LaRose (20 page)

MRS. PEACE POINTED
to the sweating, crying grimace face on the illustrated list the nurse put in front of her. It was a pain chart.

Real bad, huh?

I have a lot of pain, Mrs. Peace said, a lot of pain. And I was doing so good with no attacks! Now I don’t even remember where I put my patches. I thought they were right here, in the bottom of my papers. In my tin.

Where does it hurt? asked the nurse on duty that afternoon.

Here, here, and here. And my head.

This will help you.

That’s a shot?

And your usual, your patch. Remember, you have to guard these things. We can keep them locked up in the safe, at the desk.

I’ll just keep one, for emergency.

Good, okay. But remember not to let anybody else take them, use them. They are a hundred times stronger than morphine, right? Morphine.

That’s what it takes.

Now you’ll sleep.

I’d rather stay here, in my recliner. She’ll come and visit me.

Who?

My mother.

Oh, I see.

You’re smiling. I see your smile. But it is true, she will come. After all these years, they finally let her visit me.

I wrote our name everywhere, said LaRose to her mother. LaRose and LaRose and LaRose going on forever. I was proud of my penmanship, and careful with every letter. I wrote my name in hidden places they would never see. I wrote my name for all of us. I made my name perfect, the letters curved in Palmer A+. Once, I carved my name in wood so that it could never be erased. Even if they painted over the letters you could still read it. LaRose.

Faintly, in the girls’ dormitory at Fort Totten. On the top of a wooden door, the underside of chairs, on the shelves of the basement storage room where I was locked up once for sassing. Number 2 lead government-issue BIA pencil, in a notebook, stored now in the National Archives in Kansas City. On a mopboard, inside a cupboard, on top of a closet door in Stephan. Underneath a desk at Marty, and a chalkboard rail. Scratched into a brick grown over with grass at the old powerhouse in Wahpeton. Chamberlain. Flandreau. Fort Totten and Fort Totten. We left our name in those schools and others, all the way back to the first school, Carlisle. For the history of LaRose is tied up in those schools. Yes, we wrote our name in places it would never be found until the building itself was torn down or burned so that all the sorrows and strivings those walls held went up in flames, and the smoke drifted home.

DOUGIE VEDDAR HAD
an older brother, and his brother had friends. They weren’t in the same K–6 school but in the junior high, which was connected to the high school. Tyler Veddar, Curtains Peace, Brad Morrissey, and Jason “Buggy” Wildstrand tried to call themselves the Fearsome Four. Until later, it never caught on, except as a joke. At present, they were skinny, soft, and hadn’t got their growth. Mainly they played video games and fooled around with Curtains’s guitars,
left to him by his brother. They had a songbook but didn’t know what the markings meant or how to tune their instruments. Their noise was good, they thought. Dougie told his brother how Maggie had tried murder on him. Tyler told his friends and they kept their eyes out for the right chance to get her. Nothing happened. After school, she always took the bus. And then because she got a part as a singing mushroom in the play and stayed after, she had to be picked up.

One day they lucked out because her mother was late.

Maggie was walking in a circle, fuming, kicking up leaves. It was cold, clammy, wet outside. She didn’t like it. Tyler came by and said in a nice voice, You okay? He was that much older she didn’t recognize him.

No, said Maggie. My mom’s late.

We live over there. He pointed at the garage where they hung out. Me and my bros. You wanna come hang out until your mom gets here? You can see from the side window.

I dunno, Maggie said.

My mom’s there.

Okay.

She followed him to the garage and they went inside. There were Tyler’s friends. They stood around awkwardly, then Tyler said, Wanna sit on the couch? As soon as Maggie sat down, she knew this was bad. They jammed in beside her, pinning her, and Tyler said, You tried to kill Dougie. Then he and the other boys started putting their hands all over her. Their fingers went straight to her non-breasts and poked into her Tuesday panties. They dog-piled her, their grubby paws pinching, prodding, prying her apart. She had a fainting feeling, like she was weak and drained of all her strength. A floating grief came over her like a soft veil. Her head buzzed. But the fingers moved still harder and a hot burn hit her gut. She shrieked. When Tyler tried to cover her mouth, she bit down on his finger until she tasted blood. Buggy pushed her back in the cushions and she screamed louder, slammed her knees into his crotch so hard he yipped and howled like a puppy. Curtains tried to keep a hold but
her thumbs went out and jabbed his eyeballs. He fell back, yelling he was blinded, and she jumped toward a guitar, swung it up against Brad’s face. She knocked him against the wall. He curled his arms around his head.

Buggy was curled in a corner, bawling. Brad was wheezing. They were all in trauma.

Boys? Boys? You hungry? The mother out the back door.

Naaah! called Tyler.

The boys, except for Buggy, still curled on the floor, stood panting, staring at one another, in a circle.

Finally Tyler said, Fuck, that was amazing. Hey, Maggie, we need a front man. We need a girl. Wanna join our band?

Join? Maggie tossed her hair, inching backward. Straightened her clothes. Adrenaline was wearing off and common fright was telling her to find the door.

We’ll tell if you don’t join, said Tyler.

She stepped to the door, opened it. Rage whirled around her like a burning hula hoop.

Tell? Tell? Go ahead. You know Landreaux who killed my brother? Well, he’s my stepfather now. He’ll hunt every one of you down. He’ll shoot your heads off. Bye.

Maggie ran back to the corner where she was supposed to meet her mother. The car was pulling up.

Sorry I was late, honey. Did you get bored?

Shut up, said Maggie.

Shut up? Shut up? Is that any way . . .

Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Maggie shrieked.

She ran straight into the house, into her room. Slammed the door. After a while she sneaked out to go to the bathroom. Then in the hallway LaRose came up behind her.

Quit following me around, brat, Maggie said.

Her head felt funny, like what those boys did sucked her brains
out. Their touching hands were gross and left germs of stupidness. She wanted to wash and wash.

Little asshole. She nearly slapped LaRose.

But she couldn’t hold on to the bitchiness. LaRose was so frustrating, melting her with nothing particular except he never hurt
anything.
It got dark early, so Maggie and LaRose went downstairs to see if there was food. They ate some ice cream.

Maggie poured a can of Dad’s beer into the dog’s water bowl. He walked over and sniffed it suspiciously, but the smell was good. He lapped it up. She poured him another. He liked that one too. Then he got a smashed look on his face, walked head-on into the closed glass doors, and fell over. LaRose slid open the doors and helped the dog outside.

Poor stupid dog, said Maggie.

The dog walked in circles and fell off the deck. LaRose sat down in the cold grass with him and cradled its head in his lap. The dog was panting, his eyes were glassy, but his snarl could have been a smile. Maggie sat shivering on a deck chair looking down at them.

The dog whimpered, a drunk dog whimper.

You need coffee, said LaRose. The dog didn’t move; slobber dripped until the dog’s breath bubbled all over LaRose’s hands and legs.

Maggie watched, admiring LaRose because of the way he let the dog slobber on him. And he was always like that. There was the way he always captured spiders, never squashed them, calmed hens before they had to be killed, saved bats, observed but never drowned hills of ants, brought stunned birds to life.

Nola said her Catholic grace before dinner. A thought nagged at Maggie. She looked at LaRose, who was studying his food. He was like that monk in the brown robe, Francis. The animals came to LaRose and laid themselves down at his feet. They were drawn to him, knowing they would be saved.

This thought was erased by the way her mother chewed. Actually, it was everything about the way her mother ate. She was
already furious with her mother for being late. For putting her life in danger from those maggots. Maggie tried to turn away, to pretend her mother did not exist. But she couldn’t help watch. Nola poked her fork into one green bean, then raised it to her mouth. Sometimes Nola would look around the table to see if anyone else in the family was eating a green bean at the exact same time. At this moment, she was alone with her bean. Nola caught her daughter’s look of contempt. Surprised, she opened her mouth, bared her lips, and snatched the green bean off the fork with her teeth.

Maggie whipped her head back. How could she? How on this fucking earth? The teeth, the teeth, scraping the fork. The metal-on-enamel click. Maggie felt a sodden roar rising. She stared down at her plate, at the green beans, and tried to counsel her hatred to get behind her, like Satan, as hunky old Father Travis had suggested when Nola dragged her to confession that one time.

She took a deep breath. She picked up one green bean with her fingers. Nobody noticed. It took six hand-plucked green beans, a casual,
Hey, hey Mom!
Then a provocative mad flare of her eyes as she chomped green beans off her fingers, then the freakish grin that always got a rise.

Nola sat back, her fork half raised. She emitted a blistering wave of force.

This is how you eat a bean, Maggie, she said. Then she lifted the fork, bared her lips, scraped the bean off the fork with her teeth.

Maggie looked straight at her and mouthed words that only Nola, only her mother, could see:
You are disgusting.

What’s happening? cried Peter, feeling the soundless screech, missing the lip sync.

The dog dry-heaved in the corner.

LaRose took the bowl and scooped the last of the green beans onto his plate. He ate them fast. He glanced over, worried, but the dog had quietly passed out.

Nola’s face darkened. She was panting hard now, with the
shut ups
adding to the
you are disgusting.
Maggie leaned her chair back, satisfied. She excused herself and sauntered up the stairs. Nola’s eyes followed her daughter, sour death rays. She had raised a monster whom she hated with all the black oils of her heart but whom she also loved with a deadly confused despair. Quietly, sinking back into her chair, she experimentally ate a green bean off the end of her fork. Neither Peter nor LaRose seemed to notice. So it wasn’t her? She was not disgusting? A tear dropped on her plate.

Peter saw another tear plunk. Are you okay?

Somebody told me today? said LaRose.

Peter put his arm around Nola, just held her. He was getting good at that.

Told you what?

They said, Your mother’s beautiful.

Nola smiled a wan, bewildered smile.

Before he’d spoken, LaRose had made sure Maggie was shut in her room. This was so awkward for him always to be caught between the two—he had confided in Josette. She had told him it was awkward. She told him that for one thing, Maggie had some kind of grief disorder, probably, that made her act out. It’s us who should adopt her, said Snow. We love her, but she’s hard. Also there were communication problems at her house. Josette said it was very common at her age, the mother-daughter thing. She and Snow and their mom were lucky because Emmaline had given birth young and also she was kind of a ding like the two of them and not trying to be so goody-goody and above them. Whatever works, do it, Josette said, but I feel sorry for you because it is awkward.

Maggie slipped into his room that night. She had been lying in her room—cooling off after another hot, hot shower. She had started to cry, alone. It was okay alone. But she still cut off the crying as quickly as she could, to toughen herself. She was a wolf, a wounded wolf. She’d sink her teeth in those boys’ throats. Her thoughts returned
to how the animals were drawn to LaRose. She would trust her paw to his boy hand.

Move over, she whispered, and popped under his quilt.

Her hot feet on his shins.

I gotta ask you something. Her nose was still plugged by the unwilled crying. Her face was swollen. But his skin cooled the soles of her feet.

Please, LaRose. Don’t laugh. I’m gonna ask you something serious.

Okay.

What would you do if boys jumped me, if they touched me and stuff, all over, in a bad way.

I would make them die, said LaRose.

Do you think you could?

I would figure it out.

Could a saint kill for love?

Saints have superpowers, said LaRose.

Do you think you’re a saint?

No.

I think you are, said Maggie.

She rolled over, stared at the crack of dim light underneath the door. It was a cool night. The warmth of him suffused the bed. The itchy, dirty, cooty-fingered film on her skin dispersed. The roiling craziness her mother caused with her chewing habits dissipated. Everything bad was drawn into the gentle magnetism of the bedsheets. She began to drift.