O
now What should I think first? It seemed like it didn’t matter.
So I didn’t know what to think, because of course I knew it mattered, and yet there was nothing to think about. I remembered how Mary Bonne, who lived in town, found her husband in their own bed with a La Chien woman. She went back in her kitchen, took a knife off the wall, and even thought to sharpen the blade on her stone before she went back and cut them. She only gave them a few cuts, but there was blood. I thought the sight of Lamartine’s blood would do me good. I saw her face, painted up and bold, and I thought I would cut it right off her neck.
Yet really, I wasn’t angry. I didn’t even feel like I was inside my body. For I fed the child until it was full and slept, a dead weight I could in my arms, and I never noticed. I was wondering how raise the children without their father. I thought of Eli, how he had gone quieter and hardly came out of the woods anymore. He would not come around. He never thought of women. He was like a shy animal himself when he got trapped in a house.
Then I said right out loud in that bedroom,
“He’s a man!”
But that didn’t make any sense. It meant nothing. That all men were like Nector wasn’t true. I thought of Henry Lamartme.
Before he was killed on the tracks, he surely knew that his wife went with anybody in the bushes. When she had the boys, all colors of humans, he could tell they were not his. He took care of them. I understood Henry, and I felt for him as I sat. I knew why he had parked his Dodge square on the tracks and let the train bear down. I He must have loved her. But I wouldn’t park myself on the tracks for Nector.
“I’d see him in hell first,” I said to the room. I realized the child was very heavy and put him on the bed. My arms ached.
My throat was tight and dry. I saw that Patsy had come in the door and thrown herself on the bed, limp and exhausted as a doll made of rags.
She was sleeping too. The afternoon was getting on, and I was still sitting there without having thought what I should do next.
“I should peel the potatoes,” I told myself No doubt they would bring in a duck at least.
So I went in the kitchen and sat down with a bowl of potatoes.
I had peeled enough potatoes in my life so far to feed every man, woman, child of the Chippewas. Still I had more of them to go.
It was calming to remove the rough skin, the eye sprouts, and get down to the smooth whiteness. I ate a raw slice. I would eat a raw potato like some people ate an apple. Zelda helped me cook at night.
She would fry up the potatoes. After I peeled enough of them I went to the door and called her.
And then, when she never answered, I knew that she was gone. I knew that she read the letter. She had gone after Nector.
It wasn’t hard to figure. What else would she do?
I went back in the house and sat down with the potatoes, and I cursed the girl for doing what she did. I should have done it. I should have gone to Lamartine’s and dragged him out of her bed and beat him hard with a stick. And after I beat him and he was lying on the floor, I should have turned around and made the Lamartine miserable.
Yet in time, as I calmed down, I knew I’d thought better of going there for a reason. A good reason. The letter said that he loved her.
I began peeling more potatoes, I don’t know what for, but now I’d struck the comfortless heart I could not ignore. He loved the Lamartine, which was different from all the other things he did that caused me shame and disconvenienced my life. Him loving her, him finding true love with her, was what drove me to peel all the potatoes in that house.
I heard Aurelia, June, and the boys coming in the yard, fighting over whose turn it was to clean the birds. I guess they all cleaned their goose. I heard them behind the barn for a while. I put some potatoes on to boil. My hands hurt, full of acids, blistered by the knife. I was like a person in a dream, but my oldest boy never noticed.
Gordle came in with a tough goose.
“It should have flew higher than that,” he said. “I got it on the wing.
He looked around at the dish pans and the washtubs of peeled potatoes.
Three empty gunnysacks were laying on the floor, crumpled like drawers a man had stepped out of in haste.
“Why’d you do that?” he said.
I only looked at him. I shrugged. He shrugged. He was Nector’s son. I thought to myself, he wouldn’t go after Nector and bring him home. I was sure Gordie wouldn’t do that, even though, like with Zelda, there was a time we had been in the same body. He wouldn’t go, even though I had nursed him. We were closer when I carried him, when we never knew each other, I thought now. I did not trust him.
“It’s too hot in here for more fire,” I said. “Make one outside and roast your birds. I’m washing my floor.”
“At night?” he said, The sun was going down very fast.
“You heard me.”
He went out and made a fire in the backyard where we had an old field stone range made to cook on in the summer. They all stayed out there. I fed Patsy a mashed potato. I fed her milk. I let the baby play and roll across theflOOL I sat and watched them while I decided how I would wash the flOOL I looked at my linoleum carefully, all the worn spots and cracks, all the places where the tin stripping had to be hammered flat. It was one of my prides to keep that floor shined up.
Under the gray swirls and spots and leaves of the pattern, I knew there was tarpaper and bare wood that could splinter a baby’s feet. I knew, because I bought and paid for and put down that linoleum myself. It was a good solid covering, but under it the boards creaked.
V,j There wasn’t any use in thinking. I put the baby to sleep. I filled the tin bucket with hot water and spirits. I hauled the potatoes out of my way. Then I took up my brush. Outside they were talking.
They had a fire. They could stay there. I never went down on my knees to God or anyone, so maybe washing my floor was an excuse to kneel that night. I felt better, that’s all I know, as I scrubbed off the tarnished wax and dirt. I felt better as I recognized myself in the woman who kept her floor clean even when left by her husband.
I had been on a high horse. Now I was kneeling. I was washing the floor in my good purple dress. I never did laugh at myself in any situation, but I had to laugh now. I thought of cutting up a shroud.
The nun was clever. She knew where my weakness had been.
But I was not going under, even if he left me. I could leave off my fear of ever being a Lazarre. I could leave off my fear, even of losing Nector, since he was gone and I was able to scrub down the floor.
I took my wax. I started polishing a little at a time.
Love had turned my head away from what was going on between my husband and Lamartine. There was something still left that Nector could hurt me with, and now I hurt for love and not because the old hens would squawk.
They would say Marie Kashpaw was down in the dirt. They would say how her husband had left her for dirt. They would say I got all that was coming, head so proud. But I would not care if Marie Kashpaw had to wear an old shroud. I would not care if Lulu I.Amartine ended up the wife of the chairman of the Chippewa Tribe. I’d still be Marie.
Marie. Star of the Sea! I’d shine when they stripped off the wax!
I had to laugh. I heard the dogs. I had waxed myself up to the table.
I knew that I was hearing Nector and Zelda come home, walking in the yard. I wrung my rag out. I had waxed myself in. I __mow thought of the letter in my pocket. Then I thought very suddenly of what this Marie who was interested in holding on to Nector should do.
I took the letter. I did what I never would expect of myself. I lifted the sugar ‘ar to put the letter back. Then I thought. I put the sugar down and picked up the can of salt. This was much more something I would predict of Marie.