LaRose

by Louise Erdrich

Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untameable creatures from the face of the earth.

It was good we became teachers so we could love those kids. There was good teachers, there was bad teachers. Can’t solve that loneliness.

It was a disease of infinite cruelty that made a mother pass it to her children before she died.

I tried not to get attached to anything or anyone. You are numb for years, she said to her mother, then you begin to feel. At first it is a sickening thing. To feel seems like having a disease. But you get used to sensations over time.

Even I want to give you all the love I never could! I hated to die and leave you. How good that we can be together now!

When a person speaks calmly and exudes peace, even a wolf may listen, said Father Travis. Maggie thought, Yeah, but sometimes you have to bite.

People only listened to the wolf because it ate them. Maggie was certain.

He’s sad, said Peter. Missing his family. Can’t understand. You’re right there down the road. I catch his face in the rearview when we pass. He’s so quiet, just looking at his old house. This was all Peter could stand to tell. About the muffled crying, nothing. About LaRose beating his head with his hands, nothing. About his secret questions whispered only to Peter, Where is my real mom?, he couldn’t tell.

There was the unspeakable neatness of military preparation for violence.

It’s LaRose, said Peter. We have to think of him. We should share him. We should, you know, make things easier between us all.

A sinuous contempt gripped him and he thought of the rapture he would feel for an hour, maybe two hours, after he brought down his ax on Landreaux’s head.

Okay, slug me, he had told her every time she was on top. No thanks, she always said, it will make us even.

Her glow of sweet responsive warmth sank into him like radiation. Sometimes it strengthened him. Sometimes he felt it poisoning his bones.

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

THE ONE PSYCHOLOGIST for a hundred miles around was so besieged that she lived on Xanax and knocked herself out every night with vodka shots. Her calendar was full for a year. People who couldn’t get on it went to Mass instead, and afterward visited Father Travis in the parish office.

He was careful with Nola. Kept her on the other side of his desk. Kept the door open. Pretended he didn’t quite understand that she gave off the wrong vibe.

He couldn’t tell how much of what she said was bullshit.

Nola cocked her head. She looked ready to stick out her tongue. This was going horribly, horribly, the priest treating her like an appendage to her family. Like a nothing. Not listening.

If Peter comes to me about your treatment of Maggie, if Maggie comes herself, if anybody from the Iron family, or a teacher, anyone, comes to me about it? I’ll go to Social Services.

Nola spoke sobbingly, but her face tightened in rage. She bolted up with such a slick, sudden movement that her breast bobbed into Father Travis’s fingers. He flinched as if scorched.

if the layers of drywall and plaster were torn away from the walls, they would find the interior pole and mud walls. The entire first family—babies, mothers, uncles, children, aunts, grandparents—had passed around tuberculosis, diphtheria, sorrow, endless tea, hilarious and sacred, dirty, magical stories. They had lived and died in what was now the living room, and there had always been a LaRose.

The sisters sniffed and looked redeemed, like a light had been restored inside of them. They were so happy they didn’t know how to show it without seeming fake. The girls sat down to do the carrots.

He was a spy, but a freelancer. Nobody ran him, he ran his one-man operation for his own benefit.

he found what drugs everybody in the entire community was on and which, for their mighty highs, could be pilfered by close relatives. It was there that Romeo found out who was going to die and who would live, who was crazier than he was, or by omission, sane and blessed with health.

Romeo now lifted off. Floated up through the popcorn ceiling and the black mold. Up through the asphalt shingles flapping on the roof. On the other side of the reservation town his fellow traveler, Mrs. Peace, passed him in space. She laid her hand on his shoulder, the way she’d done to boys in school. He ducked, though she had never struck him. He always ducked when someone gestured too quickly. Reflex.

He’s not coming and I don’t think he wants to see me. Thinks I’m weak. I’m alone with this, anyway. I don’t like where my thoughts go but I can’t argue them down all of the time, can I? Maggie will be all right, after, she’ll just flourish away. LaRose will be so relieved. Peter is becoming love-hate for me, you know? He’s getting on my last nerve.

the angry neatness of its yard.

She tries so hard to be okay, said Josette. I kind of get it. And I like her flowers. Me too. But she scares me.

Except for her one purple dress, she had four of everything, in neutral colors, and she wore only these things. Four jackets, four pants, four skirts, four jeans, four shirts, four panty hose. Four of everything for dress-up, and four for everyday. But she had lots of pretty underwear that she bought from a catalog.

She took the brown heels out of their box. Laid the gray jacket, tailored, with no collar, around the eggshell shirt. The whole outfit was assembled there as though by an undertaker. Too businessy to be dead in, she thought, and took away the white pants and replaced them with a short, flaring skirt. I’ll have to think again, she decided. She tapped her lips and opened the closet.

She’s got a collection of pictures from books and things that she keeps underneath her bed. All scary.

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.

Maybe the boarding schools of the earliest days had stripped away culture from the vulnerable, had left adults with little understanding of how to give love or parent, but what now? Kids needed some intervention, but not the wrenching away of foster families and outside adoptions. A crisis intervention, giving parents time to get on track. The radical part was that, unlike historical boarding schools, this one would be located on the reservation.

leaned back and told her all about the secret fort in the lilac bush, a new action figure, the church preschool where Nola took him. But not Maggie. He didn’t talk about Maggie. He felt in some vague way that he should not have told his sisters about the banshee. There was always something like that, something not okay, and he always tried to avoid it. But sometimes he wouldn’t know what it was until he said it, like with the long-toothed boney thing that screamed for the dead. Other things that Maggie told him in their lilac-bush hideout he knew right away not to tell because she said so.

The sulphur-laden rez water containing all the minerals and iron a body needs.

Getting blown up happened in an instant; getting put together took the rest of your life. Or was it the other way around? He thought of Emmaline.

she thought maybe she would get the release she needed if she killed Landreaux instead of herself.

Only LaRose wouldn’t get it.

Then she had another thought—their tradition worked. Dazzling act. How could she or Peter harm the father of the son they’d been given?

At the last AA meeting he’d confided to the group that Bush reminded him of all the things he hated worst about himself: weasel eyes, greed, self-pity, fake machismo. In this nation of self-haters, Bush could win. Everyone looked blank except Father Travis,

Not everyone let him in their door. Some people were suspicious of him at the Elders Lodge, like Mrs. Peace. She’d even had a chain put on her door because he’d once foolishly insisted on entry when she wasn’t in favor of it.

LaRose knew she loved when he was fearless. It was a burden for her always to be the fearless one. Because of what Maggie had said about his father killing Dusty, he didn’t tell her why they were safe.

When LaRose looked up at Nola, she made a funny face, a confusing face, a face LaRose hadn’t seen before. Nola’s eyes went shiny as she looked back at the streaming glass doors. She seemed mesmerized by the branches violently whipping. The face she’d made at him had been a smile.

When she was six years old, her teachers started calling Maggie “a piece of work.” But after her brother died, her work came together. She revved up the other kids by picking friends, rejecting those who displeased her, pitting them against each other for her favor. Although she didn’t exactly talk back to the teachers, there was sarcasm in the elaborate politeness she showed.

She told nobody what she’d done so that nobody could rat her out. She was a disciplined piece of work.

Maggie had a list. Dougie Veddar was now on it. Recess came. He ran thumpingly around thinking he was safe, with his blond crew cut and rabbity teeth. Maggie was friends with an older girl, Sareah, who was fast and tough. The two girls closed casually in on Dougie and herded him away from the other boys.

Maggie had worn her hard-soled shoes for this. She reared back and kicked him between the legs. Then as he doubled over she stuffed back his shriek with the candy bar. Don’t touch my brother, she said in that scary-nice way she had, her eyes turning gold with satisfaction. Please?

girls sauntered slowly back inside. There was a stir of energy. The teachers ran past. They were running toward Dougie; some kid said in awe, He’s blue, he’s blue. The teacher hefted Dougie. Heimliched Dougie. Two teachers held him upside down by the legs and shook him. Finally, a scream from Dougie, Whoa, whoa, whoa. Relief and cynicism settled once more over the teachers as they threw playground sand on a puddle of Almond Joy.

Okay, you’re gonna stick me like Veddar stuck you. Same place. It will be like we’re getting engaged or something. LaRose was almost six. I’m only almost six, he said.

Now I’m glad Veddar almost died. Huh? He choked on that candy bar. I smashed it down his throat. It went down the wrong pipe. He turned blue as a dead person. Even maybe he was dead until Mr. Oberjerk lifted him up by the ankles and shook out Veddar’s puke. You saw it all, right?