The Dance Boots by Linda L Grover Read Free Book Online Page B

had quilts patched from pieces of men’s pants and jackets, dark wools, Girlie a flower garden of brights and pastels, ladies’ skirts and dresses. Sonny and George slept on the front room floor, but Girlie brought her quilt into the bedroom and slept with the little boys on the floor next to Maggie’s bed. For the first week after she got home from school she had followed Maggie from room to room, kitchen to front room to bedroom, as she did her work at home, cooking, cleaning, ironing, sewing, and when Maggie sat in the rocking chair, Girlie sat on the floor next to her, touching the hem of her mother’s skirt with the back of her hand or pinching it between her thumb and first finger, being Maggie’s little girl again for just a little while.
    Andre showed up one day while Maggie was at work and made himself at home. When she got home he was lying asleep on the front room floor on the wedding quilt that her mother had made them, the one she took when she left the allotment, that he must have taken off her bed, with his head on his damn jacket, and Girlie was in the kitchen slicing up some pork and lard for when he woke up. “Ai,” she thought, “sshhtaa,” and was going to say something when Girlie turned from the stove and said with a happy smile, “Look who’s here!” Maggie thought, well the children were glad to see him; he was good to the children. Why ruin it for them?
    He stayed two days and then took Sonny and George to find a ride with him back up to Mozhay Point; Maggie didn’t see them again until the end of summer when the boys walked in the frontdoor swaggering a little because they had cash money from working at the tourist stand and ricing. They had Waboos with them but not their father, whom they’d left up at Old Man Dommage’s.
GIIWE-NIIBIN: GIRLIE IN LATE SUMMER
    George came back to town from Mozhay with Mickey right before we had to go back to boarding school, which was a good thing because I didn’t want to have to go on the train by myself and then have to try to explain to Mr. McGoun where they were. It was going to be hard enough to leave Mama and the little boys, who were really old enough to go to school and really shouldn’t be left alone like that when she went to work. Mama was doing everything she could to keep those boys with her and not send them to Indian school, but I knew she was going to have to send them sometime. One night we could hear her and one of the uncles talking out in the front room, late when they thought we were asleep, me and the little boys. The big boys were outside in the backyard by the fire, so it was just Mama and Uncle Noel sitting out there, the rhythm of Ma in the rocking chair making tiny rumbles against the floorboards, once in a while Uncle Noel spitting into a tin can, very soothing it was so I was lulled almost asleep till they started talking about the little boys. Noel was saying how they needed somebody to watch them with Mama having to be at work and he didn’t see how anybody else could take them; once Indian school started the older children would be gone; Giizis really had to go to school and who could watch Biik? She couldn’t count on Henen to do it; Henen had her own troubles and needed watching herself; maybe Maggie should go home. Grandma was too sick even to leave the allotment for Duluth; she wouldn’t be able to take care of them even if Maggie sent them up to Mozhay and stayed in Duluth to work.
    â€œWho else would watch them, my girl?” he asked.
    Mama’s voice was so quiet I had to hold my breath to hear her. “I don’t know, I just don’t know,” she said.
    Biik and Giizis were scared; they pushed closer to me so that their little bodies got my sides all hot and sweaty, Biik’s eyes big so he looked like a little owl there in the dark, and Giizis trying so hard not to cry that he shook. Little brothers. I sat up on the floor