LaRose

  Brad is bending over LaRose, concerned. Why’d you do that, Buggy? He’s, like, not breathing.

  LaRose hovers, watching to see if he’ll take a breath. Freedom, buoyancy, repose. Oh yes, and take that breath before Brad gives him mouth-to-mouth. As soon as he fills his lungs, LaRose is sucked back into his body with a gentle thhhhpppp. He lies still until he’s sure he’s intact. He stands up, dusts off his pants, picks up his backpack, and leaves. He means to walk home, but Brad Morrissey insists on giving him a ride. They say not one word until the Ravich driveway.

  The way you defended your sister was awesome, says Brad.

  LaRose turns and knife-hands Brad on the nose, drawing blood. Then he gets out of the car.

  You should go out for football someday, calls Brad as he pulls out, mopping at his face. LaRose walks into the house, up the stairs to his room. He needs to be alone. Something has happened.

  THERE ARE FIVE LaRoses. First the LaRose who poisoned Mackinnon, went to mission school, married Wolfred, taught her children the shape of the world, and traveled that world as a set of stolen bones. Second, her daughter LaRose, who went to Carlisle. This LaRose got tuberculosis like her own mother, and like the first LaRose fought it off again and again. Lived long enough to become the mother of the third LaRose, who went to Fort Totten and bore the fourth LaRose, who eventually became the mother of Emmaline, the teacher of Romeo and Landreaux. The fourth LaRose also became the grandmother of the last LaRose, who was given to the Ravich family by his parents in exchange for a son accidentally killed.

  In all of these LaRoses there was a tendency to fly above the earth. They could fly for hours when the right songs were drummed and sung to support them. Those songs are now waiting in the leaves, half lost, but the drumming of the water drum will never be lost. This ability to fly went back to the first LaRose, whose mother taught her to do it when her name was still Mirage, and who had learned this from her father, a jiisikid conjurer, who’d flung his spirit all the way around the world in 1798 and come back to tell his astonished drummers that it was no use, white people covered the earth like lice.

  Old Story 3

  WHAT TASTES SO good? This was the man’s wife asking.

  The blood of your husband, the snake. I have made him into broth, said the husband.

  The woman was furious and ran to the tree where her snake lived. She knocked three times, but it did not emerge and she knew it was killed. While she was gone, her husband plunged the two little boys into the ground, for safety.

  That doesn’t sound very safe, said LaRose.

  This time Ignatia didn’t answer, just kept on with the story.

  When the woman ran back, her husband cut off her head. Then he rose into the air to flee away into the sky.

  How could he do that? asked LaRose.

  In those olden old days, said Ignatia, remember, before this earth existed, those people had all kinds of power. They could talk to anything and it would answer.

  I mean how could he cut off her head, said LaRose.

  But Ignatia had resolved to ignore all questions.

  After a while, said Ignatia, the woman’s head opened its eyes.

  Scary, said LaRose, with respect.

  The head asked the dish where her children were. She asked all of the belongings in the lodge, but they would not tell. At last a stone did tell her that her husband had sunk the children into the earth, and that now they were fleeing underground. The stone said that he had given them four things—power to make a river, fire, a mountain, a forest of thorns.

  So the head began to follow those children. It cried out, My children, wait for me! You are making me cry by leaving me!

  Ignatia’s voice was wicked and wheedling. LaRose looked aghast but leaned closer.

  Really scary, he said. Keep going.

  The little boy was riding on his big brother’s back, and he kept telling his little brother that the head was not really their mother. Yes it is! Yes it is! said the little brother.

  My children, my dear children, do not leave me behind, called the head. I beg you!

  The little brother wanted to go back to the mother, but the older brother took a piece of punk wood and threw it behind him, calling out, Let there be fire! Far and wide, a fire blazed. But the head kept rolling through fire and began to catch up with them.

  The boy threw down a thorn. At once a forest of thorns sprang up, and this time the rolling head was really blocked. But the head called to the brother of the snake, the Great Serpent, and that serpent bit through those thorn trees and made a passage. So it managed to catch up with him.

  The brother threw down a stone and up sprang a vast mountain. Yet that rolling head got a beaver with iron teeth to chew down that mountain, and it kept on pursuing the children.

  The brothers were very tired by now and threw down a skin of water to make a river. By mistake it landed not behind them, but in front of them. Now they were trapped.

  LaRose nodded, caught in the story.

  But the Great Serpent took pity on them and let them onto his back. They went across the river. When the rolling head reached the river, it begged to be carried across. The Great Serpent allowed the head to roll onto its back, but halfway across the serpent dumped it off.

  Sturgeon will be your name, said the Great Serpent. The head became the first sturgeon.

  What is a sturgeon? asked LaRose.

  It’s an ugly kind of fish, said Ignatia. Those fish were the buffalo of our people once. They still have them up in the big northern lakes and the rivers.

  Okay, said LaRose. So that’s the end?

  No. Those two boys wandered around and by accident, the younger boy was left behind. He was all alone.

  Now I must turn into a wolf, said the little boy.

  That’s interesting, said LaRose. Just to become a wolf.

  When his older brother found him, then the two walked together. This older brother became a being who could do many things—some places he is known as Wishketchahk, some as Nanabozho, and he has other names. He was kind of foolish, but also very wise, and his little brother the wolf was always by his side. He made the first people, Anishinaabeg, the first humans.

  Huh, said LaRose. So what’s the moral of this story?

  Moral? Our stories don’t have those!

  Ignatia puffed her cheeks in annoyance.

  They call this an origin story, said Malvern, also annoyed, but precise.

  Like, ah, like Genesis, said Ignatia. But there’s lots more that happens, including a little muskrat who makes the earth.

  And our Nanabozho, he’s like their Jesus, said Malvern.

  Kind of like Jesus, said Ignatia. But always farting.

  So the rolling head’s like his mom, Mary? And this whole story is like the first story in the Bible?

  You could say that.

  So our Mary is a rolling head.

  A vicious rolling head, said Ignatia.

  We are so cool, said LaRose. Still, getting chased like that. Maybe caught. Maybe slammed on the ground. Getting your wind knocked out.

  It is about getting chased, said Ignatia, with a long suck on her oxygen. We are chased into this life. The Catholics think we are chased by devils, original sin. We are chased by things done to us in this life.

  That’s called trauma, said Malvern.

  Thank you, said Ignatia. We are chased by what we do to others and then in turn what they do to us. We’re always looking behind us, or worried about what comes next. We only have this teeny moment. Oops, it’s gone!

  What’s gone?

  Now. Oops, gone again.

  Ignatia and Marvern laughed until Ignatia gasped for breath. Oops! Oops! Slippery!

  What’s gone?

  Now.

  Oops, laughed LaRose, slipped past!

  And then, just like that, Ignatia died. She gave them a glowing look and her feet kicked straight out. Her head fell back. Her jaw relaxed. Malvern leaned over and with her nurse’s paw pressed the puls
e on Ignatia’s neck. Malvern looked aside, frowning, waiting, and at last took her hand from Ignatia’s throat, pushed Ignatia’s jaw back up, and pulled down her eyelids. She then cradled Ignatia’s hand.

  Take her other hand, said Malvern. She’s starting out on her journey now. Remember everything I say, LaRose. This will be your job sometime.

  Malvern talked to Ignatia, telling her the directions, how to take the first steps, how to look to the west, where to find the road, and not to bother taking anyone along. She said that everybody, even herself, Malvern, who had never told her, loved Ignatia very much. They held Ignatia’s hands for a long time, quietly, until the hands were no longer warm. Still, LaRose felt her presence in the room.

  She’ll be around here for a while more, said Malvern. I’m going to get her friends so they can say good-bye too. You go on home now.

  LaRose placed Ignatia’s hand upon the armrest of her chair. He put on his coat, walked out the door, down the hall. He went through the airlock doors, then out the double front doors, into the navy-blue frost-haloed air. He was supposed to meet his mother at the school, so he walked along the gravel road and crossed the uncertain pavement, the buckled curb. The cold flowed around him and down the neck of his jacket. His ears stung, but he didn’t put his hood up. He moved his fingers, shoved in his pockets. There were so many sensations in his body that he couldn’t feel them all at once, and each, as soon as he felt it, slipped away into the past.

  THE PICTURE DIAGRAM on Romeo’s wall was slowly taking shape, with bits of information plucked forward or pushed back. Romeo’s television had lost sound, but no matter. He only watched the mouths move and read the closed captions. It was better because otherwise their voices, the emphasis they put on certain words, could distort his thinking. He still liked the word yellowcake, and the unknowable place it was from. Niger! But already they were past that. As bright October shifted to the leafless icy dark of November, there was scarier talk of weapons of mass destruction.

  Oh please! Everybody in North Dakota lived next door to a weapon of mass destruction. Right down the road, a Minuteman missile stored in its underground silo was marked only by a square of gravel and a chain-link fence above. You passed, wondering who was down there, deep and solitary, insane of course, staring at a screen the way Romeo was staring now, at the mouth of Condoleezza Rice and knowing, as nobody else but Romeo knew, that this was a hungry woman who strictly controlled her appetites. This was a woman so much more intelligent than any of the men around her that she played them with her concert hands like chopsticks on her piano. Even Bulgebrow Cheney with his frighteningly bad teeth—and he must have millions so why could he not get new teeth—even Cheney was her mental slave. Didn’t know it, but he was. Her eyes glittered. Her mouth a deep blood red. She had no feelings for any man. She ate them. Talked of rods. Smoking guns.

  Romeo adored her.

  Of them all, she was the smartest and most presidential. Could they see it?

  From his pockets, he emptied the night’s take onto a cafeteria tray. He went through it meticulously now, pushed aside tiny blue pills, fat white pills, round green pills, oval pink pills. He was quite sure that another clue was hidden in the story he’d heard just that evening about the way a person bled to death from only surface wounds. That fit into the findings somehow. A tack. A placement. A string that would attach the phrase and the possible meaning. He’d cross-medicate, then medicate. It was beautiful, like an art project, this thing he was doing.

  MAGGIE BADGERED HER mother into teaching her how to drive to school. Nola instantly got used to it. Every morning, after her father left, Maggie went out and started the Jeep. Nola put a long puffy coat on over her robe, thrust her sleepy bare feet into Peter’s felt-lined Sorels. With a thermos go-cup of coffee in hand, she settled comfortably into the passenger’s seat. LaRose took the backseat. On the half-hour drive, it was Nola’s job to make encouraging noises and dial through the radio channels, finding the Hallelujah stations. Rush rants. Perky pop and stolid farm reports. It woke Nola up, freed her from the sticky webs of benzodiazepines. The radio and its familiar chaos flipped a pleasure switch in Maggie’s brain. Because she had her mother belted in safe beside her and LaRose safe in back, because she was in charge, she was light with relief. She hummed and tapped her fingers on the wheel. Through snow, through black ice, slippery cold rain, Maggie was a fully confident and careful driver.

  When she got to the school drop-off, her mother kissed her dreamily, then walked around to slip behind the wheel and drive home. Maggie let her go. She let LaRose go. She walked down the high school hallway, flipped her hair, and now said hi to many girls. She called home sometimes, from the school office, just to hear her mother’s voice. On one hand, Maggie was now a stable, caring, overprotective daughter—adjusting slowly to the fear smother of her mother’s fragility. On the other, she was still a piece of work.

  A disciplined piece of work.

  She was cute in an early-supermodel-Cheryl-Tiegs way except her hair was dark, her eyes either gold or black, and except that sometimes there was hot contempt in her skewed gaze. She made it her business to study boys. How their heads, hearts, and bodies worked. She didn’t want one, but she could see herself controlling one. Maybe each of the so-called Fearsome Four, hunt them down, skewer their hearts. Have them for lunch although she was trying to be a vegetarian—because good for the skin. She was strict with herself.

  Somehow, hulky Waylon got past all that. He stood by her locker and watched her exchange a set of books—morning books for afternoon books.

  So are you okay here? Anybody bothering you?

  She found it surprising that he would ask her this question, and weirder than that, she answered yes. Though nobody had bothered her at all.

  Waylon’s interestingly lush features focused. He had an Elvis-y face, which Maggie knew only because Snow actually liked that old music. He was thick and broad, with soft skin over cruel football muscle. His hands were innocent, expressive, almost teacherly. His summer football practice crew cut was growing out into a thick fuzzy allover cap of furlike hair. He was taller than Josette but not quite as tall as Snow. Maggie stared at his hair intently, then decided that she liked his hair, a lot.

  Waylon’s look had turned somber.

  Who? he said at last.

  What?

  Who bothered you?

  It wasn’t kids here, said Maggie. It was kids at my old school.

  He nodded gravely, without speaking. He let his face talk, lowering his brows to let her know he was waiting for more. Maggie liked that, too.

  There’s some guys, call themselves the Fearsome Four?

  Waylon’s jaw slid sideways and his teeth came out sharply, gripping his bottom lip. He leaned his head to the side and squinted his sleepy eyes.

  Ohhh yeahhh, he drawled. I know those guys.

  Those guys bothered me real bad, said Maggie with a comfortable, bright smile. Especially Buggy. Wanna walk me to class?

  Waylon swayed slightly as he walked, as if his heavy body needed to be set upright after every step. With Maggie beside him, so tensely pretty and purposeful, people looking at them, shy pleasure made him blush.

  Whenever Nola and Peter had gone to teacher conferences at Maggie’s school in Pluto, it was the same: careless homework, trouble in the classroom, mouthing off, probably she wrote the c-word in a bathroom stall. However, test scores always perfect. That meant she was smart enough to change her behavior, if she wanted to. Clearly it was all on purpose, said her teachers. Peter had always left Maggie’s classroom gasping for control. Nola was silent, clutching his arm, her lips moving. They would walk unsteadily down the hall. After LaRose started school in Pluto, however, LaRose’s teachers had consistently erased Maggie’s distressing reviews.

  Ah, LaRose! Maybe not an A student, but a worker, quiet, and so kind. Respectful, easygoing, pleasant, a little shy. Those eyelashes! What a sweet boy. Dreamy sometimes. And accomplished! He could draw anything h
e wanted. Sang, off-key but with expression. A talent show favorite with Johnny Cash tunes, the boy in black. Just a love, the teachers gushed, he makes it all worthwhile. They knew the teachers meant worthwhile dealing with Maggie, how the struggle for her soul was worth the effort once they got to LaRose.

  Maybe things would be different now that Maggie was in ninth grade. Now that she had more freedom. Now that her whole other family—Hollis, Snow, Josette, Willard, and LaRose—was in her new school also.

  Peter and Nola each ate a tasteless cookie from the plates set out in the hallway. They sipped scorched coffee waiting for the first teacher to finish with the parents before them. At last they entered the classroom.

  If she’s trying to find her footing here by kicking in doors, that’s not an appropriate choice, said Germaine Miller, English teacher.

  I am trying my hardest not to fail her, because I can tell she’s bright, said Social Studies.

  If only she would do her homework! Cal Dorfman shook his head over math scores.

  Nola explained that Maggie did math homework every night. Peter said he’d even tried to check it but she was so independent now. The three looked from one to another in distress. The teacher sighed and said that Maggie probably didn’t turn her homework in because she lacked organizational skills. From now on he would stop the class every day until she coughed up a homework paper. So it went.

  Except for Physical Science. Mr. Hossel gave a pallid smile when they introduced themselves. But Mr. Hossel was already talking about what a hardworking daughter they had and how they must be extremely proud of her deductive skills, her logical mind, her disciplined approach to handing in homework and how well she worked on group projects. She seemed fascinated by the laws of motion, for instance, and she was excellent at calculating speed.

  Nola gaped, Peter flushed. Mr. Hossel grew more animated.

  She is super eloquent describing the electromagnetic spectrum, he cried.

  We are Maggie Ravich’s parents, they reminded Mr. Hossel.