The old marriage from perma red 26767

Exemple de page de The old marriage from perma red

The Old Marriage

from Perma Red
by Debra Magpie Earling

ISBN: 039914899X

Location: Flathead Indian Reservation
Louise and Yellow Knife

When Louise White Elk was nine, Baptiste Yellow Knife blew a fine powder in her face and told her she would disappear. She sneezed until her nose bled, and Baptiste gave her his handkerchief. She had to lie down on the school floor and tilt back her head and even then it wouldn't stop. She felt he had opened the river to her heart. The cloth he had given her was wet with her blood. She felt hot and sleepy. Sister Thomas Bernard pulled her up and told her to go to the bathroom and wash her face. Sister pinched the bridge of Louise's nose. Louise kept the handkerchief pressed to her face, embarrassed by all the attention she was getting. She could feel her blood cool in slow streams between her fingers. She remembered at one point Baptiste Yellow Knife had knelt down beside her. Her head was empty. She imagined the veins in her temples quivering. Her skin draining color. Her face glowing, a candlelit egg. Suffering. A saint. Awkward Baptiste. Pigeon-toed and dusty Baptiste was kneeling beside her cradling her head with his cool, dry hands, his voice tickling her ears. He was leaning over her, whispering to her, whispering a story. His voice was in her ear. She felt Sister Bernard pull Baptiste away from her. The back of her head danced with silver stars and Louise fell back into dreaming, a snagged fish released again to water.

Grandma squeezed her hand as she blinked awake. Louise's hands were cold. "We got this back," Grandma said. She held up the handkerchief that Baptiste had given her. It was crumpled, stiff and black with her blood. Louise didn't understand at first and then she remembered Baptiste standing close as the school nurse lifted her into the car. He shyly asked the nurse for his handkerchief back. As they pulled out of the school yard, Baptiste smiled at Louise and lifted his bloody handkerchief up so she could see all he had taken from her.

Her grandmother had told her to stay away from him. He was the son of Dirty Swallow, the rattlesnake woman. Baptiste Yellow Knife's mother could direct the rattlers to do her bidding. Last summer a rattler had tapped the back of her grandmother's skirt as she sat on the stick-game lines. Her grandmother had won too much of Dirty Swallow's money, and she wanted it back. Now the son of Dirty Swallow wanted something from Louise.

There was something about Baptiste. Baptiste was from the old ways and everybody hoped he would be different from his mother. He knew things without being told. He knew long before anyone else when the first camas had sprouted. He would inform his mother the night before the flower would appear and he was always right. He knew stories no one but the eldest elder knew but he knew the stories without being told. "He knows these things," her grandmother had said, "because the spirits tell him. He is the last of our old ones, and he is dangerous."

On the day Louise's great-grandmother had died Baptiste foretold her death. It was in the spring, on a day so clear clouds faded overhead like wide ghosts. Louise's great-grandfather was branding horses in the high field and, she remembered, Baptiste had come over with his grandfather to watch. Louise was six years old at the time but she still remembered Baptiste, because it was one of the few times she had seen him out of school then. But she remembered him most because of what had happened that day. And that day Louise sat up on the hillside with her mother, her grandmother, and Old Macheese - her great-grandmother. Louise thought at first Baptiste was frightened of Old Macheese and had chosen to sit away from her.

Old Macheese had survived everything, even smallpox, but her grandmother said her face had always been pitted. Louise could still remember Old Macheese's face, places where disease had died beneath her skin, bruised places where the blood had pooled for good. Old Macheese liked to rub her knuckles down Louise's spine, liked to laugh at her when she tripped or cried, whenever she hurt herself. And after the old woman died Louise's grandmother had told her Old Macheese was just that way, mean.