© 1988, 2009 Louise Erdrich (used with permission of the Wylie Agency, LLC) and the University of North Dakota

Moderator: . . . to this session of the 19^th Annual UND Writers Conference. Michael Dorris is going to read, but before he does that there are some Native American students from UND who want to make a presentation to Michael and to Louise Erdrich in appreciation for their work on behalf of their people and as a gesture of their affection and esteem for them personally. Would you like to come up?

UND Student 1: First, I guess we’d like to call Michael and Louise up here to accept this gift. We do this in honor and appreciation for what they are doing, and kind of as a custom of our people to give gifts in honor of what they are doing. And with that I would like to present this gift to Louise. Would you please come over here? And this is wherever you go everyone will know you’re Indians.

UND Student 1: And Michael.

Louise Erdrich: I’d like to present this book which is autographed and...

UND Student 1: Oh thank you.

Louise Erdrich: To everybody, but anyway, thank you.

UND Student 1: Yeah, ‘cause I remember when I took this course. I think I borrowed Lisa’s book.

[Laughter]

[Mumbled thanks and appreciation]

Louise Erdrich: Thank you very much.

UND Student 1: And Michael, in honor of what you do, I present you with a nice, beautiful belt buckle. It’s kind of representative of our people because shown that's the rose, which is the flower of the Chippewa nation, which is symbolic of our people.

Michael Dorris: That’s wonderful. Thank you. And this for you, please, to put in the student library or wherever for the remembrance of the Michif to honor you and thank you very much.

UND Student 1: OK, thank you, thank you very much.

UND Student 2: You’ve each got matching beadwork. You won’t get lost now.

Michael Dorris: [laughter] Yeah, that’s right.

[Laughter]

Michael Dorris: I’ll try it on right now, so...

[Laughter then applause]

UND Student 2: And there you go, we proud of her.

Moderator: Yeah, some people would have thought that Michael Dorris would have the decency to turn around to do that. Clearly, they didn’t have supper with him last night as I was honored to do. He told me kind of a funny story. He was doing a book signing in the southwest part of the country, and he was watching one woman as she came up her face was kind of screwed up, and he knew that she was going to be kind of a tough customer. He could tell that she was working on a question, and, I guess, ignorant of his collaboration with Louise, she said, "You know, one thing has troubled me. How, when you assume the female persona, and you’re writing in this voice, how do you know about what it feels like to have your skirt creep up the back of your legs?" And he answered very simply, "Well, I’m a transvestite". [Crowd laughter] But I do know that he collaborates with Louise, and so to be in fine company, I’m going to do that and steal one of her lines. From yesterday’s panel, she mentioned about how "parenthood makes you vulnerable and mortal." And I thought, well that’s really very fitting to describe the characters in Yellow Raft and Blue Water as exactly that. And also, as Christine is pure evil, it occurred to me that Michael Dorris is pure talent. And I’m delighted that he is here today to read. You have seen his works, I’m sure in Parent Magazine, 17, and Savvy, and maybe you’ve heard he’s got a novel out. Yes, this just in! Proud to say he’ll be reading from Yellow Raft now. Please give him a warm welcome.

[Applause]

Michael Dorris: Thank you very much. It is a pure pleasure to be here in Grand Forks. We’ve had a wonderful time, and I compliment the organizers of this conference and everyone who had anything to do with it for really the best and most impressive writer’s conference I think we’ve ever attended. I thank my friends for their presentation. It gives me confidence in this reading. I greet my family and, and you. I’m going to read two sections of the book: one, pretty short, and the other a little longer to give you a sense of all three of the main characters. There are three: Rayona, who is a 15-year-old girl, the mother of, or excuse me, the daughter of Christine, and the granddaughter of a woman named Aunt Ida. Rayona is half black and half Indian. She lives in Tacoma with her mother throughout her first 15 years. And then at one point her mother, who is a very problematic person, she just tried to kill herself over her husband, who she thought was cheating on her, but before she could drive off a cliff the car ran out of gas. And so she’s very frustrated at this point, and they decide they’re going to beat a fast exit back to the reservation. But before they do, they’re going to stop and get something to bring home. And, luckily, she has a perfect idea for this, because she has recently joined a video club in Seattle. And this is the story of how she joined this club. And this is told by Rayona, who, I remind you, is 15. Gives you a sense of her mother as well.

A week before she went into the hospital this last time, she saw the ad in the paper. I thought she was checking out the Classifieds like she did every morning, hoping to improve her prospects, but she had browsed too long in the Arts and Leisure.

"Look at this," she said, excited. "For only ninety-nine cents you can join this club for life, with all the privileges!"

"We don’t have a VCR," I reminded her. "We don’t even have a TV that works."

‘Well, you never know. If we do get one we’d kick ourselves if we passed on this deal. Listen: you get movies for a dollar off on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. You can reserve ahead. You get a free subscription to their literature."

Mom put down the paper and went to the kitchen drawer for her scissors. She cut out the ad in a neat square and folded it twice before putting it into her purse. She was always one for a bargain.

The next time we were out in the Volaré, she drove to a shopping mall on the north side of the city. We worked our way through Sears and K mart and into an immense building full of stores that sold shoes and cards and sports equipment and dresses with Japanese writing on them. Finally we came to Village Video, a small glass room with racks of cassettes lining the walls. Two people, a man and a woman, were ahead of us, and the manager was talking to them.

"Ninety-nine cents is what it says in black and white and that’s what I’m sticking to," he said. "Village Video does not go back on its word."

"But I paid twenty-five dollars for the same thing four days ago," the woman complained. Mom gave me a look with her eyebrows raised, as if to say, "See!"
"I know, I know," the manager said. He seemed truly sad, but helpless. He shrugged his heavy shoulders in despair. "I can’t do anything about that. We have competition coming into this mall." He looked from right to left out the door as if expecting to see competition arriving any minute. "We have to build our membership."

"But. . . " the woman said.

"No retroactive," the manager cut in before she could go on. "I understand, I really do, but that’s just the way it has to be."

Mom was delighted. The woman’s loss was her gain. I could tell she felt proud that she had not come in here last week and plunked down twenty-five dollars. It would have done me no good to point out that the thought to do so would have never entered her head.

"How long does it last," the other customer, a man wearing a tan shirt with little straps that buttoned on top of his shoulders. He looked as if he were comparing all the pros and cons before shelling out ninety-nine cents. You could see he thought he was pretty shrewd.

"It lasts for as long as you live," the manager said slowly. There was a second while we all thought about that. The man in the tan shirt drew his head back, tucking his chin into his neck. His mind was working like a house on fire.

"What about other people?" he asked. "The wife? The kids?"

"They can use your membership as long as you’re alive," the manager said, making the distinction clear.

"Then what," the man asked, louder. He was the type who said things like "You get what you pay for" and "There’s one born every minute" and was considering every angle. He didn’t want to get taken for a ride by his own death.

"That’s it," the manager said, waving his hands, palm down, like a football referee ruling an extra point no good. "Then they’d have to join for themselves or forfeit the privileges."

"Well then, it makes sense," the man said, on top of the situation now, "for the youngest one to join. The one that’s likely to live the longest."

"I can’t argue with that," said the manager.

The man chewed his lip while he mentally reviewed his family. Who would go first. Who’d survive the longest. He cast his eyes around to all the cassettes as if he’d see one that would answer his question.

The woman had not gone away. She had brought along her signed agreement, the one that she paid twenty-five dollars for. "What’s this accident waiver clause," she asked the manager.

"Look," he said, now exhibiting his hands to show they were empty, nothing up his sleeve, "I live in the real world. I’m a small businessman. I have to protect my investment, don’t I? What would happen if, and I’m not suggesting you’d do this, all right, but some people might, what would happen if you decided to watch one of my movies in the bathtub and a VCR you rented from me fell into the water?"

The woman retreated a step. This thought had clearly not occurred to her before.

"I don’t want to be sued by your estate, do I? By your orphaned children?" The manager continued, now leaning his elbows on the counter and putting his weight on them. "I don’t want to be held responsible for you if you electrocute yourself by mistake."

The woman put her expensive contract into her purse and drifted off. At first she pretended to browse through new selections, but actually she was working her way towards the door and when she thought no one was watching, she cut out.

Mom stepped up to the counter in her place and pulled out a dollar bill.

"I’m joining this thing!" she announced brightly, "and I want you to know," she said to the manager, "that I intend to get my money’s worth!"

"That’s good, that’s good," he said, handing her a blank contract card. "What if I live fifty years?" Mom asked.

"You’re covered," he nodded.

"What if I put it in her name?" Mom said, jerking her head in my direction, "and she lives for a hundred years. You know, medical science."

"You can both use it during her lifetime," the manager answered, giving me an appraising look. "As long as you continue to share the same domicile."

"She wouldn’t evict me, would you, baby?" mom said. "And this way, if the worst thing happens, you can still rent tapes at members’ rate. It’s like something I’d leave you."

"This low offer may not be repeated," the manager agreed.

"Well, that’s that," mom decided. She wrote my name on the dotted line and had me sign on the bottom. "Till death," she said proudly.

I can’t explain how I felt, but it was as though a part of my life was over. As far as video clubs went, this deal would last as long as I did, no matter what else ever happened to me. No surprises. Someday, if I was lucky, I would still be a name in the records of Village Video, an old lady who’s charter membership had never expired.

"Remember," the manager said as we left the store, "I’m not responsible. What you do with your cassettes is your ballgame."

"We are not idiots." Now that she was the mother of a lifetime member, Mom could afford to be more herself. "Some of your people may watch shows in their bathrooms, but not us."

"We don’t watch them anywhere," I reminded her as we searched for our car in the huge parking lot. "We don’t have anything to watch them on. Our TV barely has sound."

"Go ahead and be smart," she said. "But you’ll be laughing out the other side of your mouth if we ever get one of those players and can watch all the movies we want at member’s rates."

Well actually a few days later they do need to rent a couple of videos, as I say, they’re going to take them back to the reservation, and they visit the store once more. Early in the morning:

The manager is rolling back a metal gate, opening his store, and Mom greets him like an old friend. "My daughter is still alive," she announces, pointing to me. "We’re just going to exercise our privileges and borrow some tapes."

"Fine, fine," the manager says.

"What if we are a little late bringing them back?" Mom’s voice is casual, cagey.

"Oh not to worry. A little fine, reduced to almost nothing because of your charter membership. Happens all the time."

Mom presses her foot on my toe to show that she has been right. After five minutes of browsing, she picks a movie about a jealous old car named Christine that murders people. She loved the ads when the film came to a theater in Seattle.

"Look at this," she said that day, shoving the Amusement section under my nose, and then reading the ad. "I am Christine, I am pure evil." She put the slogan, she cut the slogan out and stuck it on the refrigerator with a magnet and was thrilled to get the same thing printed on a bumper sticker the third time she saw the movie.

For the second tape, out of a lot of, after a lot of considering, she picks Little Big Man.

"I dated a guy who played an Indian in that movie," she whispers at me.

She tells the manager an almost similar story when she has me sign for the tapes.

"This one is special to me, " she brags. "I was once engaged to the star."

"Dustin Hoffman?"

Mom smiles as if she knows a secret, but doesn’t say yes or no. "Did you see his face?" she asked when we’re out of the store. "But now I just think that now he’ll remember who we are."

[laughter from speaker and crowd]

Ok tho, that’s, that’s mother and daughter number one, but there’s another character in this book who’s name is Aunt Ida, and uh, all through the book she appears to many people as a very enigmatic and confusing character because she seems so grumpy all the time. And finally at the end of the book, she gets a chance to tell her story, which is not a happy story. And I will just uh give you a. . . a few things so that you’ll understand this section. She’s about fifteen years old and basically has been conned into acknowledging being the mother of a child that was born to her aunt, a woman by the name of Clara, who then cut out and left her with this child who of course is the baby Christine. So, she is living back on the reservation. The conceit here is that she is speaking in her own language and therefore has a large vocabulary to draw on. She’s close to her sister, Pauline, who has become very religious. And, uh she finds herself in this section a young woman, now she’s about eighteen years old; she was fifteen when the baby came, all by herself with only a priest as a friend and trying to figure out what happens next. And uh, I dedicate this part to my mother-in-law, Rita Erdrich, who called us up late one night after she read this part, and she said that now she would have to reconsider her opinion of all the old bats she had known previously in her life.

[Crowd Laughter]

Michael Dorris: And this is Ida’s voice.

With mama dead a month and Papa run off somewhere in his shame, with Pauline out of school and married to Dale Cree, and with the threat of Clara under control and Christine my child in the eyes of the law, I leased off land for annual cash. I improved the house with electrical wiring and plumbing. I cast around to choose my future and heard Willard Pretty Dog was home.

He looked dreadful, Pauline said. He had tripped on a mine in Italy and was stitched together clumsy as a pieced blanket. He refused to be seen and had painted the backseat windows of his mother’s car for when he rode from the reservation to his stays in the hospital. Willard had been more vain about his good looks than people realized, Pauline pronounced, and this was God’s Judgment.

She made me curious. When I was outdoors scything hay or hanging wash, I watched the road for Willard’s passing. I asked for news from Father Hurlburt when he visited me on Bingo nights, while he entertained Christine with the card games you can play alone, and he was glad to keep me informed.

"He’s a sorry soul." Father Hurlburt shook his head, ticked a six for Christine to play her five, and sighed. "Bitter."

"They say he has the face of a devil," I prompted, using Pauline’s word.

"Of a hero, more like it. He’s got a Silver Star and a letter from Truman. An honorable discharge and veterans’ benefits for life. And with the miracles of plastic surgery, someday his face will be less deformed."

"I can’t think of him like that," I said.

"Neither can he, and that’s his trouble. He needs some of your courage, Ida, some of your toughness."

I looked at him, pleased at this description but doubtful. Those were not words I would apply to myself. I knew my limits. On my own land I was confident, rooted, but once away, when I was in Denver or when I had to go to town, I was as nervous as an outdoor cat trapped in the house. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid to leave, as that I was fearful to be gone.

Christine scrambled the cards into a pile, furious that they would not fall her way. She had no patience. Father Hurlburt gathered them, tapped the corners against the tabletop, and replaced them in their torn paper box.

"Perhaps you should visit Willard," he suggested. "He is so cut off from everyone since he returned."

"Will he see me?" I kept my face and voice calm, but I was excited at the prospect. Willard had once been far beyond any girl in our class, the type who would have left the reservation and then returned in a big car for visits. He was the type who would have married white.

"Not at his home, maybe, but he goes to the hospital on Thursdays to have the bandages from the latest operation removed. I’m driving him. I’ll suggest we stop in on the way back." Father Hurlburt reached for Christine, but she shrieked with laughter and ran from his hands.

Thursday was a day away. I surveyed the room, imagining it through Willard’s eyes. Rather than make things more attractive and modern, the harsh electrical lights revealed every imperfection, every forgotten crack and stain. They betrayed me as well. My burned cheek had healed to an angry brand, the color of nails left in a rain bucket. My hair was black hay. I had the thick, strong body of a woman who fought the earth for every bite she ate. I was the one who noticed until, no one noticed until they needed something. Only Christine thought I was beautiful. And in time, she’d learn her mistake.

Yet, if Willard was as bad off as Pauline said, he couldn’t be choosy. I told Father Hurlburt I might be home on Thursday. He could stop by with Willard to see.

On Wednesday night, when Christine had gone to sleep, I dragged out Papa’s washtub and filled it with hot water. My first year’s lease money had only stretched to install a toilet and two sinks, in addition to the wiring. I turned off the lights, draped my clothes on a chair, and, as a last thought before I stepped into the water, I turned on the radio. I liked the programs where they talked, where the politicians argued with each other or where they asked questions and gave prizes. I learned odd facts: the length of a wall in China, the value of the gold stored in Kentucky, the secret lives of movie stars.

The warmth enclosed me as I lowered my body. I thought of Papa yelling insults from this tub and I couldn’t understand it. A bath brought me peace, made me float free. I raised one leg into the air and pointed my toes as I slid the soap along my skin. I washed myself beneath the water, slowly, lifting my hips against my hand. When I sat, my breasts tightened with the jolt of coolness. They were my secret, round and firm, my glory. I leaned forward, spilled my hair over my forehead and showered water from my cupped hands till it was wet and sleek. Then, with the tips of my fingers, I massaged my scalp with Ivory soap. I had placed a fresh pitcher beside me on the floor, and I rinsed in its lukewarm flow. I slept that night without a gown, fresh between sheets dried in the sun.

I was in the yard early with Christine and saw the mission car head to town. I calculated the time it would take, there and back, the time for waiting at the hospital, the time for removing the bandages, the time for a doctor’s words, and planned my day.

When Christine came she gave me a ride to the store and amused, when Pauline came, she gave me a ride to the store and amused Christine in the front seat while I went inside. I nodded to those I knew. They were used to me, not surprised when I didn’t stop to talk. I bought rice, meat for stew, flour and butter and new yeast, and expensive tea, packed in a fancy box, which I had never tried.

"You must be having a party," Pauline said when she saw my two sacks of groceries. "How much did you spend?"

"Just supplies," I told her, and let her look. The tea was hidden in the bottom of one bag and the heavy package of meat in the other. The only thing she found was the red candy stick for Christine, but even that displeased my sister.

"You’re gonna rot her teeth."

While the bread and canned-berry pie baked, I scrubbed the floors and washed down the walls. I gave Christine a bath and rewarded her with licorice before putting her to bed. I cut the meat into small cubes, which I dropped off a spoon into a pot of boiling broth. I peeled potatoes and carrots and an onion, and let them simmer. I ironed the largest of Mama’s dresses and put it on. I brushed my hair with rosewater and braided it loose while it was still damp, then I coiled its rope into a fat knot and pinned it low on my neck. I dared a look in the mirror. The best face I had stared back. I bit my lips for color and remained standing so my dress wouldn’t wrinkle. Everything was ready.

I heard Father Hurlburt attempt to persuade Willard to get out of the car. He spoke our language better after all our conversations, and from just his voice, you might think he was one of us.

"She’s expecting you, Willard," Father Hurlburt said. "She knows you were hurt. She’s an old friend."

Willard replied with mumbled words I couldn’t decipher.

"But it does look better, much better today," Father Hurlburt continued. "The last operation made more difference than you think. Once the swelling subsides and the bruises clear. It takes time, but there’s progress."

Again I caught the sound of Willard’s whisper. It was urgent, insistent.

"Just a short visit then." Father Hurlburt was pleading now, sure he was doing the right thing. "For Ida’s sake."

I had enough of this. I went outside, pushed past Father Hurlburt, and opened the car door, out-pulling the hand within that tried to keep it closed. Willard swung his face away from me, raised his shoulder as a shield, hunched against the seat.

"I cooked you stew," I said to him. "Come and eat. There’s nobody to see you but me and my girl, and she’s asleep."

I recognized Willard’s shape, the slim lines of his legs, the width in the chest within the checkered shirt, the back of his neck. My eyes fell to the hand he clutched in his lap and I saw that the two last fingers were gone that the white seams made a patchwork that disappeared under his cuff. He couldn’t seem to move of his own will, but sat quivering like a cold child.

"Come on." I took his hand, urged him from the car. Without once looking at him, I led him to the house and went through the door first.

"The food is almost ready," I said, stirring the rice on the stove and adjusting the heat under the pot. "Sit down at the table."

Father Hurlbert stood, uncertain, in the doorway. I knew I should invite him to eat, but I also knew I shouldn’t. I spoke to him with the tone of formality, the tone people ordinarily used with priests.

"Thank you, Father. Willard is fine now. I can get Pauline or one of the neighbors to take him home later." I tried to make my eyes gentle my words, and Father Hurlbert showed me he understood. He played the same game.

"I appreciate it Mrs. George. I do have many duties to attend. So I will leave you then, Willard. If that’s alright?"

We both waited for some signal, but none came.

"Good night Father," I said.

When the sound of the car engine faded down the hill, I filled a plate to overflowing and carried it across the room.

In my imagination Willard’s face had been worse, but it was terrible enough. He bore little resemblance to the handsome, striking boy I had known in school. Ruts cut through his cheeks and the slope of his jaw was altered by a deep wedge. The space between his nose and his bottom lip was only partly covered with shiny skin, leaving exposed a row of white teeth too even to be real. A hole, only thinly veiled by the hair he had grown long, replaced one ear. But the worst thing about Willard was the flat, hate-filled surrender in his eyes.

His weakness made me bold.

"You’re better than I expected," I said.

A sound like feeble laughter rose from his throat. "What would you know of anything?" His conceited self-pity splashed over me, irritating as spilled water.

So, without planning or thinking, I told him. I laid my life on the table—Clara and Papa and Mama and Pauline; Christine, the lies, the loneliness—for Willard to examine and see if it was bad enough to suit him. As I listened to my own story, I lost control of its interpretation. I heard it as a tale on the radio, so sad it deserved applause and a trip to Florida. Unhappiness was the only thing Willard valued and as I admitted mine, I put myself in his broken hands.

When I was done, when the tea had turned cold in its cup, when the stew broth had formed a crust in the side of the pot and the night had made us all but invisible for each other to see, I raised my palms to my face and breathed into them. My skin was cool and smelled of onion. The weight, where my elbows were propped on the table, was heavy and balanced.

The wood of Willard’s chair crackled as he leaned toward me. His fingers tugged at mine, left my face exposed. I waited, hardly breathing, my eyes closed. Then I felt his touch, light as fog, upon my cheek.

Christine, still lonely for her grandma, was glad for Willard’s presence. The novelty of his wounds wore off and when he realized Christine saw him without comparison to how he had once looked, he let down his defenses. He told her about the ship that took him across the ocean, about the exotic animals he had seen in zoos. He let her ride him like a horse.

Pauline was distressed that I took Willard in.

"Think how it looks," she fussed. "My sister, alone in a house with a man not her husband. What will Papa say if he comes back? And your friend, Father Hurlburt?"

"Its not what you think," I told her, but of course it was. Willard had come into my bed that first night. He knew more than I—who only had a schoolgirl’s giggling stories to go by—but I soon took the lead. Any male body would have been unusual to me [clears throat] so the wounds of the war, at the war had carved in Willard made no difference. He was all I knew and all I wanted, and I was good for him, I could see that. When we were alone, he would sit in the sun with no shirt and let the warmth soak into his body.

When Father Hurlburt came as usual the next Thursday night, I knew he didn’t condemn me, and little by little Willard participated in our talks, told his stories, made his jokes.

I used every jar of berries Mama had put aside in years of preserving, just to make him a month’s worth of pies. I didn’t tire, as some might have done, at Willard’s daily need for comfort, for reassurance, for sympathy. I made myself silly to hear him laugh, never corrected the errors he made in his grammar or his bad memory of old-time stories. As he got more sure of himself and bragged about his soldiering, the battles he had won, the heroics he had performed, I listened with wide eyes and never put to him a question I didn’t think he could answer.

Mrs. Pretty Dog asked half the reservation what she should do about me. She came from a respected family, was the widow of a good provider and had looked to Willard for her future. When the war overseas started, she worked it into her design. The army was a way, she said, for Willard to expand his experience, to see foreign countries, and he would come back the better for it. When he returned the worst, beaten and unrecognizable to her, she despaired. Everyone was to blame: the Germans, the Americans, Willard’s brave heart, and now finally me.

She didn’t allow herself to visit for almost three months, until just before Willard was set to return to the hospital for his next operation. Christine had given me constant reports of Mrs. Pretty Dog’s public humiliation that her son, the famous veteran, should take up with such an odd woman, already with a bastard child and living alone and uncourted. I was not the one with whom she had expected her son to abuse her, not the one she had planned would lift from her the trial of Willard’s medical care. But her hopes were nothing to me, so when she came to call, I was ignorant of her regrets and polite as a future daughter-in-law.

"You have electricity," she discerned first thing inside the house.

"Of course," I replied.

She peeked through the door I had left open.

"And a toilet!" She had heard news of these things, but was still impressed to find them true.

Christine rushed from outdoors, her hair in disarray, the hem of her clean dress soaked from the slough behind the house. Without taking any notice of Mrs. Pretty Dog, she ran to the counter, reached for a cup, filled it with water from the faucet, drank, wiped her mouth with the back of her arm, and was gone. Her rudeness delighted me and encouraged me.

Willard brushed and ill at ease sat at the table. He wore a loose blue shirt I had made for him, work pants, and Papa’s soft deerskin moccasins. The sun had restored his color, and his shortened lips seemed almost to smile in nervousness.

"You have been a good nurse to my son," Mrs. Pretty Dog began, settling herself on a chair. "Will he return here after the next trip to the hospital or will he come home?"

"Ask Willard," I said, and banged a bowl of jam on the table before her. "I’ll get you a spoon and some frybread."

The silence lengthened while both of us waited for Willard to speak, but he only stirred sugar into his tea.

"What will they do this time?" Mrs. Pretty Dog asked in exasperation.

"He gets an ear," I said. "Made from something that feels exactly like human skin. They’ll work on his mouth and sew more skin to smooth his face."

Mrs. Pretty Dog recoiled at my bluntness, but I had learned that for Willard it was best to be direct, best to say the worst that hid in his mind.

"He’ll be handsome," I added, out of fondness.

At the word, once so linked with her son, the corners of Mrs. Pretty Dog’s mouth dove for her chin. Her forehead and eyebrows pulled up and together, ready for tears. But I interfered.

"The priest is taking me to the hospital after the operation. You want a ride?"

She was jarred by my presumption, by my control. Anger for me overcame the sympathy she felt for herself, and she pulled her lips into a taught pinch.

"Naturally, I will be at my son’s side when he needs me." Her eyes flashed a hundred messages to remind me of my place. I could understand why Willard was so afraid of her disapproval, but she had no influence over me.

"I’ll tell Father Hurlburt to save you a seat, then," I said evenly and set a plate, heated in the electric oven and laden with rounds of golden bread, on the table. Then I moved behind where Willard sat, put my hands on each of his shoulders, and casually let them slide down his chest. I was no nurse. Mrs. Pretty Dog saw, had confirmed before her eyes the most extreme rumors she had spread. I felt a tremble in Willard’s skin and thought perhaps I had gone too far. Then he relaxed, leaned his head for an instant against my breasts, and spoke.

"Eat mother, before it cools."

I got the news of Papa’s death while Willard was recovering in the hospital from his operation. When Father Hurlburt came on Monday, I knew he had something to tell, and when I saw his long face, I knew it was unpleasant.

"Willard or Papa?" I asked before he said a word.

"It’s your father."

My body sagged, and Father Hurlburt put an arm around my shoulder. He didn’t realize that my reaction was one of relief.

"I’m sorry," he said, as if he was guilty. "There was a phone call to the rectory."

"He’s dead?" Father Hurlburt nodded, tightened his embrace, but I pulled back.

"Where?" I asked. "How did he die?"

"I don’t have all the details. He was in Minot. I think it was an accident of some kind."

I could imagine what kind. When Clara left the second time, when Pap . . . Mama had a stroke that took her speech, when Pauline asked none of us to witness her marriage and gave a poor excuse, the fear of scorn and disappointment lost its power over Papa. He existed without boundaries and I never again met, even for an hour, the man who raised me.

"He lived too long," I said. Father Hurlburt thought that he had misunderstood.

"But Lecon’s life was full."

I had missed my period, then another, but kept the news to myself. There was no one but Christine to see my morning sickness, and she was too occupied with her own concerns—the plugging of prairie dog holes with rocks, the endless parade of her dolls and toys—to notice.

The realization that my body was capable of bearing life came as an astonishment and a gift to me. Food tasted better, every sound was crisper, every light brought more clarity. The garden I had planted sprouted shoots of corn, bean vines, radish greens, and trailings of squash. Weeds grew even faster, and I let them be. I left the windows of the house open, day and night, and allowed the insects to fly freely beneath the shelter of my roof. I sometimes wore only my bra, sometimes not even that, when I worked outdoors.

Willard had to stay in the hospital in Billings this time until every cut was healed, until all danger of infection was passed. Early in the morning of the day of his new face was to be revealed, I waited beneath the porch roof. When Pauline had come earlier to take Christine for the day, I was tempted to confide in her, but I saved my news to add to Willard’s celebration, or to comfort his disappointment. I carried it like flowers to the sick. [Clears Throat]

Mrs. Pretty Dog was already in the front seat of Father Hurlburt’s car, and at first I barely minded. [Clears Throat] But reservation roads soon took their toll. My body rose and fell with every ditch and hole, I bit my tongue and drew blood, my head ached from constant need to flex the muscles of my neck against the jerks and swings of the wheels. Nausea overwhelmed me, and the breeze from my window did little to settle my stomach. I thought of the baby, bouncing helplessly within me, and debated announcing my condition in order to gain the front seat. Mrs. Pretty Dog would have no choice but to trade her comfort for that of her grandchild. But I endured. No one would know before Willard.

My baby’s father peered at us through the openings in the spotless white bandages that covered his face and neck. His eyes were black as the water in a shallow well, timid and apprehensive. I smiled into their depth while Mrs. Pretty Dog petted his good hand and complained about her long trip, about the horrible dream that woke her in the night, in the dream . . . in Willard’s face was unveiled to be that of a lynx.

The doctor’s arrival interrupted the story. He made Mrs. Pretty Dog, Father Hurlburt, and me move away, and we stood in a row against the wall, watching as layers of gauze were unwound into snowy mountains on the floor. The doctor’s head blocked my view so I did not know why Mrs. Pretty Dog gasped. I saw in my imagination the face of her dream and squeezed shut my eyes in alarm. But when I blinked, it was Willard who looked back—the blurred photograph of the boy I knew in school. He was, as I had promised. He was the next thing to handsome.

Willard could not read our faces. He hesitated before lowering his gaze to the hand mirror the doctor offered, but once he saw he could not look away. He turned his head slowly, marveling, as he did, as did we all, at the perfect ear. He ran his tongue carefully along the length of his inflamed but longer upper lip. The line of his jaw was clean and unbroken once again.

"He was an excellent candidate," the doctor said. "You can see, when the healing is achieved his appearance will be dramatically improved."

Mrs. Pretty Dog was crying, wailing, still not satisfied at less than total recovery, but praising God for His miracles, crediting the prayers and Masses she had offered for Willard’s progress. Father Hurlburt was in conversation with the doctor, inquiring about the technique of the operation, the process of bone grafting, the lifelike quality of the material that formed the ear, the stability of the results. Willard continued lost in the glass, touching each part of his face, afraid to change his expression.

I was happy for him, of course, but the resurrection of his face frightened me too. There, in that foreign city hospital room, surrounded by other people, Willard and I were strangers, unlikely partners. His triumph threatened to overshadow mine.

After the doctors had left, after every nurse had come into the room to exclaim at the transformation, Mrs. Pretty Dog, Father Hurlburt, Willard, and I sat together in the solarium, surrounded by abandoned potted plants. The commotion of this morning was abating and we were looking ahead.

"Your life is starting over," Mrs. Pretty Dog told Willard. "You have your second chance."

It was the ideal time to divulge my secret, but I wavered. Words in that open room seemed dangerous, betrayed hiding places, drew hostile attention.

"Are there more operations in store?" Father Hurlburt asked.

"In a year," Willard said. "But nothing like this one. I am the most changed I will be, they say."

"I don’t believe that. They learn more all the time. Someday they’ll fix it perfect." Mrs. Pretty Dog pulled the skirt of her dress over her wide knees. "When will they let you go home?"

I recognized her question and listened for Willard’s reply.

"I’ll be back at Ida’s next week." I caught the stir of a smile from Father Hurlburt, but I still said nothing, still waited, although I didn’t know for what.

"Ida’s?" Mrs. Pretty Dog sunk her teeth into the bait, sprung the trap, and made her stand. "Surely you don’t need a nurse now!"

Willard spoke with a firmness I had not heard before.

"You know she’s more to me than a nurse."

I prepared myself to reward him, to seal our bond.

"But you could have anyone. I could understand when you were so . . . sick, but you don’t have to settle for her now. What does she have to offer you? A woman . . . fat woman no one else wants, a child without a father."

In her panic, she described me as if I weren’t present, and I chose to let her. Willard must speak for me now, must make his position clear.

"Ida may not be beautiful," he said. "She may not be very smart. But when no one else cared for me she was there. When I first went to her house, I . . ."

His voice droned on, but I lost the sense of his meaning. I heard only the beginnings of his statement, again and again. The air in the little room was dry and unmoving. Yellow mums withered on stiff stalks, their pots wrapped in colored foil. I saw myself through his eyes, a person who’s goodness overcame her drawbacks, a person Willard would love out of loyalty, out of spite towards his mother, out of his infirmity.

". . . not the kind who will turn his back just because . . ."

I watched his stiff new mouth open and close, saw the flash of teeth and tongue, the eyes that didn’t see me, that couldn’t, that never would.

He finished his proud declaration and looked to me for gratitude.

I heard my words as much as I thought them.

"Your mother’s right. It’s better you go. Papa is coming home and I’ll have to take care of him. There won’t be room for you." I turned to Father Hurlburt, cut off his objection. "We should go back before it gets late."

He read my glance and nodded, but he didn’t understand.

Mrs. Pretty Dog was nervous at her success, afraid to spoil it.

"Well of course we all appreciate what you’ve done for Willard, Ida. I know—"

"What do you mean?" Willard was dismayed and confused. He couldn’t believe his real ear. My thanklessness angered him.

"I’m glad you’re well," I said. Then in a softer voice, "It will be alright. This is the way it should be."

I didn’t hate Willard, but I no longer wanted him. And I never let myself again.

When my pregnancy became public knowledge, I laughed when people suggested that Willard must be the father.

"Willard?" I’d say "Willard Pretty Dog? And me?"

That didn’t make them forsake their suspicions, but it made them not sure. Some speculated that Christine’s father had visited me again. Men kept clear of me to distance themselves from incrimination.

"Who then," Pauline asked. She felt a married sister, even a disapproving one, had a right to know.

"Who do you think?" I invited her to guess, but would never say yes or no to any of those she proposed. There was only one I ever absolutely denied.

"It couldn’t be Father Hurlburt?" Pauline once whispered. His Thursday night visits, the puzzle of my friendship with him, troubled her.

He was the only man I didn’t want to lose. I dropped the teasing from my voice.

"Not a priest. Never."

And she believed me.

Waiting was no hardship. There was no time that I wanted more than the present instant, no better day I could imagine.

Christine was all I needed. She was almost four and interested in everything around her. I taught her to read Father Hurlburt’s books. With the next lease payment I bought her a television—one of the first on the reservation—for company, and after the aerial was installed, we sat for hours in front of the tiny screen. It was unfamiliar to hear English in the house, but Christine had programs she would never fail to watch. She loved Miss Frances on "Ding Dong School" and I liked Kate Smith, especially her clothes. Willard stopped by now and then and I neither discouraged nor encouraged him, but he found me different.

"I don’t know what it is," he said as he was going home one afternoon. "But you’ve changed."

I knew what it was. I no longer pretended to be stupid. If Willard made a mistake in his speech or his telling of history, I pointed it out. Not in a mean way, not really, but clear enough so no doubt remained and I persuaded myself I was doing this for Christine’s benefit—she remembered everything she had heard so she might as well hear it right—but it was more than that. I wanted her to see me smart, to know she could be that way herself.

When I finally told Christine there was a baby coming, a brother or a sister for her, she had many questions. She took my news as a serious matter.

"Where will I stay when you have to go away?" she demanded.

"If I have to leave, which I won’t, you will go with Pauline and Dale."

"I don’t like them. Can’t Mother come back?"

That word in her mouth dug into me like a trowel. Christine’s memory of Clara had faded with time, but had not disappeared.

"No," I said.

"What will the baby be called?"

That was the same question Pauline had asked, and then half answered.

"If it’s a girl, it must be ‘Ann’ after Mama. And if it’s a boy . . . would you name it after Papa?"

I raised my eyebrows incredulous that she of all people had made such a suggestion.

"It’s the custom." She was Papa’s daughter all over: people’s thoughts mattered more to her than her own.

"Aunt Ida!" Christine’s voice called me back to the present. She hated it when I didn’t answer her immediately.

"I haven’t decided on a name. It’s bad luck to say too soon."

"Did you always know I was Christine?"

"No, go outside now."

Everything she said made me think of Clara, not that I needed reminding. Pregnancy itself brought back those weeks in Denver and left me even more unbelieving at Clara’s coldness. It was beyond me how she could have cared so little about Christine, how she could have given her away with such a lack of regret. I was determined to make up for this with my baby, as if the balance of things had been thrown off by Clara and needed righting by me.

The baby grew so deeply within me that my pregnancy showed almost not at all. My body was large, satisfied by its fullness, and my waist merely filled into a curved line. Weight never hampered my movements, the way it does some women. I was due in April, but a month before, Pauline, whom the doctor in town said might never have children, started the practice of visiting every morning and every night. She read books that told what I should eat and drink, and she consulted old ladies, like her midwife mother-in-law, Polly, to discover the sex and disposition of my baby. I had sinned, not it, Pauline said. It was to be, she was sure, a nephew and he, she had been told, would become a leader and a wise man. Pauline would be his godmother.

I joked about her predictions, but I always listened. She had nothing bad to say, and over time I began to think of the baby as she described, only better. In my mind’s eye, I had the advantage over all the soothsayers. I knew whose face he’d wear. Pauline’s fascination and information gathering generated interest in the birth throughout the reservation and, I was later informed, people placed bets on the day and the time I would deliver, as well as on which man the child would favor.

I don’t know who won.

By late March, a thawing wind had blown away all traces of snow and left the land raw and stripped, the roll of hills out my window bare against the low sky. One afternoon, I put eggs on the stove to boil. I cleaned the house, changed sheets, washed dishes left from breakfast, I gave Christine an early supper of beans and franks, her favorite food, and lay in bed to wait for Pauline to come. When I heard her car stop on the gravel in front of the house, I counted the seconds until my next contraction. I finished before she opened the door and called my name. I leveled my voice, so as not to upset her.

"Go get Polly. I’m close."

Her footsteps sounded, running, on the polished floor. Christine appeared beside me and I took her hand. We made a game of it, counting, counting. She learned new high numbers, imitated the strain that shaped my words, laughed at her own cleverness, laughed at the faces I made.

Pauline returned in time and brought her husband and his mother. Polly had assisted at many births and wasted no motion. She sent Christine into the other room with Dale, and gave Pauline and me instructions. At first I watched her eyes for signs and then, eventually, I depended upon her hands.

I don’t know the hour of his birth, but I saw him first in lamplight. His head was long, his hips narrow. He was neither fat nor thin, neither big nor small for an eighth month pregnancy. In all his parts and all his measurements, he was normal.

But even Polly, with all the babies she had seen, had to acknowledge it: my son was a beauty without mar.

"He is a picture," Pauline whispered, her arm supporting my shoulders as he drank the milk of my breast. I could see the wishing in her eyes, the yearning.

"If he were yours," I asked her, "what would his name be?"

She paused, regarded him closer. "I’d have to name him for Papa, after all. Lecon."

"But he’ll go by Lee," I said. "To be different."

Thank you.

[applause]

[~Transcription completed by Lucy Hartmann, reviewed by Dr. Crystal Alberts]