LaRose

by Louise Erdrich

Landreaux didn’t see himself from the outside the way he normally witnessed his thoughts. Somehow he’d slipped around his thoughts in that moment, and as he sat down he also took a drink.

The worst kind of loneliness gripped him. The kind you feel alongside another person.

Sometimes energy of this nature, chaos, ill luck, goes out in the world and begets and begets. Bad luck rarely stops with one occurrence. All Indians know that. To stop it quickly takes great effort, which is why LaRose was sent.

Existence whined in her head like a mosquito. Then she swatted it. Rode the tide of her comfort down into the earth.

At night, she flew up through the ceiling and soared as she had been taught. She stored pieces of her being in the tops of the trees. She’d retrieve them later, when the bells stopped.

Girls were named for deathless things—forms of light, forms of clouds, shapes of stars, that which appears and disappears like an island on the horizon.

In English there was a word for every object. In Ojibwe there was a word for every action. English had more shades of personal emotion, but Ojibwe had more shades of family relationships.

Then he sees more. Sees all he has kept himself from seeing. Sees the sickness rising out of things. The phosphorus of grief consuming those he loves.

They spoke in both languages. We love you, don’t cry. Sorrow eats time. Be patient. Time eats sorrow.