The Antelope Wife: A Novel Part 14

The party waits. The hiccups sound like the prelude to a bout of hysteria. Though she is no weeper, Frank nonetheless expects her to cry. Her shoulders shake. Her forehead is red in her hands. But when she lifts her face, her small laugh lights a string of firecracker laughs through the kitchen so that Frank's own scratchy, hoa.r.s.e, unfamiliar laughing croak is part of the general roar.

Chapter 21.

Northwest Trader Blue GRANDMAS GIIZIS AND NOODIN enter the early morning kitchen stealthily, hungry for leftover birthday cake. Knowing their habit, their love of sweets, the girls have risen to entrap them. Cally is already pouring coffee. Deanna is already cutting the remains of the twelve-layer chocolate raspberry cake that Frank nearly pulled off his ponytail in frustration to get right.

The grandmas accept the thick, uneven slices of cake and look at Cally and Deanna quizzically, with a slow and doggy quiet regard. Giizis takes a burning sip of hot coffee.

"You girls are up early," she observes. "What do you want?"

Cally and Deanna shoot a look at each other, bite their lips. Each takes a huge deep breath. Cally elbows Deanna. She elbows her sister back.

"Nookoo?" says Deanna.

"Grandma?" says Cally.

"Eya'?" says Giizis.

"Eya'?" says Noodin.

"We want to know something."

Giizis and Noodin shoot a look at each other, bite their lips, and each takes her own huge deep breath. They hope it will not be about those things that their mother should talk about. They hope they will not have to plan a menstrual moon-lodge ceremony or a berry feast or talk about the old ways and the new, regarding woman matters, not yet!

"About our names. We want to know."

The grandmothers' crooked, hungry smiles grow softly indulgent and even delighted. Here their granddaughters are asking for the names that have frightened their mother off. The names that came so powerfully in dreams. History scared Rozin, but history is what her daughters want. The right ones are asking for their names here, the young ones, and their mother can just go whistle up a tree trunk.

"How do we get them? What do we do? Do you know them? Mama said you dreamed them once. We tried to get her to tell us. She wouldn't tell us. She said there had to be a ceremony. What ceremony. How does it go? Do we have to get married? We hate boys. They are so gross. Dogs are better. But Sweetheart Calico took her dog. And how do we get our names?"

The grandmas take big bites of unhealthy chocolate raspberry sugar cake, chew it, and enjoy the taste. Their smiles appear. A sunny moment of startling peace. In walks Rozin wearing her fuzzy pink bathrobe, yawning.

"Cake!" She frowns at the grandmas and is about to scold them about their blood sugar when the girls grab her arms. Before she even pours herself a coffee, they tell her that they have asked their grandmas to give them names. The names she would not tell them. They are gloating. Rozin turns her back and chooses a tribal college ceramic cup in despair. It is chipped. She thinks of smas.h.i.+ng it in the sink.

"I was afraid this would happen. I never should have said anything."

"Don't be afraid," says Cally.

"It will be all right, Mom," says Deanna, and brings her the carton of half-and-half from the refrigerator.

"Thanks," says Rozin. It is odd how girls know everything about your habits. They have been watching and learning all about you. They know that you cannot take your first sip of coffee without cream-milk in the cup. They know that after your first sip of black medicine water you are a better person.

"Yes," says Rozin, after the first taste. "Yes, I guess it is time."

The Names There will be a feast and a ceremony later. But at this moment, the grandmas feel they should proceed. Before Rozin drinks enough coffee to change her mind. First, the grandmas fill two cups for Rozin and make her promise not to open her mouth until they are done talking. Then Giizis settles herself, pulling at her big soft T-s.h.i.+rt. Frowning into her coffee cup, she speaks.

FIRST OF ALL the old woman came to me. Our ancestor who was killed by the bluecoat soldier. "During my time I made such beautiful things," she said. "I wanted my children and grandchildren to know they were loved. Other people see those special dresses, moccasins, leggings, or a baby's first dikinaagan, and know that child is cared for. I made that cradle board real special. I copied into velvet the flowers we love, the wild prairie roses. You can eat them if you are hungry. Those sweet petals keep you going. But we didn't need them, for here we had killed a lot of buffalo, and we had dried the meat before we were attacked.

"I saw the soldier shoot at children and I ran at him with a stone. But he killed me on the end of his gun. Not so easy, however, because I stared at him in his eyes. I stared him back in time, to when he was defenseless, before his birth. And then I put my spirit into him as best I could.

"That long moment pa.s.sed. I looked at the distance. Over his shoulder, I saw the dog running off with my baby granddaughter, the dikinaagan strapped on its back. Oh, I was happy. They were getting away. I was filled with joy and nothing hurt me. I had given that child my own name, a very old name that goes back for many generations, and would be carried forward now. I cried out that name, and fell away and held the earth, and melted into the earth, and am part of everything now. My spirit guided the other spirits who died with me on that day, for I was named after the band of radiant light we travel.

"Why is it given to us to see the colors and the power and the imperishable message? We are so limited, so small. Gaagigenagweyaabiikwe, I cried, and put the name into the soldier's mind so he repeated it and repeated it. He scratched it into the sand the first time he sat down-whiteman's letters, a name never written down-and eventually he carved it into his arm. My name killed him eventually, though he died by his own knife, it is true. But our people had pity on his spirit. We helped him to depart this earth. As he walked the road to the next life, the letters never melted from his arm, they guided him. And now they are part of everything, too. They are the name I give you. Everlasting Rainbow. The footbridge that connects us with the other world."

"OF COURSE," SAYS Giizis, sipping her coffee, "it is very difficult to translate a real Ojibwe name into the whiteman's language. So often, our names include movement, the stirring of leaves, the glint of light on water, the trembling of color. English is so limited."

"We do our best," says Noodin with a critical sigh.

"Ombe omaa," says Giizis to Deanna, and she places her hands on her grandniece's head and says the name four times. She makes Deanna repeat it. Then Cally and Rozin. She writes it down.

"Not gonna carve it in my arm. Now you memorize this."

She gives the paper to Deanna and then nods at Noodin. "Mi'iw minik, my sister, ginitam."

"THERE ARE THESE beads I love," says Noodin. "Deep ones, made of special gla.s.s. Hungarian beads called northwest trader blue. In them, you see the depth of the spirit life. See sky as through a hole in your body. Water. Life. See into the skin of the coming world."

Cally nods, lets a long breath out, impatient to see how this bead talk connects with her name.

"Just a second," Noodin says, "I'm getting it all fixed in my mind. My brain is soaking up the sugar. I have to let the cells energize before I go on telling you."

Noodin draws a deep breath and continues.

"When I was a child," says Noodin, "I wanted beads of that northwest trader blue, and I would do anything to get them. I first glimpsed this blue on the breast of a Pembina woman pa.s.sing swiftly. I saw her hand rise to the beads and then touch the blue reflection on her throat. Ever after, I knew I must have that certain blueness which was like no other blue. I scored my fingers making quill baskets and when they were finished I went to the trader and sold them. I looked behind his gla.s.s and wood counter at the hanks of beads hanging there on nails-beads the ripe silk of prairie roses. Silver beads, black, cut-gla.s.s white. Beads the tan of pony hide and green, every green there is on earth. There were blues there, sky blue, water blue, the blue of the eyes of those people who took our trees. The blue of old pants and the blue of mean thoughts. I searched for the blue of those beads I had seen on the Pembina woman, but that blue was different from all the other blues on earth. Disappointed at the trader's cache, I spent my money on sweet candy. There would come a time I would see the beads I needed, but I already knew they could not be bought."

Grandma Noodin stares at Cally, looking through her, figuring.

"During my motherhood, when I was rocking or nursing my baby," she went on, softly, "I had a lot of time to think about this blueness. I could see it before me, how it appeared and disappeared, the blue at the base of a flame, the blue in a fading line when I shut my eyes, the blue in one moment at the edge of the sky at dusk. There. Gone. That blue of those beads, I understood, was the blueness of time. Perhaps you don't know that time has a color. You've seen that color but you were not watching, you were not aware. Time is blue. Or time is the blue in things. I came to understand that my search for the blueness called northwest trader blue was the search to hold time.

"Only twice in my life did I see that blue clear. I saw that blue when my daughter was born-as her life emerged from my life, that color flooded my mind. The other time, my girl, was the day I found your name. Or dreamed it. Or gambled for it. Here's how it happened."

Other Side of the Earth I was a new mother-to-be, pregnant. Picking berries, I felt sleepy and lay on the ground. It was so soft underneath the tree, the gra.s.s long and fine as hair. I put down my bucket to rest and curled in the comfort. While sleeping, I saw the Pembina again-she came to me. I saw her as a tiny speck first, then bigger and bigger until she was down the road and standing right in front of me. Had those beads on. Still hanging from around her neck. They were made of that same blue I have described to you and I still wanted them with all my heart.

"Will you gamble for them?" the Pembina asked me, gently.

I told her that I wanted those beads but had nothing I could use to put down. No money. No jewelry. Just berries. She took marked plum pits out of her pocket, smiled, and right there we sat down together to gamble.

"You have your life," she said gently, "and the ones inside of you as well. Would you bet me two lives in return for my blue beads?"

"YOU GAMBLED," SAYS Rozin. "I believe it! That was me inside, you know!"

"Shut up, my girl," says Noodin.

"You promised," says Giizis.

I DIDN'T EVEN think twice but answered her yes. We started playing the game, throwing down the plum stones and gathering them up, taking turn after turn until the sweat broke out on my forehead. I beat her the first of three games. She took the second. I took the third and gestured at her beads. Slow, careful, she lifted the strand over her neck and then she handed them over.

"Now," she said, "you have the only possession important to me. Now you have my beads called northwest trader blue. The only other thing I own of value are my names, Other Side of the Earth, Blue Prairie Woman before that. You have put your life up. I'll put my names. Let us gamble again to see who keeps the beads."

"No," I said. "I've waited too long for these. Now that I've got them, why risk them?"

She gazed at me with her still, sad eyes, touched her quiet fingers to the back of my hand, and carefully explained.

"Our spirit names, they are like hand-me-downs which have once fit other owners. They still bear the marks and puckers. The shape of the other life."

"Why should I take the chance?" I asked, stubborn. "So what?"

"The name goes with the beads, you see," she said, "because without the name those beads will kill you."

"Of what?"

"Longing."

Which did not frighten me.

Still, I played her another game and yet another. That is how I won her names from her. My girl, that was my naming dream. Long version. Your name is a stubborn and eraseless long-lasting name. One that won't disappear.

CALLY WANTS HER to say it, the old name, the original.

"Ozhaawashkmashkodikwe, Blue Prairie Woman." she hears, but she isn't satisfied.

"And the beads?"

Cally is surprised to hear the sharpness in her voice. She hasn't even thanked her grandma, yet already the need is on her. She has got to know what the necklace of beads looks like, that blue. She can imagine it at the edge of her vision. A blueness that is a hook of feeling in the heart.

"The beads." Noodin's whole face wrinkles, her thin lips slowly spread in an innocent smile. "Already, you want them, I know. But you will have to trade for them with their owner, Sweetheart Calico."

Who stands behind them suddenly, her gaze on Cally's back like a cape of quills.

The Blue Beads The twins have become been afraid of her. She is not just any woman. She is something created out there where the distances turn words to air and thoughts to colors. She wiggles the first bead from the broken place in her smile. Then she pulls bead after strung bead from her dark mouth out. That's where she was keeping them all of this time, they understand. Beneath her tongue. No wonder she was silent. And sure enough, as she holds them forward to barter, now, she speaks. Her voice is lilting and flutelike on the vowels and sibilant between the jagged ends of her tooth.

"Make that d.a.m.n Klaus let me go!"

"Okay," says Cally. "First give me the beads."

Chapter 22.

Wiindigoo Dog SO THERE WAS this big canine rabies outbreak in the state of Minnesota. Here's what happened. The state sent three dogcatchers to work day and night rounding up the dogs. The first dogcatcher was from a crack Norwegian dog-catching school, the second was Swedish, the third was an Indian dogcatcher. Each had a truck. They traveled together in a squad. They worked hard all morning and by noon each of the dogcatchers had a pretty-fair-sized truck full of dogs. About then, they were getting hungry, so they chained up the back of the trucks. But they forgot to lock the doors themselves, see, so by pus.h.i.+ng and wiggling the dogs could open the doors behind the loose chain just enough to squeeze out, carefully, one at a time.

When the dogcatchers came back from lunch, then, first thing they looked into the back of their trucks. The crack Norwegian dogcatcher's truck was totally empty and so was the Swede's truck. But the Ojibwe dogcatcher's truck, though unlatched the same and only chained, was still full of dogs.

"This is something, though," said the Swede and the Norwegian to the Ojibwe. "How do you account for the fact all our dogs are gone and yours are still there?"

"Oh," said the Ojibwa, "mine are Indian dogs. Wherever they are, that's their rez. Every time one of them tries to sneak off, the others pull him back."

"I DON'T LIKE that joke," says Klaus. "My rez is very special to me. It is my place of authority."

"Geget, you filthy piece of guts," says the Wiindigoo Dog. "I like it there, too. Don't get spiritual on me."

"Why do you like it?" asks Klaus. "You have no spirituality whatsoever. What's there for you?"

"On the rez," says the wiindigoo, "the ladies, they roam. Bye now. Gotta maaj."

"Good riddance." Klaus turns over and sleeps.

WHILE SLEEPING he remembers that he is really someone else with a life and a toothbrush and a paycheck. He lives a normal day in his sleep, rising in the morning to do a hundred crunches and fifty push-ups, then pours himself a bowl of cereal before he showers. That feels good! Next, he is shaving, just those few whiskers on the blunt end of his chin. He is walking away from his actual house. Locking his door. Getting into his car.

Car! Once upon a time far away and long ago. These things were his. He earned them with work and money. His mouth waters. Coins and bills. He remembers the solid pack of his wallet in his left jeans pocket. He is left-handed, a lefty. What does that matter now? He is totally ambidextrous with the bottle.

KLAUS IS SLEEPING with his head sticking out of the bushes in the park, and he is wearing a green baseball cap. A young man wearing thick earphones and chewing a piece of bread-tie plastic whips around the bushes, expertly mowing gra.s.s for the city park system. He rides the mower with sloppy a.s.surance-the big red machine itself encourages reckless driving with its fat cushy seat and wide cramping whine of protest. That's what his lawn mower is-one long scream of protest. the world of gra.s.s was never meant to be shortened to a carpet so that the outdoors is like one big wall-to-wall room. The young man rounds the corner and runs over Klaus's head.

There is no warning, of course. No chance for Klaus to prepare himself in his dream for getting his head run over by a lawn mower. Only the jagged earsplitting raucous blade shrieks, only the helmet of metallic motor sound, only the fact, lucky Klaus, that a powerful stray dog bolts toward the machine and gets. .h.i.t, slams into the air. Bounces off a tree and vanishes. The impact jars the machine to a giant skip so that the accident leaves no more than a neat b.l.o.o.d.y crease down the exact middle of Klaus's face.

KLAUS DREAMS HE is a drum struck violently and rapidly. His drum face wears the sacred center stripe. Klaus blinks up into the sky. Sun shot and pearly. Leaves gleaming and tossing. His ears are suddenly unpacked of cotton and his thoughts run pure between his temples, open and sparkling. In the extraordinary light Klaus makes a thousand decisions. Two of them matter. Number one, he will finally stop. Just stop. And he knows, the way he has known so many times before, right down to his aching big toe, center of his soul, that he is done drinking. He can do that. The other of his important decisions is not so consciously settled. It is just that he knows, in vague detail but with overriding certainty, the next thing to do.

Bring her back. Bring her back to us, you fool.

Getting sober. Letting her go. The idea of it hurts so bad he momentarily wishes that the lawn mower had struck him full on, taken off his head, his thoughts.

THERE IS A little bench down the street in a dogs.h.i.+t triangle of lawn. Some strangled dark red ambrosia-colored snapdragons are planted there by who knows who? Better go there, says a voice. Her dog, Wiindigoo. Get out. Don't look back. Now, right now, attend to yourself and focus on the next fifteen minutes of your life. For you were never able to do it a day at a time, not you. An hour. Two hours. Half a day at a time. Or not.

Klaus goes looking for her. Now and again they'll ask him, what was so f.u.c.king great about her? What did she do, in bed for instance, or what did she cook? Was it something she did with her hands, her face, some way she had, perhaps? A love way. A food. Not one thing in particular, he says. She never cooked anything from a recipe. Potatoes, mac and cheese, that kind of stuff. It wasn't that. They'll ask did she have his children. No, he'll say. No kids. Was she related to you? Was she from your own clan?

Sometimes he thinks she was. Yes.

In his worst down and outs, he gets comfort from the thought that she was just a fragment of his imagination, his pretty antelope woman. But he knows she is actual in every way. What scares him worst is this: The simple knowledge that his Sweetheart Calico is a whole other person. Lives in another body, walks in a different skin. Thinks different thoughts he can't know about. Wants a freedom he can't give.

She dragged me in, he says greedily, can't she handle it now?

Yet he knows with bleak shame he is excusing his trapper's appet.i.te. He's tangled in a net of holes. He doesn't know how to stop wanting her in him, with him, part of him, existing in his food and water and booze. He doesn't know how to stop the circle of his thoughts.

In the old days, they used to paint the red stripe of the drum down the middle of their faces. Right now, sitting on the carved bench in the hopeful little ugly park he closes his eyes. His face bears the blood-painted stripe. He tries to divide himself up equally-two parts. Send half of yourself to each direction. West, east. Let her go with the western half, free. But the part of Klaus that goes to the west reaches out and clings to his love like a baby, following her into sky-hung s.p.a.ce.

Giiwebatoon Klaus folds and unfolds the strip of cloth that he uses as his headband, traces the small buds and sprigs of pink unbudding roses and white roses, the sweetheart calico. Sweat and dirt, drunken sleeps, railroad bed, underpa.s.s and overpa.s.s dust, volleyball-court gravel, frozen snirt, river water, and many tears are all pressed into the piece of cloth. It holds the story of his wretched love. Though grit scored, dirt changed, and sun faded, it isn't frayed. It is woven of the same toughness as his longing. He wraps the strip of calico around his wrist like a bandage and he waits. He becomes part of the scenery, a tree, or anyway a stump. He is waiting for her to appear.