Dora-Rouge was transfixed. “I’m so glad I can still see!” With these words, everyone saw the room through her eyes. It was grand, full of people, everything scrubbed clean and shining. Even the walls were washed and, to Dora-Rouge’s amazement, the windows had no streaks. Frenchie laid down her fiddle to hug Dora-Rouge. She was shoeless in her Sunday dress with the large red peonies. She hugged us tightly, one at a time. When she bent over Dora-Rouge, Frenchie’s wonderful and sagging breasts bulged out a little above the low-cut flowered dress, and I smelled the rose water she had splashed on her skin.
Frenchie went back to fiddle playing, but only in B-flat—and she laughed. Her face, like Dora-Rouge’s, looked full and bright, this time without the use of false color. While she played, Justin LaBlanc himself sat near her, the transforming power of love incarnate, a bottle of Dr Pepper in his hand. He smiled and tapped an unpolished brown shoe on the floor, and when she wasn’t playing and he wasn’t eating, they held hands like young lovers. Justin looked slightly embarrassed around the other men, but it was them or Frenchie and, as he said, he’d had enough of them with their talk about fish and poker and bait. “And Frenchie’s a good-looking woman. She’s still got nice legs for a woman her age.”
“When did all this happen?” I asked.
Dora-Rouge said, “The night the mirror broke.”
Two young men, with their paper bags of liquor, had closed themselves into the bedroom. One woman asked Frenchie if she shouldn’t kick them out. “Not tonight,” Frenchie said, but everyone could already hear their slurred voices and smell the whiskey. Mingled with the fragrance of soup, bread, and perfume, it was a powerful kind of smell, an intoxicating poison that passed through the overheated house and made it seem damp as a swamp.
A few children from town ran through the house. Their parents tried in vain to silence them. Frenchie looked at the three boys and one girl with both a wistful amusement and a worry that they might break an Avon bottle or glass figurine.
A large tureen of wild rice and ham soup sat at the center of the table.
I followed Frenchie into the kitchen, “Can I help?”
She bustled about, getting silverware out of the drawer. “Oh, sure, honey. Put these soup spoons out for me, will you?”
The table was nearly ready. People were already lining up. Near some cloth napkins were bowls of warm water. “What’s this? Soup?” Justin asked. He was first in line. Everyone stood behind him.
Frenchie peered out from the kitchen. “What’s what?”
He pointed at the bowls.
“For washing your hands.” She went back to the kitchen and didn’t see how the people looked at each other. Even though they wanted to, no one smirked or laughed. “Finger bowls,” they would say later, and they’d say Frenchie is just that way, it’s how she always was.
When Justin opened a bottle of red wine, the two men from the back bedroom appeared as if by magic, their own bottle stashed away on the closet floor amid unmatched shoes and a few bright, low-cut dresses that had slipped off the scrawny shoulders of hangers. One of the two men was round and light-skinned. He wore a cast on his hand and wrist. He smiled at me in a way that was embarrassing. The other was dark and bone-thin, a red bandanna tied around his forehead, just above his eyes. They filled their plates and glasses and went back into the bedroom.
By the time Tommy arrived with four of the quiet people from the Hundred-Year-Old Road, the house was filled with a happy mood and the sound of forks on Melmac. My cheeks felt hot. I had sipped some of the wine when no one was looking. Others, plates balanced on their laps, could not stand up to greet or touch hands with the Hundred-Year-Old Road people, who all entered wearing solemn looks, reminding us of the importance and seriousness of the gathering and of our journey. At first no one but me seemed to notice, and it made me mighty nervous to see their faces, as if they thought we’d bit off more than we could chew. Or that we were all four going to our deaths. I had that feeling right away, and then, one by one, the others grew quiet until even the bright room itself dulled.
Wiley was dark and small. He was the one with the young wife, Chiquita, and she stood beside him, all of twenty-four, her hair pulled straight back. Wiley wore a thin cotton shirt with a sleeveless tee beneath it, his pants high. He remained standing and waited for the room to grow quiet, then he said a prayer for Dora-Rouge’s safe departure. In spite of the new serious mood of the room, a few people smiled throughout the prayer, and looked at each other, especially Frenchie and Justin. I smiled at Tommy, hoping our lack of solemnity would not undermine our fortune with the Great Spirit as we traveled to the far place of my mother.
The Hundred-Year-Old Road people had intended to stay only awhile, but before long they, too, were carried into the merriment. What with the cut flowers and the fiddle, and the rare, noisy children, the happiness was contagious, in spite of the impending loss of Dora-Rouge. “It’s the way I always wanted to go out,” she said. After a while, even Wiley smiled and said, “Well, I might as well make a night of it,” and he poured himself a glass of Coca-Cola, and in the house of perfumes and powders, bottles and tins, it seemed for once that everyone was prosperous, and we had joy, at least half a night’s worth.
I watched Chiquita, wishing I knew her better. In spite of her hair, and her attempts to behave in a traditional manner—she really did try—she seemed younger than me, more protected than the girls I had known. Chiquita was impressed, for instance, with the perfumes on Frenchie’s table and didn’t try to hide it. “You have Avon!” she said. She opened a red bottle and smelled it. “I love Persian Wood.”
“Why don’t you keep it, dear?” With her hands, Frenchie pushed back any argument Chiquita might have had.
All night Chiquita held the bottle she was given, as if someone would steal it from her, or it would slip through her fingers if she let her guard down. I made a mental note that when we returned from the Fat-Eaters, I would give her some girl things. She was deprived, living with Wiley.
Then I turned my attention to Tommy. He ladled soup into a flowered bowl and brought it to me. We stood together, afraid of our love and the words it might utter, so we said nothing. Only now did I think of how we would be apart. Now I was dreading to go.
Across the room, John Husk was well pressed and shining clean. Close to him, Chiquita passed the bottle of perfume beneath Wiley’s nose. He wrinkled up his face. “You don’t like it?” she asked. “He doesn’t like it,” she said to no one in particular, like a girl who’d taken up talking to air because she lived in the presence of the hard-of-hearing.
LaRue watched Bush from across the room like a predator who had just spotted a helpless lamb. He was dressed in the fashion of the day, pointed-toe shoes and tight pants, his hair loose at his shoulders and a pair of sunglasses hanging out of his shirt pocket. At least it wasn’t a leisure suit, I thought. I gave him a stern look, but he didn’t notice me at all; he had eyes only for Bush, who didn’t cast a single look at him. She was preoccupied with listening to Mrs. Illinois. Her face, in deep worry as she listened and nodded, made me think about our journey, tomorrow’s undertaking. Tommy took my hand, still quiet, and I leaned against him, feeling the strong warmth of his body.
About nine o’clock, people’s attention again turned to us. Between sips of cola and wine, the men were full of advice for our journey. It was partly that we were women who were about to venture into the deep world of broken waters, and partly that the men believed we were touched with a craziness and it was their duty to set us straight. They must have thought we were giddy with confidence and not with wine. That’s why they wanted to remind us of all the dangers ahead. They wanted us to know that we were journeying into a watery place most men would not want to endure, and that the dangers were real.
“This time of year is bad for bears,” one man said to me.
“I know that,” I said. I blushed to hear my haughty voice. It sounded like adolescent disdain. But my shortness was wasted on him.
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From every corner the advice continued. “You have to mark your trails,” one man said, and Wiley added, “Break twigs in case you have to find your way back. It’s easy to get lost up there.” It would have gone on all night except for the fact that Mrs. Illinois silenced them. “Hush,” she said quietly. “You’re worrying the girl. They have Dora-Rouge. They’ll find the way.”
The room quieted, but now that our trip was mentioned, Bush unfolded one of the maps beneath the light of a lamp and asked a few questions of the men she knew had journeyed into the far north by canoe. She went to the table and pushed dishes and cups aside and they all gathered in the light of a pink flowered lamp. Which currents were useful, she wanted to know, and which places had falls and steep portages to avoid.
“Why don’t you let me do your face sometime?” Frenchie asked Chiquita, ignoring the concerns of the men, ignoring, too, the people bent over the map at the table. She had her priorities. Chiquita, so excited and deprived at the same time, smelled her perfumed wrist.
Only a few of Bush’s questions were answered, and even those answers did not sound too certain. What had seemed so far away even a day before now stared us in the face. I no longer wanted to go. I knew this clearly, as well as I knew the love lines and life lines of my own palm. I had a bad feeling about it. Bush had hatched this plan in winter, under the crazy hand of cold and dark. I hated to admit LaRue might have been right. I had never been completely sure about Bush’s sanity. Now the panic rose in my chest. But I knew I would go. I was dead clear about it. And I would utter no word of dissent, not even when the men said a thirteen-day journey was next to impossible. The furs were sold, the canoes were already on The Raven, and we were packed. This was a fate I accepted. But even so, Frenchie’s house felt suddenly chilly. I told myself this was what it felt like for a bride, getting the jitters before her wedding. It was last-minute nerves.
Mrs. Illinois pulled up a chair beside Dora-Rouge. She called her by her old name. “Ena,” she said. “Ena, do you remember that medicine on Sleeper Island, those tiny plants with round leaves? Could you bring me some?” But as soon as she spoke she remembered Dora-Rouge would not return. Too late, she clapped her hand over her mouth.
“It’s all right.” Dora-Rouge answered with grace and strength. “I’ll send them back with Agnes.” She was going to say something else, but the clock on the wall called out ten o’clock and, relieved, she said instead, “Let’s see the news.”
It was a troubling time, with difficult news. The war in Vietnam would soon be over, but the deaths, to everyone’s shock and dismay, were still carried across oceans and land by the invisible waves and particles of air. On a closer front, the American Indian Movement was gaining momentum in the cities. We’d heard a little about the goings-on in Wounded Knee, but we were hungry for more information. We wanted to see and hear more from the young men with braids. They sounded strong as warriors to us. Many of the people in the room admired them, even the older ones, and some had already taken to letting their hair grow and wearing it, once again, in growing-out braids.
If the American Indian Movement got little attention on television, the dams and diversions of rivers to the north were even more absent. They were a well-kept secret, passed along only by word-of-mouth. We would have known nothing about them if not for the young men who canoed from place to place, telling people what had happened.
The news disturbed Justin. As if he could bear it no longer, he exploded in red-faced anger. “Those young men act just like Reds!” Communists, he meant. That’s what he called AIM members. Everyone turned away from the gray light of the screen and stared at him. He didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were watching the screen. But Frenchie, too, stared at him. “What?” she said, as if she hadn’t understood. “What?”
“They’re Reds.” He repeated this in an angry voice, still looking at the screen, oblivious to the openmouthed stares around him.
“Why, Justin LaBlanc. How can you say such a thing?” Frenchie didn’t wait for his answer. “They’re right! You can see with your own eyes what’s happening.” Her face turned pale and she began to tremble. She stood up awkwardly. “I can’t believe you feel that way!” She walked quickly to the room where the two men drank among the doilies and talcum dust and mirrors. Her high-heeled shoes clicked behind her. “Get out,” I heard her say. “Get out of here now!” She slammed the door behind them and they stood before us, red-eyed and sheepish, all of us staring at them as if they held a clue as to what was going on.
We watched the rest of the news in uncomfortable silence, pretending Justin hadn’t spoken, but soon after that, a few people drifted out of the house toward their homes. They held Dora-Rouge tightly a long time before they left, and they cried. With both hands, Mrs. Illinois held a hanky to her face and sobbed into it.
After a while, Bush took a glass of water in to Frenchie. She was gone awhile and when she came back out I asked, “What did she say?”
“She’s crying.” And more quietly, so no one else would hear, “She’s drinking their whiskey.” The two men were empty-handed and unsteady, still standing.
But just then Frenchie flew out of the room like a storm. “Get out of my house!” she said to Justin. Her face was red and puffy. Justin went over to her and touched her shoulders with both of his hands. He bent down just enough to look squarely into her eyes and, as if he were talking to a child, he said, “I was wrong, baby, it’s just the old U.S. Army in me talking. Ever since being in the service I hear the voices of the sergeants, and they even speak right out of my mouth. Like how you hear your mother. The thing is, it’s their words, not mine.”
Husk and LaRue looked at Justin LaBlanc as if he were crazy. Then they exchanged a glance between them. LaRue shook his head as if to say, “He’s got it bad, and an old man, too.”
To prove how sorry he was, Justin ate one of Frenchie’s cookies, the ones he had hated before. She was still red-faced. She sat down at the end of the table.
Frenchie had been right, all of us agreed. Luckily, Justin, using the army sergeants as an excuse, had saved face in their eyes. If anything, they respected him more for admitting he was wrong, because they’d all been mad at him, too, they had just kept their own mouths shut.
By the time we were ready to leave for the night, Frenchie was pacified. Just a moment after we stepped out the door, she said, “Wait. I have something for you.”
She went inside. When she returned she placed, in Dora-Rouge’s lap, two of the precious bags of wild rice she was storing for relatives. They were contained in flowered pillowcase cotton and tied with pink ribbon.
ON THE WAY HOME, Agnes walked beside me, carrying away some of the wilting hothouse carnations. Light clouds drifted across the full moon. She looked up. “Do you think it’s a good idea to leave during the full moon?” By now everyone was accustomed to her anxiety and no one answered.
Husk pushed Dora-Rouge and her wheeled secretary chair over the bumpy road, the rice heavy in her lap. Even though he hadn’t had a single drink, the secretary chair Frenchie had sent on the ferry from her daughter’s place would speed up now and then, with a will of its own.
“You’re damaging my kidneys,” Dora-Rouge said in a shaky voice. “Slowdown.”
Husk obeyed for a few moments, but before long, distracted, he would speed up the pace again.
“I mean it! Slow down.” Her voice rattled. She put out a tiny foot as if to stop the chair. A darker cloud moved over the moon.
“I’m so sorry.” Husk’s white shirt shone through the darkness and with his black pants it looked like there were no man’s legs beneath it. I watched the floating shirt and the soft, white hair of Dora-Rouge move through the darkness of night. The smell of Frenchie’s perfumes was still in our clothing. Dora-Rouge bumped along the narrow road. The lights of houses fell across the deep spring grasses and a soft breeze moved them like waves of water. It was a beautiful night, the grasses bending, and Husk in his luminous shirt. Agnes humme
d, her voice deep and soft, this time not just to drown out the voices of others, because we were quiet. It was one of the songs strong enough to need no words.
ON THAT LAST NIGHT, whenever I closed my eyes to sleep, I had visions of our traveling. In the darkness I saw the two canoes like thin lights moving through water, or silk-fine cocoons, the bodies brilliant inside them, waiting to grow wings. Sun played across the shimmering skin of water. Floating, I looked down from above and had no sense of what world was there except that it was alive, immense, and it took us in. For great distances ahead of me was the shining water. But a kind of sorrow stood by the bed. I pulled the sheets to my neck as if I could keep it from me. Maybe something I didn’t know was dreaming me. Somehow I knew I would lose a part of myself on this journey, as if, when we cast off into water, I would step outside my skin. It was a kind of dying. And I was afraid. Before then I’d feared that night and sleep could swallow me, that I would drown inside darkness, but now my fears grew to contain lakes and rivers and things with teeth.
I pulled back the covers. Barefoot, I went to the kitchen after Dora-Rouge’s bitter sleeping potion, but before I reached the bathroom, there was a soft knock at the door, I tiptoed over. “Who is it?” I whispered, leaning against the door. But I knew who it was. I opened the door. Tommy stood on the porch. A light wind moved the trees outside. “I want to be with you,” he said.
I buried my face in his chest and let him in. We lay down together in silence on the cot. We were close enough that I could feel his heart beating. We stroked each other’s hair. He caressed me with infinite tenderness, touching my face lightly. His arms were dark and strong against the white sheets. Our bodies made an agreement with one another, that one day they would be lovers. Soon, on the crowded little cot, I slept, my head against his shoulder, with none of Dora-Rouge’s potion in my stomach.