Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich Read Free Book Online Page B

But once they smash there is no way to put them right.
    SAINT MARIE r G a Sr (1934)

MARIE LAZAR RE
    So when I went there, I knew the dark fish must rise. Plumes of radiance had soldered on me. No reservation girl had ever prayed so hard. There was no use in trying to ignore me any longer. I was going up there on the hill with the black robe women. They were not any lighter than me. I was going up there to pray as good as they could.
    Because I don’t have that much Indian blood. And they never thought they’d have a girl from this reservation as a saint they’d have to kneel to. But they’d have me. And I’d be carved in pure gold. With ruby lips. And my toenails would be little pink ocean shells, which they would have to stoop down off their high horse to kiss.
    I was ignorant. I was near age fourteen. The length of sky is just about the size of my ignorance. Pure and wide. And it was just that-the pure and wideness of my ignorance-that got me A up the hill to Sacred Heart Convent and brought me back down alive.
    For maybe Jesus did not take my bait, but them Sisters tried to cram me right down whole.
    You ever see a walleye strike so bad the lure is practically out its back end before you reel it in? That is what they done with me. I don’t like to make that low comparison, but I have seen a walleye do that once. And it’s the same attempt as Sister Leopolda made to get me in her clutch.
    I had the mail-order Catholic soul you get in a girl raised out in the bush, whose only thought is getting into town. For Sunday Mass is the only time my father brought his children in except for school, when we were harnessed. Our soul went cheap. We were so anxious to get there we would have walked in on our hands and knees. We just craved going to the store, slinging bottle caps in the dust, making fool eyes at each other. And of course we went to church.
    Where they have the convent is on top of the highest hill, so that from its windows the Sisters can be looking into the marrow of the town.
    Recently a windbreak was planted before the bar “for the purposes of tornado insurance.” Don’t tell me that. That poplar stand was put up to hide the drinkers as they get the transformation. As they are served into the beast of their burden.
    While they’re drinking, that body comes upon them, and then they stagger or crawl out the bar door, pulling a weight they can’t move past the poplars. They don’t want no holy witness to their fall.
    Anyway, I climbed. That was a long-ago day. There was a road then for wagons that wound in ruts to the top of the hill where they had their buildings of painted brick. Gleaming white. So white the sun glanced off in dazzling display to set forms whirling behind your eyelids. The face of God you could hardly look at.
    But that day it drizzled, so I could look all I wanted. I saw the homelier side. The cracked whitewash and swallows nesting in IL list the busted ends of eaves. I saw the boards sawed the size of broken windowpanes and the fruit trees, stripped. Only the tough wild rhubarb flourished. Goldenrod rubbed up their walls. It was a poor convent. I didn’t see that then but I know that now. Compared to others it was humble, ragtag, out in the middle of no place. It was the end of the world to some. Where the maps stopped. Where God had only half a hand in the creation.
    Mere the Dark One had put in thick bush, liquor, wild dogs, and Indians.
    I heard later that the Sacred Heart Convent was a catchall place for nuns that don’t get along elsewhere. Nuns that complain too much or lose their mind. I’ll always wonder now, after hearing that, where they picked up Sister Leopolda. Perhaps she had scarred someone else, the way she left a mark on me. Perhaps she was just sent around to test her Sisters’ faith, here and there, like the spot-checker in a factory. For she was the definite most-hard trial to anyone’s endurance, even when they started out with veils of wretched love upon their