Love Medicine (31 page)

What about Germaine? She told Germaine to quit hoarding commodity flour and give it away because there was worms in it.

How do you figure?

Insight. It was as though Lulu knew by looking at you what was the true bare-bone elements of your life. It wasn’t like that before she had the operation on her eyes, but once the bandages come off she saw.

She saw too clear for comfort.

Only Grandma Kashpaw wasn’t one trifle out of current at the insight Lulu showed. She and Lulu was thick as thieves now.

That too was odd. If you’ll just picture them together knowing everybody’s life, as if they had hot lines to everybody’s private thoughts, you’ll know why people started rushing past their doors.

They feared one of them would reach out, grab them into their room, and tell them all the secrets they tried to hide from themselves.

Which is of course just what happened to Lipsha Morrissey.

Lulu grabbed me.

She might be soft and sweet as marshmallows, but in her biceps there was tension steel. She had run her nails beneath my collar, and I was whisked in before I could draw breath to yell.

Clapped right down in her plastic armchair and scared to move for starting a fateful apartment-wide avalanche of sharp-edged ashtrays and painted poodles, I breathed a sigh. Caught but good, I thought. I wasn’t really scared so much as irritated to be treated so abrupt. I was sure I knew all my secrets, see, and hadn’t anything to hide.

But I was wrong. As soon as she’d said,

“I talked this over with your mother long ago,” I knew she was going to tell me something on which I’d shut the door.

And when she said,

“Not your stepmother, not Marie, but your mother in the flesh …” my worst thought was confirmed.

“I don’t want to hear,” I told Lulu flat out. “My real, mother’s Grandma Kashpaw. That’s how I consider her, and why not?

Seeing as my blood mother wanted to tie a rock around my neck and throw me in the slough.”

“that’s what you always been told,” said Lulu calmly.

“Been told?”

Sure enough, I was hooked then. I took her bait.

“What do you mean?”

So she up and spilled the beans.

“You’re nineteen years old now? That makes it twenty years ago this happened. My son Gerry-you know him, in Illinois doing time now-was just out of high school. One day he came home and told he how he’d got his eye set on this beautiful woman,

“She’s got a beautiful shape,” he said. “She has class.” He didn’t say that she was also very bold, or that she was already married, or even that she had a child. He didn’t tell me those facts! He just said,

“Mom I think I’ll marry her.” He presented me with it. The only drawback was she was what you’d call an older woman.

More experienced. But who cares past a certain point anyhows?

People talked, but those two went together and fell in love. Well, the inevitable happened pretty soon. That pretty woman started wearing a big wide tent dress. My boy left. Then I don’t know what happened between them, because, not long after, a little baby was placed in your Grandma Kashpaw’s arms. The woman went back to her husband, Gordie Kashpaw. As you know, they did not live very happily ever after.

Neither did my Gerry. In fact, it looks like you had the best life of them all.”

I couldn’t take it in.

“You went and made this up for laughs,” I said. “I ain’t June Kashpaw’s son.”

“Her father was a Morrissey,” said Lulu, “figure that.”

So I figured. My head felt put on strange. A buzzing sound was starting in the room.

I looked at her, and all of a sudden here was the next odd thing: I saw that Lulu Lamartine and Lipsha Morrissey had the same nose. Hers was little, semi-squashed in, straight and flat. Mine was a bigger, flatter version of hers down to the squashed-in tip. It was like seeing something in a mirror that’s not your face.

- “I’m scared to death of you,” I said. “Old witch, you tell me lies!”

“You spoilt child, ” she said. “Who else would you want to hear it from? They all know. Grandma Kashpaw, she’s afraid to tell you because she loves you like a son. It frightens her to think you might run off.

June’s dead. My son Gerry’s in the clink. Gordie’s drying out, but he wouldn’t tell you anyhow. They all know it though, all of them Kashpaws. What the heck is it anyway? Do you like being the only one that’s ignorant?”

“No,” I said.

She softened. Her hard little black eyes toned down and misted.

That black crow feather duster on her head seemed to fold its wings and settle.

“I got a letter,” she said, then she smiled. “Your dad Gerry’s –-odd been so good they’re going to transfer him back to the state pen.

There ain’t a prison that can hold the son of Old Man Pillager, a Nanapush man. You should be proud that you’re one.

“I’m the only one that had nothing to lose by telling you all this,” she went on after a short pause. “It’s simple. I either gain a grandson or lose a young man who didn’t like me in the first place.”

I sat there in total quiet. She had caught me but good.

“Well,” she said after a while, “which is it?”

Consideration got me no place the next day and a half I thought at first I would pretend like nothing happened, and just go about my business.

But as I walked here and there on the reservation, swept the bingo hall, cleaned up pop-tops in the playground, I could not help but dwell on the subject of myself. Lipsha Morrissey, who’d learned so much in his short life. Who had lost and regained the touch. Lipsha Morrissey who was now on the verge of knowing who he was.

I was confused.

Had my mother tried to sling me in the marsh? I went back to Lulu and asked.

“No,” she said. “June was ‘just real upset about the whole thing.

Your Grandma Kashpaw took you on because the truth is she had a fond spot for June, just like she’s got one for you.

Besides that, Gordie couldn’t handle another man’s son. They’re all jealous of Gerry Nanapush on this reservation.”

I was still confused.

Had June mentioned me at all in the time I was growing up?

“Yes,” said Lulu. “She watched you from a distance, and hoped you would forgive her some day. She wondered why you turned out odd.”

“I turned out odd?”

“Well I never thought you was odd,” she said. “Just troubled.

You never knew who you were. That’s one reason why I told you.

I thought it was a knowledge that could make or break you.”

Again I sat there in total silence.

“Well,” she said, “make or break?”

I didn’t know. I was still trying to compass it all out. It was the tax ingest problem my brain had ever had to work with. I know that Grandma Kashpaw tried to give me help. She used up her cans of commodity beef to keep my strength up. She fought Old Lady Blue at the mission bundle sales to acquire a Stetson practically new except for a burnt hole through the crown. One night she said that she didn’t trust the banks no more and showed me where she’d stuck her money. She had it all tied up in a little pink hankie and stuck amid her underskirts.

“I’m an old woman,” she said. “What do I need with this?”

Maybe I was mis constructing but the more I thought about the way she looked at me when she said that, the more I felt like Grandma was offering me something. Bus fare, maybe, the chance to get away from here in my confusion. Whatever it was she really meant, I finally did the wicked act you might have already been expecting.

I stole into Grandma Kashpaw’s apartment and sneaked the hankie full of money from her drawer.

As my hand was feeling for that hankie, I heard her breathing in the dark bed, pretending to be asleep. I was doing what she was afraid of and running away. More than anything I wanted to say I’d get back as soon as I could, reassure her somehow, but I couldn’t. My throat choked up.

What could a sneak thief have to say anyhow? I thought.

I was drove to this crime by mass confusion. My soul was going to get whaled on for sure, if it was not already damned. As I walked out of that room, I justified. I justified my criminal act by being so unhappy I could die of it. Confusion. It was a bleak sadness sweeping through my brain. Sirens blowing. Random anger, which had never been my style before.

More than anything, I resented how they all had known.

So that’s all there was to it, pretty much. I rode the bus across the missile bases and the sunflower fields until I came to our most popular border town, and then shame hit but good. Shame rolled over me in waves and a tidal wash. I was buried in it like a sink hold I took a room in a hotel for old veterans and, like them, I spent my daylight sifting in the window drinking 3.2 beer and my nights in the lobby watching cop shows. Shame had me by the neck. But at last, when it had played out to squirts and dribbles, I was able to look around me.

I was able to walk the streets like the younger derelicts.

I walked back and forth then, all day, only vaguely curious about what I would do next. As I walked, I kept returning to one particular window.

In it was the pictures of some clean-cut boys with monkey wrenches standing among a bank of red flowers.

There was a caption. It said:

JOIN TODAY’S ACTION ARMY

Eventually, I walked into the office behind those grinning boys. Two shakes later, before I had thought twice, I was signing my name on a wad of paper.

, After I had signed up for my monkey wrench and red flower, I went back to the hotel and watched Efrem Zimbalist junior persecute some drug addicts. I happened to take a close look around me at one point, and then I realized something. I realized that if I went in the army, and then if I got lucky enough to come out, I would be a veteran like these guys-gumming the stubble on their chins, dreaming of long-hocked medals, curling up around their secret war wounds to comfort a lonesome night.

Not much You never knew who you were. That’s one reason why I told you.

I thought it was a knowledge that could make or break you.”

Again I sat there in total silence.

“Well,” she said, “make or break?”

I didn’t know. I was still trying to compass it all out. It was the tax ingest problem my brain had ever had to work with. I know that Grandma Kashpaw tried to give me help. She used up her cans of commodity beef to keep my strength up. She fought Old Lady Blue at the mission bundle sales to acquire a Stetson practically new except for a burnt hole through the crown. One night she said that she didn’t trust the banks no more and showed me where she’d stuck her money. She had it all tied up in a little pink hankie and stuck amid her underskirts.

“I’m an old woman,” she said. “What do I need with this?”

Maybe I was mis constructing but the more I thought about the way she looked at me when she said that, the more I felt like Grandma was offering me something. Bus fare, maybe, the chance to get away from here in my confusion. Whatever it was she really meant, I finally did the wicked act you might have already been expecting.

I stole into Grandma Kashpaw’s apartment and sneaked the hankie full of money from her drawer.

As my hand was feeling for that hankie, I heard her breathing in the dark bed, pretending to be asleep. I was doing what she was afraid of and running away. More than anything I wanted to say I’d get back as soon as I could, reassure her somehow, but I couldn’t. My throat choked up.

What could a sneak thief have to say anyhow? I thought.

I was drove to this crime by mass confusion. My soul was going to get whaled on for sure, if it was not already damned. As I walked out of that room, I justified. I justified my criminal act by being so unhappy I could die of it. Confusion. It was a bleak sadness sweeping through my brain. Sirens blowing. Random anger, which had never been my style before.

More than anything, I resented how they all had known.

So that’s all there was to it, pretty much. I rode the bus across the missile bases and the sunflower fields until I came to our most popular border town, and then shame hit but good. Shame rolled over me in waves and a tidal wash. I was buried in it like a sink hold I took a room in a hotel for old veterans and, like them, I spent my daylight sitting in the window drinking 3.2 beer and my nights in the lobby watching cop shows. Shame had me by the neck. But at last, when it had played out to squirts and dribbles, I was able to look around me.

I was able to walk the streets like the younger derelicts.

I walked back and forth then, all day, only vaguely curious about what I would do next. As I walked, I kept returning to one particular window.

In it was the pictures of some clean-cut boys with monkey wrenches standing among a bank of red flowers.

There was a caption. It said:

JOIN TODAY’S ACTION ARMY

Eventually, I walked into the office behind those grinning boys. Two shakes later, before I had thought twice, I was signing my name on a wad of paper.

I After I had signed up for my monkey wrench and red flower, I went back to the hotel and watched Efrem Zimbalist junior persecute some drug addicts. I happened to take a close look around me at one point, and then I realized something. I realized that if I went in the army, and then if I got lucky enough to come out, I would be a veteran like these guys-gumming the stubble on their chins, dreaming of long-hocked medals, curling up around their secret war wounds to comfort a lonesome night.

Not much in that, less than nothing. It gave me a sick chill to think of ending up here, like foam th rowed off the waves of the lake, spin drift, all warped and cracked like junk and left to rot.

This here was yesterday’s action army, I thought.

Fear clenched down. If I wanted to evade the consequences, I was going to have to hightail it and run.

But where to? That was my problem. I couldn’t bear going back home to the rez, where every damn Kashpaw cousin knew the secret of my background all those years. I was too galled. And yet I really didn’t have nowhere else. There was no clear direction to follow, nothing to send me anywhere, until, as in this sort of case, I decided to ask myself point-blank what exactly I wanted.