The Antelope Wife by Louise Erdrich Read Free Book Online Page A

the elders had suffered in those schools remained forever within them unsolved. In the evenings, by kerosene lantern light, the children worked regularly at their lessons. During the days, their mothers educated their children in all that was Ojibwe, all that they needed to survive. In this way, the family escaped many of the harms around them. They kept to themselves, rarely walked into town. They spent their time together and made themselves mute around others so as not to draw unnecessary attention. Augustus was anxious also to preserve his privacy from any who might guess that he was not legally married to either one of the women he lived with. He feared that his standing at the bank would suffer. But since no white people ever visited, nobody really understood that Mary and Zosie were different people. The two of them never appeared in the town together.
    Occasionally, people did try to visit them. Old Shawano had placed his tar-paper house with a view to the small winding road that led up to it. Augustus had added a small white frame house to the same site, and so the family often had time to vanish before a visitor arrived to stand before their silent door. For a few people, though, the family stayed put. One visitor was a bachelor named Asin, Stone, and another was Bagakaapi, Sees Clear. They came originally to visit Old Shawano, but continued even after he entered the spirit world. They came for the remarkable bannocks and jellies that Victoria set before them, and they came because the children were curious and asked them questions, which they were only too happy to answer.
    Questions
    “What were we?” asked Charles. “Before this?”
    He looked down at his overalls and bare feet. Asin knew just what the boy was asking. It was summer. They sat behind the house, which did not face the lake the way white people’s houses did, but sat sideways to catch the calmer breeze and protection of the woods. There was a low bluff at the side of the lake and a path that led through it to a broad velvety beach, which today was hot and windy. The women had cut leafy poles to make a cooling arbor and an outdoor kitchen. Augustus had pegged together a plank table. The children could hear the waves from where they sat, and the searching cries of gulls.
    Zosie paddled out to an island and gathered two baskets of gull eggs. Now the eggs were boiling gently in a black iron kettle hung from a tripod on an iron hook. Zosie kept the fire low and even. Mary told her that the gulls would peck her eyes out when she was dead. Zosie shrugged and poured cups of tea.
    Asin repeated the question, with a nod significant of its complexity. Then he cried out.
    “What were we? We were warriors! The women too!”
    Zosie smiled. Asin went on. “We hunted and trapped for the fur companies. However, we understood they were trapping us the way we trapped the animals. They were using their goods as bait. They used their rum too. Rum cut with pepper, water, tobacco. One swig would make you crazy. We knew most of those traders were against us at heart, but of course we needed more territory to hunt animals. We fought our way out here from the east and encountered the powerful Bwaanag. We fought them hard and never would have beat them except the whites attacked them, too, from all sides. They had good warriors, those Bwaanag. We made a mistake not to band up with them to extinct the whiteman. Now like us they are forced to hide their eagle feathers. And it is no use to make any war parties against the Bwaanag for land, because the now the whiteman has our land and their land too.”
    Asin slapped at the cloth of his frayed pants. He looked down at his knees. “You know what we call these trousers? Giboodiyegwaazonag. Sewed up the butt. Sewed up the butt! We had freedom once!”
    “Freedom of the butt?” asked Booch, and the children rolled with laughter, the women too. Asin and Bagakaapi laughed, repeated Booch’s question, then variations of the