn’s!”
“The little sweetie,” Beryl cooed in exactly the same voice, “bless her heart.”
Little Bud didn’t go back to his table after the break and the Dommage girl was nowhere to be seen after she went outside to empty ashtrays. All the ladies at the table noticed but out of consideration to Beryl nobody said a word. Instead, they so obviously ignored Bud’s empty chair that it became the blind spot that the entire table un-focused upon. Sis, loyal and feeling generous toward her friend because of the magnificence of her own grandchildren’s school papers, turned the attention to a joke on herself.
“I never look for patterns or lucky numbers when I pick out my bingo cards. My system is, I pick the top six cards off the pile, and those are the ones I play.”
“Do you change them, then, when they don’t pay?”
“Gaawiin, I stick with the ones I pick out when I get here, and those are the ones I play all night; that’s my system.”
“Oh. So, do you win much?”
“I never win!”
The table laughed.
“. . . bingo!” called Beryl.
When he tapped twice on the trunk it was the signal for her to step on the gas, step . . . step . . . while Earl, shoulder to the rear fender, pushed to rock the Falcon out of the mud. Alice watched Earl reversed in the driver’s side mirror, feeling the terror she imagined a mother must feel for a child in danger. His stocking hat had fallen off and lay in the mud, and in the moonlight the top of his skull shone through his fine hair (remember how soft his hair had always been, like a baby’s, silky against her tender fingers when she stroked it), thinned and such a light gray it was almost transparent. His shirt was so caked with mud she couldn’t see the plaid; he had torn some of the buttons off when he caught it on the rear fender, so that it hung off his shoulder and swung as he pushed. His mouth hung open as he gasped and gulped in air, and she thought, he can’t do this, can’t keep on; he looks so old, and so frail.
He tapped once, the signal to stop, and Alice took her foot off the gas pedal. She got out of the car and stepped to the rear of the car, where he leaned against the trunk. “We’re gonna try it one more time,” he said, then just like that Earl was sitting in the mud, his legs bent in front of him, head hitting the trunk before he lay humiliated in the mud, an old man exhausted and weak and unable to take care of his wife. “Just a minute, just a minute,” he said when she took his arm to help him up, “let me get my breath a minute.”
He looked so small, and so helpless. Like a baby, she thought, a small and helpless baby. She stroked him as she would to soothe a baby, her special calming way of passing one hand, then another, down from throat to ribs, and felt his heart pound quickly and unevenly, an uneven gallop almost heard. She blinked away a horse galloping towards the car, red eyes, open mouth full of teeth and ears streaming smoke. “Alice,” he whispered in near sleep, “do you know where we are?”
Alice knelt in the mud and looked down at her husband, then up at the sky full of open space and stars.
She never saw the baby, never knew if it was a boy or a girl, if it lived or died. She remembered a hand and arm holding her head immobile, a folded white cloth brushing her nose and lips, pressing tightly when she resisted, easing once she stepped willingly into the darkness of that sweet and thick smell. The last thing she heard, those thousands of times she remembered back to what she thought of as her nine months as a mother, “Gawwin, gego gitaaji ken,” came from the boarding school matron, who sat on the side of the infirmary bed, next to where Alice lay, facing the foot of the bed, turned from that ancient young suffering face. The matron had been holding Alice’s belly in the circle of her strong arms, pressing her own rib cage down against the top of Alice’s belly to help her push that baby out, while her scrubbed hands held Alice’s ankles apart and drawn up to her buttocks. Does she dream, the matron wondered, and hoped not.
Her baby, born while she lay unmoving and unaware, silent for the birth (how could the doctor and the matron not hear the screaming and weeping inside her soul, the tearing of hair and clutching of robbed belly, the keening that would follow in her wake every day for the rest of her life), disappeared and was never seen, although she would look for it in the face of every baby, then child, then young person, adult, and finally grandparent, every person she saw from that day who looked to be about sixteen years younger than Alice.
Does she dream, the matron wondered, and hoped not.
The white cloth. The darkness of that sweet and thick smell, then sunlight, warm and bright. In her dream the air was so still that the leaves on the trees didn’t move, and the flat-surfaced lake was unmoving, a gray unreflecting as fog. She walked to the edge of the water and stepped into the rowboat, small and neat, with oars that fit her hands. She rowed on top of the water towards the setting sun with no effort until she reached the middle of the lake. What was below the water, she wondered, and bent over the side of the boat carefully and closer, closer until her fingers touched the surface, and saw her mistake. The opaqueness of the water was not a solidity, but a thin membrane that broke at her light touch. And a hole opened in the lake next to the boat as the mishibizhii, the great water panther reared up, higher than ten men, blocking her from the heat and light of the sun. She stood up, in fear that she felt all the way from the boat rocking under her feet, and from the roots of her hair to the ends, as it turned white. Covering her eyes from the awful sight she waited for how long, a moment, an eternity, to die. After that split second, or endless years, she saw through her closed eyelids the sun’s red light outline her fingers, and felt again the warmth of sunlight on her face. She lowered her hands and opened her eyes to see that the monster had disappeared under the water. The ends of her hair, loosened from the binding back of her neck, waved in front of her face glowing white as electric filaments.
“Alice.” The matron’s strong and scrubbed fingers rubbed her cheeks, chafed her ears. “Alice.” She opened her eyes to the sight of the matron’s heavy, ageless face.
She had lain still, unmoving through the birth of her child and woke from the terrors of that deathless sleep sick and cold, vomiting and sweating, to a life unrealized by anyone else, walking it on sharp rocks of punishment, atonement, loathing. The memory and its burden would be hers alone, swallowed into her consciousness like that thick and heavy opaque lake water. She would be unable to speak of it, though she explored and probed and avoided and touched with her thoughts, as she would a bad tooth with her tongue.
Punishment. Alice’s secret life became a mirror, reflecting in reverse the unspeakable being she had become since choosing that sweet and heavy blackness over her own baby. She became to those who knew her a woman of patience and compassion, with a reputation for acts of kindness. She cooked and cleaned for the sick. Watched little children while their tired mothers walked to Lost Lake on commodity day, or found rides to Mesabi on relief day. Cut out and hemmed a half dozen diapers for the eighth child of Old Man Dommage and his fourth common-law wife, the ill-tempered, frowsy daughter of his own first cousin, and left them neatly wrapped in clean brown paper on the back stairs of their miserable shack, braving their ill-tempered and frowsy dogs early in the morning, before anybody was up, to spare them embarrassment and any need to thank her. She was kind in her gossip, gentle in her humor, accepting of people’s ways. She held her mouth gently yet firmly, her lips closed over the memories of dreamlike reality, realities like dreams.
Does she dream, the matron wondered, and hoped not.
She had abandoned her only child and never conceived another. Her hair whitened early, black with silver at first, then silver with black, then silver, and finally a white that captured the light that surrounded her, by sun or moon. As a young woman she walked quickly, as an old woman slowly, over those rocks of punishment, atonement, loathing, punishment that never lost their sharpness. The other pain, the ache in her chest, arms, hands and fingers, that ache of loss, deep and dull, manifested itself in her stance, elbows facing the rear, palms front, ready to receive and hold that baby, that baby she looked for in the face of every person she saw from that day who looked to be about sixteen years younger than Alice.
There was no explanation for Earl beyond what she had had to memorize from the catechism at St. Veronique’s: God was the Supreme Being who made all things, including the mistake of letting Alice have Earl. Since the day she saw him she had known that one day the Supreme Being would realize this and correct the error.
He spoke softly, as always, in his faraway and wondering voice. “Alice.” Earl, looking so small and helpless. “Alice. I think I’m going to die.”
Earl, don’t leave me. Don’t leave me here. “You’re getting cold; I’ll get you a blanket.” She took her coat from the back seat and the blanket off the front seat, tucked the blanket under and around Earl, her coat over his chest and arms. She found his hat, brushed off some of the mud and pulled it down to cover his ears.
His heart slowed in its gallop, and Earl looked up at his wife. It was Alice all right, though bent over him like that she reminded him of his grandma. What was missing? Oh, yes, her pipe; she kept that little clay pipe between her teeth when it wasn’t in that little pocket bag hanging off her waist. Remember how she would smile when she got a smoke, and how she used to suck on it unlit during Mass, when they were supposed to be praying before Communion, bent over with her hands folded together under her nose so the priest wouldn’t see her sucking on that unlit pipe. Except for that one thing she raised him the way the priest and the sisters told her to, didn’t let him around any of those old Devil Indians, sent him to boarding school, made sure he went to Mass every day in the summer, and Confession on Saturday. And took care of his sinning, too; caught him lying once and yanked him by the arm over to the woodstove where she held his hand over the burner so he’d get a taste of the hot blue fires of hell and remember for next time so he wouldn’t end up burning for eternity.
Because his lips didn’t move and no sound came from his throat, Alice couldn’t hear him ask, “Who will look for us?” which was probably a good thing because that would make her think how no matter how much she had wanted babies that hadn’t been meant to be. Who would look for them? No children, or grandchildren, or great grandchildren, would be waiting for them at home wondering what was keeping them, why they weren’t home from Early Bird yet. Nobody would be saying, maybe they’re having trouble with the Falcon, let’s drive out to Chi Waabik to see. You take the rez road and I’ll take the cutoff.
His wife looked frightened. “Kwesens,” Earl whispered, “little girl. Gaawiin, gego gotaaji ken. Don’t be scared, now.” He tried to smile encouragement and courage.
In back of Alice, the bushes next to the car parted and the little girl memegawens, the one in the blue striped ticking work dress like the ones Alice had worn at boarding school, slipped through, followed by several other small children, some wearing boarding school uniforms, some in deerhide, one in bib overalls, moccasins and a man’s cast-off hat. They murmured to each other, the sound of leaves falling onto the dry grass of an early autumn, and hung back, timid of the large and aging Alice kneeling clumsily in the mud and begging the stars.
Her feet above the wet grass, little Alice tiptoed to the kneeling Alice grown old, and knelt beside her. “Niijii kwesens, gawwiin, gego gotaaji ken,” she began the song, and waved ambe, ambe, to the other children. As the children joined her, they began to dance, their feet above the ground, while from behind the brush more of the little people emerged from the woods. A young man in an Army uniform with hair the color of chokecherries parted the brush with his hands and walked softly on beaded moccasins toward the car, his head on a level with the tail lights. He was followed by a woman in a long dark skirt with her hair bound in a white turban, who stood behind the children. More memegawensiwug, parents and grandparents, and people much older than that, stood at the side of the road, watching the dance and listening as the children sang to comfort their playmate Alice.
Joining the song in her reedy old woman’s voice, old Alice sank to her heels, then rolled onto her side to lie with her head on her arm, next to Earl, her other hand on his chest, her eyes slowly closing as her song ended.
Earl lay unmoving, his eyes reflecting the night sky of open spaces and stars.
* * *
Down the cutoff road two white lights swayed and danced in unison, growing larger and brighter as Little Bud’s truck jumped and bucked towards Earl and Alice and the little people. Angie saw them first.
“Bud, look out! Stop!” Bud hit the brakes and leaned on the horn.
Startled, the small boy memegawens Earl in overalls and moccasins ran into the brush, diving under leaves. The adults took the children by the hands and hurried them back into the woods. The last to disappear, Little Alice nodded towards Angie, “giigawaabamin; nagatch,” put her finger to lips and stepped through a stand of quack grass.
When Bud got out of the truck there were only Earl and Alice lying by the back of their car. The young man and girl knelt, touched them softly. Were they alive? The old man was so cold.
“Aunt Alice,” said Angie, her breath warm on the old woman’s face.
“Auntie . . . Uncle,” the young man said in his soft and distant voice, irresistible to Angie and now perhaps irresistible to two old spirits about to fly. “It’s me, Bud. Come to help. I’m gonna carry you to the truck.”
Alice opened her eyes. “Where’s your Uncle Earl?”
Angie couldn’t speak. Bud said gently, “He’s right next to you, Auntie.”
Alice sat up. “Earl,” she said. “Earl, wake up.” The old man’s eyes stared at the moon, reflecting the possibilities of the starry night sky.
Bud placed a warm hand on her forearm. Don’t frighten her, he thought. “Auntie,” he began.
“Earl!” Alice shook her husband’s shoulder. “It’s time to get up!”
The old man blinked. “Was I snoring?” he asked.
“Earl. Let’s get in the truck. Time to go home.”
Linda LeGarde Grover’s poetry chapbook, The Indian at Indian School, was the 2008 Native Writers selection by the University of Arkansas Little Rock’s Sequoyah Research Center. Her short story collection, The Dance Boots, will be published by the University of Georgia Press as part of their Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Story series.