I like this, said Maggie, almost shy with delight. She stretched her hand out for her purple polka-dotted fingernails to catch the light.
What do you mean you took care of it? said Josette. You beat that kid up?
He had to be revived, said Maggie in a modest way.
For real?
Did you get in trouble?
Not that time. If I do get in trouble, I can handle it.
Josette nodded at Snow. She can do the time, ayyyy. She’s looking out for our baby brother, no shit, she’s for real.
If we were all a family it would be much better, Maggie said. You guys could sleep over.
Noooo, Josette smiled. Just that we’re too old.
We could have the same tattoos then, Maggie said. I know how to give them.
Whoa, hold on! The girls collapsed, laughing.
I just sharpen up a pencil real fine, then pow. She made a quick stabbing motion with a pen.
Assassin! said Snow.
Coochy stuck his head in the door and made a girly face. Your dad says it’s time to go.
The girls held their arms out for hugs.
Kiss, kiss, one on each cheek, like we’re in the mafia.
WOLFRED ASKED THE girl to tell him her name. He asked in words, he asked in signs, but she wouldn’t speak. Each time they stopped, he asked. But though she smiled at him, and understood exactly what he wanted, she wouldn’t tell her name. She looked into the distance. Near morning, after they had soundly slept, she knelt near the fire to blow it back to life. All of a sudden, she went still and stared into the trees. She jutted her chin forward, then pulled back her hair and narrowed her eyes. Wolfred followed her gaze and saw it, too. Mackinnon’s head, rolling laboriously over the snow, its hair on fire, brightly twitching, flames cheerfully flickering. Sometimes it banged into a tree and whimpered. Sometimes it propelled itself along with its tongue, its slight stump of neck, or its comically paddling ears. Sometimes it whizzed along for a few feet, then quit, sobbing in frustration at its awkward, interminable progress.
The Pain Chart
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.