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

Moderator: ...and it's my honor tonight to introduce the speaker.  A few years ago I picked up a copy of USA Today, and they were listing books that were supposed to be big sellers for summer reading. One of them was called Love Medicine, took place on a, on an Indian reservation in North Dakota. I never heard of Louise at that time, or of her books.

 I called up Mike Jacobs down at the [Grand Forks] Herald and said, Mike, do you read USA Today? If you don't, you better get out today's issue because there is an article in there talking about a book that takes place in North Dakota. There aren't too many of those, you know. So, we, I still have that clipping incidentally, Louise if you want it. That got me inter- introduced to Louise Erdrich and her writing. I got a hold of her book. We had to order it through B. Dalton at the time. Now, they're on sale all the time. After reading it, of course, like everyone else who's read her work, I was really, greatly impressed with her writing. 

Few years later she came to UND and read from her book.  And afterwards, I was hoping to get a chance to talk to her, but she was mobbed by people and I didn't get chance. But I did have a nice chat with her dad and found out we had a lot in common. Well since then, Louise has been on every bestseller list and her books have won virtually every award that there is to win. If you want a list of those, just look on the inside of the dust jacket on her books; I won't repeat it here. 

Few weeks ago, I was in Chicago.  I went into a place called [Rosoli] Bookstore and they had a big display on Louise, and I felt so good about that I wanted to go and grab the woman behind the cash register and bring her over and say, you see? She's from North Dakota. Louise's books are selling big in Europe and all over the world right now too. And apparently, she just came back from a tour where she was giving some promotion overseas, also.  I also found out another thing about Louise today when reading the Grand Forks Herald, I found out that she and I have something else in common - both of us started out our careers with our first jobs being hoeing sugar beets in the summer. But I don't think there have been too many field workers who have gone on to write bestsellers. 

Well, it gives me, it is truly a great honor and privilege to be able to introduce Louise Erdrich to you tonight, and she'll be reading some selections from a book. Louise?

[Audience applause]

Louise Erdrich: Goin' to get a drink of water back here, if you don't mind.  Thank you very much for that terrific introduction. I don't think that many former beet hoers have gone on to do so much good for so many people, Doctor, thank you. And, thank you all, for being here tonight. It's, it's really good to be here. Whenever Michael and I drive, we drove over from Minneapolis, whenever we hit the stretch past Fergus Falls where everything levels out, we just breathe a deep sigh, because it really is so, so calm and so beautiful to look in, into that distance. And so, for that reason and because it's wonderful to see friends, and of course beloved family members, it's good to be here. And I am going to read a piece of The Beet Queen, which is a novel. And then I am going to read one poem. 

This part from The Beet Queen is taking place in 1964, and I thought I'd read it because it's partly an homage to one of the Red River Valley's national ethnic dishes, which is Jell-O. And, it, it really it, it's a piece that is, is very close to the heart because of that. The, the main character is named Celestine, and she's from a mixed Chippewa and, maybe French something else family. She's got a daughter named Dot, and her aunt, Dot's aunt, Mary, is the other main character. And Mary is a very tenacious sort of strong-willed woman, who is intending to take charge of the child. Dot's about 11 and the year is 1964. Before so many advances in Jell-O making were, came about.

Celestine.

One night Mary calls me up to tell me I shouldn't bother driving to work tomorrow. 

Oh, they work together, at a butcher shop. 

Then she waits holding her breath on the phone for me to ask why not? So I ask. 

"The shop's burnt," she answers in a satisfied tone.

"What!" I am horrified. 

"Don't worry," she says, "I'm safe. There was mainly smoke damage. The place is crawling with insurance adjusters."

"Should I come over?" I wonder. 

"I'm coming over there," she says. 

So that is how she ends up living in my house through December. 

Mary is not too badly upset about the damage to the shop because, to tell the truth, it isn't doing quite so well as when Pete and Fritzie ran it. This is not Mary's fault. Since the boom with the sugar beet began, supermarkets have been setting up with one-stop-shopping convenience. I can see the attraction, but Mary calls them junk. At any rate, this accident is a chance to renovate. She could not afford to otherwise. She's excited. Workmen start on the repairs of the butcher shop even before the insurance comes through. A hole burned through the smoke room and spread through the inner electrical connections. Mary is lucky. The only harm to her living quarters is a few gray plumes of smoke blown up the walls. She doesn't want to live with smoke, or hammering, with plaster or men tramping through her back rooms, however, and says she's more comfortable bedding down in Russell's old room with Dot, if I don't mind, that is. 

"I don't mind," I tell her. 

But the truth is, after three days I'm edgy. I don't know why. Maybe it's that Dot and I have gotten used to our daily ways and Mary disrupts the evenings with her constant reports. She's been to the library for books and has taken her favorite were out once more. It is a book by a man named Cheiro and is all about reading the lines in your hands. Mary has been doing this for years, and I'm tired of it. I know what the lines in my hands mean. 

"No love, no money, no travel to Hawaii," I tell her when she asks for a look. "No thanks." 

"I just want to see if that island in your Head Line has shrunk," she says, consulting her book. "Could mean a tumor of the brain or a nasty blow."

We are sitting in the front room around the gas furnace. I watch its blue ripple in a little cross-hatched window. I tell Mary that there is more mystery right there in the jumping flames than in all of Cheiro's books. 

"Well, then answer me this," she says, leaning off her chair for emphasis, "a child is born with certain lines in its hand. Those lines and no others. How do you explain it?"

The flames reflect across her face, so ordinary yet so fierce. She has taken to wearing a different colored turban every day, covering her hair. She's wearing a white one now. Her slanting eyes are sharp yellow, and the little purple spider veins in her cheeks have darkened like stitches. If you didn't know she was a woman you would never know it. She could be the famous Cheiro himself. 

"There's nothing to explain," I tell her stubbornly. "They're just lines." 

But Mary isn't listening; she is looking into Dot's palm, which she has already read at least a thousand times before. It's the one thing Dot never tires of, however. Now she wonders if Mary can figure out the initials of the boy she will marry. 

Dot is almost eleven but already, more than once, she has been deeply in love. I can hardly stand to see her lose out when it happens and she gets a crush. To attract attention she has developed a loud booming voice and, like me, she is big and imposing, with a large jawed grin full of teeth. She frightens off the other children with her hot pursuit. To get boyfriends, she knocks them down and grinds their faces in the snowy grit. To get girls, she ties the string waistband of their dresses to her own dress strings. She drags them around the playground until they promise to write her a note. 

The nuns don't know what to do with Dot, and I don't either. So I do the wrong thing and give her everything until there is nothing left. I try to be the mother I never had to the daughter I never was. I see too much of myself in Dot. I know how it is; I was too big for all the boys. But I never went so far as to beat them senseless, which Dot has done. 

I discourage violence and love-crushes. But Mary eggs her on. 

"I see an S," she muses, "then a little j. S.j., S.j." 

"It's not him," says Dot, disappointed. She broods into her hand as if her stare could rearrange the lines. 

"Take your homework in the kitchen," I say, "and get it done." 

I can feel Dot make a face behind my back. A sense develops in a parent. 

"I'll help," says Mary, too quickly. So they go in, leaving me alone. For a while then, I hear them snicker as they flip through the pages of Dot's books, I have no doubt that they are laughing at me, and I know I will feel this way later on as well. Mary will sleep in Dot's bed, and Dot will flop out on a cot. As I am trying to sleep, I will hear the two of them, whispering. But I won't tell them to be quiet because I know that Mary will not obey. 

That's it, I realize now, looking at the gas glow. That's why I'm so depressed since Mary has been around. It's like having two unruly daughters who won't listen to or mind me. I'm outnumbered, the only grown up. 

When Mary and Dot come back into the room, I'm all set to ask how the work on Mary's house is coming and maybe suggest she could live back there quite soon. But before I can open my mouth, Dot announces that she has a secret that she has been keeping for one week. By the way, Mary smiles knowingly and sharply gestures for me to listen, it is obvious that Dot has already told her. This upsets me, but with effort I form my face into an eager mask. 

We are quiet.  Then Dot speaks in a loud voice. 

"I am going to play Joseph, father of the Christ child," she states. "We've been practicing for the Christmas play next week." 

I think it's terrible that they pick my little girl to play the father of Christ in their pageant. Then I look at Dot, imagining her in a long, grizzled beard and coarse robe. I see the carpenter's maul wielded in her fist. I sigh. I try to smile. It's true that she will be convincing. 

Dot hands me a folded-up mimeograph from her teacher and I read that there will be a Christmas play the second week in December. Parents are invited to attend and also to bring a pan of hotdish or dessert for a potluck afterward. There was a dotted line on which I'm supposed to write the dish I'll bring. But the dish is already filled in with the word Jell-O. 

"Jell-O salad," Mary says, noticing my stare. I look at Dot and try to be reasonable. 

"I'm proud of you," I tell Dot. "Of course I'll be there." 

Then I ask Dot to put on her pajamas and wash her face. She says no. I say yes. Mary acts the coward and stays out of it. One hour later, excited and satisfied at having caused a delay, Dot tramps upstairs loudly singing her favorite carol, which has a chorus of "Pa-rup-pa-pa-pum." Listening to her footsteps in the upstairs hall my heart fills up. Even though she's difficult, I am her mother.  I'm the one who should sign her Christmas mimeograph. I can't say this to Mary, because it seems small and foolish. So instead I blurt out something more idiotic yet.

"I suppose you're going to put your damn radishes in the Jell-O!"

 I say this suddenly in a grating voice that seems to echo.

 Mary's answer is an attempt to act innocent. She says that she thought she'd save me trouble by bringing along the dish. She thought, because I was too busy, she would make one of her special Jell-O salads. I do not say I am glad she has done this because it isn't her place. And there was nothing, there was another thing as well. She knows I don't like her Jell-O salads. I have said so before. She puts in walnuts or chopped celery, macaroni, onions, miniature marshmallows, or, worst of all, sliced radishes. 

Even thinking about her strange Jell-O makes me furious. Nothing she cooks is normal not her bran cookies, not her sheet cakes, not her liver casseroles. I don't want her awful cooking to reflect on Dot. 

"All right," I say coldly, however, "do as you like." 

Dot comes down the stairs in a wooly nightgown fresh and washed. She is so happy about having stayed up an hour late about her starring role and acceptance of the invitation that I don't have the heart to put a damper on any of her joy. She puts on a damper on herself for a moment, in a startling way. 

"I forgot to tell you what the play is called," she says. "It's ‘The Donkey of Destiny.'"

Then her expression changes suddenly. 

"I hate the donkey," she says, almost as if to herself. 

"Dot?" I ask. 

But already she is turned, surprisingly with no more argument and runs upstairs to climb in bed. 

That night, I keep Mary downstairs talking for a long time. I'm still annoyed with her and really the reason I talk so late is merely to keep her from keeping Dot awake. I don't let Mary go to bed until her eyes droop. She yawns exhausted and can hardly drag herself from the chair.

 I'm tired too, and I know that by diverting Mary I've left Dot to face her problem with the donkey alone. Whatever that problem is, I should have helped her. I should gone upstairs after her and got her to admit what was wrong. But I know if I had, Mary would have climbed right after me and tried to take over the situation. 

This must stop! I think, getting into bed when the house is quiet. I decide that no matter what, even if it causes a misunderstanding, Mary must go back to her own house after the Christmas play is finished. Until then, I will endure her acting girlish with Dot. I will try to stand them whispering late across the hall and telling secrets to each other, but just until the play is over. After that, I decide that I will keep my daughter to myself. 

But the next day, I have to remember all that I intend and bite my lip, because Mary tells me something I do not know about my own daughter, although I would have know if it were not for keeping Mary up the night before. 

We are at the shop, it is late morning, and after having been closed for a few weeks, we're opening for business in a few hours. We're back into preparing orders for our regular customers, which seems to me a hopeful sign. Repair work is going on all around us. I want to urge the men with their aprons full of tools to work quickly. They're going as fast as they can already. To me their frenzied hammering, the whine of their drills is a cheerful, industrious sound. To Mary, it is irritating. 

"It gets on my nerves," she says, wrapping pound after pound of bratwurst.

"Harder they work, the sooner you can move back home," I answer. I am unable to keep a note of anticipation from my voice. 

"Well," says Mary with a close glance, "I could always check into the Fox." 

"Oh, no," I answer in a voice I cannot keep sincere. "Don't go to a hotel. I'm sure that your presence is very beneficial to Dot." 

"I'm sure it is too," Mary says, giving me the same narrow-eyed stare she often uses on hard cases who want credit. But I do not want credit. She is the one in that position.  She wants to stay with me and weasel her way into Dot's affection. Not that I don't understand. Mary is alone, I know. It's her way of doing it that I object to. Wallace Pfef likes my daughter very much, but he never butts into our business the way Mary does. 

So I return Mary's stare with blank windows she cannot read, then hit the cash button on the register. I am adding up an order. By the time I find the total, she has recovered and swung around. 

"Do you know what it was about the donkey last night?" She asks this as soon as I slam the drawer shut. I do not want to have to ask her. 

But Mary doesn't wait for me to ask. 

"Dot loves the donkey. One half of it that is." She fairly crows. "The little boy who plays the front end is her beau." 

"That's no surprise to me," I say calmly, but inside I am thinking that I really could be driven past my limit. I really could be forced to do something I'd regret. I turn from Mary and I start thinking, if she has been able to worm her way into my daughter's heart to this extent, where will it leave off? If Dot ever runs away, she'll hitch into town and live with her aunt. What a victory for Mary. I'll be fired and barred from the house of meats. I'll have to hire a lawyer to get my daughter back. It isn't fair. I'm the one who has to be strict and tell Dot to do her homework. Mary is the one who keeps her up late all, all night having fun so the next day she dozes off in school. I'm the one who tries to make Dot eat lima beans and wash her neck. Mary lies, looking into the palm of her hand. I ached for a mother because I never had one. I would have been glad for a mother to tell me what to do, but Dot always had me there no matter what. I've been steady, but unexciting. For dinner I make hamburger casserole, while Mary would serve anything that fell into her hands. 

A week goes by. And then, it is the morning of the Christmas play, bleak and cold with the usual traveler's warnings. Dot is spinning with excitement, nearly out of control. She gulps down her breakfast and in a surge of affection, hugs me, then Mary. I can see that Mary is so touched and surprised that she has no words and can't even say good-bye or wish Dot luck. Dot forgets to brush her hair and jumps out the door looking wild and unruly. Hug or no hug, I run after her with a hairbrush, slipping and sliding, to catch her at bus stop. 

"Dot," I say, "stand still. Calm down or you'll be tired by the time you get on stage." 

Her cheeks glow and her eyes are dagger bright; she's carrying an old bathtub of Wallace Pfef's and a pair of my leather sandals in a paper sack. The rest of her costume will be supplied by the nuns. The wind is harsh. My legs are bare. The road is slick and welted with frozen grime. Dot struggles while I brush her hair and pluck lint from her blue plush coat. The bus rescues her; she leaps in the very second the thin door swishes open. 

"Next time you see me I'll be disguised," she screams. 

Gears in the bus groaned impatiently, and she runs down the aisle to sit in back of the bus with, as I have heard, the other troublemakers. She waves, though, and her face is a pure blob of light through the caked dust of the window. The bus pulls carefully down the road, and she is gone. I walk back to the house with my plan firm in mind. 

The first thing I'm going to do is call Wallace Pfef, because my car has a rotten snow tire and tonight in this ice I'm going to need a ride. I can't ask Mary, because I'm bringing along a special, secret dish that I don't want her to know about. Not until the play is finished, that is. Not until the parents are wandering hungrily toward the back of the auditorium where the long, hot lunch tables are set full of uncovered dishes. Then she'll find out about it soon enough, for I have decided to go more hog wild than Mary would have the nerve to. I've decided a jealous mother has a right to be unpredictable. I've also fixed it so all the strange looks will go in Mary's direction and not toward Dot or her mother. We'll be eating off our paper plates, talking to Wallace Pfef, ignoring the scratched heads and titters over at the table. Mary, for her part, will be someplace else. I don't care; I don't even plan to sit with her during the play. 

When I get back to the house, she's already prepared to drive into town. I'm glad she's going early; I'm taking the day off. That way, I'll have time to perfect my special, secret dish for this evening. 

"Don't bother to wait for me," I say as she is going out, "just find a place in the auditorium tonight and sit. It'll be crowded." 

She nods at me and drives off, squinting forward to see through the little anti-frost square of plastic fixed to her windshield. I call Wallace and agree on a time, and think that everything will go like clockwork. But of course, as with most things in life, it doesn't. 

This next part, it's dedicated to my mother who suffered through so many of my Christmas plays, who made so many angel costumes. 

The gymnasium that night is packed full and noisy. I walk into the confusion with Wallace and my foil-covered pan. But before I can safely deposit it on the table, along with the offerings of the other parents, we are caught by Mary. She is dressed to the hilt in a black turban with a rhinestone buckle and a new rayon dress. The material is so unusual; I can hardly stop looking at it. The background is blue, covered everywhere with markings that could have been drawn on by prehistorics with charcoal sticks. It is writing of a sort, legible yet meaningless. It almost makes you want to lean forward and decipher it. 

"I saved us seats," she says, "right up front. Come on, before someone grabs them." 

"I'll find you," I say, pushing Pfef to go with her. Luckily, she is so anxious to get back to the seats that she doesn't notice that I brought a dish. So I am able to slip it in among the others. I say hello to the teachers who are standing at the back marshalling the paper cups; even Mrs. Shumway gives a pleasant smile tonight, although her eyes, darting over the crowd, light a moment on Mary's flashing buckle and take on a glazed wariness. 

At length, I make my way to where Mary has kept the seat open between herself and Wallace. She has nothing to say to Wallace since he has become Dot's friend. She also blames him for sugar beets, which have brought the new franchise supermarkets that have cost her so much business. We look around, caught up in the excitement of it all. The lights blaze in steel mesh buckets. Dads with rolled sleeves are lifting additional folding chairs from side carts and settling mink collared grandmothers. In front by the entries to the stage wings, nuns are huddled together in their black veils. The gym is run down, a parish all-purpose room used for wedding and funeral dinners, budget meetings, bingo. The purple velveteen curtain is a shabby cast-off from the public school. The wood floor creaks and waivers, but the walls shine, decked in strands of tinsel. The feverish noise mounts and mounts, then suddenly, it hushes and there is only the sound of programs rustling. In whispers, we find and admire Dot's name. The lights go down, there is complete silence. Then the curtains squeak open. The spotlight shows a boy wearing a knit poncho and a huge sombrero of the kind people who have been to Mexico hang on their walls. The boy makes a long, sad speech about his friend the donkey we must sell to the glue factory in order to buy food. On a darkened set of bleachers behind him, a chorus of first graders laments the donkey's fate. 

The boy pulls the rope he has been twisting in his hands, and the donkey bumbles out of the wings. It is wearing grey pants and tennis shoes. The body is barrel shaped, lopsided; the paper Mache head lolls like it was a drunk. The mouth painted open in a grin, and the slanted black-rimmed eyes give it a strange expression of cruelty. 

Parents ooh and ahh, but, some look startled.  The donkey is an unpleasant creature. Its dyed burlap-and-rug hide looks moth-eaten. One ear is long and one is short. Mary must be the only person in the crowd who thinks the donkey's cute. "Oh, look at it prance," she whispers into my ear. 

Her tartar eyes gleam softly; she bites her lip. Her gloves are in a tight ball like socks. She smiles at the boy and his donkey as they start out on the long road to the glue factory. Tragedy, her favorite element, is in the air. Her eyes sparkle as the chorus wails. 

"Amigos! We are amigos!" The boy shouts from beneath the sombrero. Then they slowly begin to walk across the stage, they're weeping. But before they reach the glue factory, Saint Joseph appears. 

My heart jumps. I am so afraid she will trip or say the wrong thing. But she is just right. 

She wears a long beard of spray painted cotton, an old piece of upholstery fabric tied to her head, and a brown towel cloth bathrobe that Wallace loaned to her. My summer sandals looked biblical on her. As in my vision of her, she is carrying a wooden maul. Mary nods proudly and I guess that the maul is her old sheep knocker. I don't like that. Saint Joseph should carry a construction tool, I think, not an instrument of death. Perhaps because of the maul, Dot looks grimmer than the mild church statues, and more powerful. I believe in her as Saint Joseph, even though she is my daughter. The donkey sidles up to her with its evil, silly grin. She stands before it, with her legs spread wide, balancing on the balls of her feet. All I can see of the boy, who according to Mary she loves, are the gray corduroy knees and frayed black shoes. Dot grabs the donkey around the neck, the gray legs twitch for a moment in the air, and she sets the donkey down and says her lines to the donkey's amigo. 

"Señor, where are you going with this donkey?" 

"I must sell it to the glue factory, for my family's hungry," says the boy sadly. 

"Perhaps I can help you out," says Dot. "My wife Mary, myself, and our little boy Baby Jesus want to flee King Herod. My wife could ride this donkey if you would sell it." 

"I will sell my donkey to help you," shouts the boy. "He will not be killed!" 

"Of course not," says Dot, "we will only ride him across the desert to Egypt." 

She takes some large coins made of crushed aluminum foil from her bathrobe pocket and gives them to the boy. 

And so it is, the transaction is accomplished. The donkey of destiny now belongs to Dot, who then tries to pat its snarling paper maché muzzle. But, here is where the episode occurs, which I later hope will not scar the mind of my daughter for life. The donkey balks. Is this in the script? I glance at Wallace, then Mary, wondering. But Wallace shrugs and Mary's look narrows to a flashlight focus of premonitions. 

"Come along little donkey," says Joseph, through grit teeth. She pulls, perhaps a bit roughly, the rope around its neck. Suddenly, a hand snakes out from the front of the donkey's neck flap and rips the rope right out Saint Joseph's surprised knuckles. 

My hands fly up helplessly, as if they could stop everything, but it's too late. The audience twitters, a few loud men guffaw, and Saint Joseph hears the audience, laughing at her! She jerks the rope back from the donkey. The hand slips out again, this time pulls cotton fluff right off of Saint Joseph's chin. 

Dot's arm tightens. I can feel it. Her face goes red with fury, purple, white, and then she raises the maul, high! I know what will happen. The audience gapes. Then she brings it down, clean, like swift judgment, on the cardboard skull of the beast. 

The front of the donkey drops, the head flies off, smashed, and the last of that scene that we see is Saint Joseph standing in criminal triumph, maul gripped tight over the motionless body a tow-haired boy. 

The curtain has closed and the audience is in a rumble of consternation. A fat, blonde hysterical woman flies down the aisle, no doubt the monk- mother of the donkeys fai- felled front end. I sit rooted. 

"Come!" Mary hisses, hoisting her handbag on her elbow. "Or the nuns will take it out on her hide!"

We leave the chairs to Wallace and find the side door. We slip behind the curtains into the backstage area. Angels and shepherds are standing in dismayed clumps. The Virgin Mary has torn off her veil and sobs in a corner. The painted wood silhouettes of sheep and cattle look stupidly baffled. 

"Where's Dot?" Mary's voice booms. Everybody swivels. 

"She escaped out the back door of the gym," says one of the sisters, tight lipped. 

"Get out a search party then!" says Mary. "She's barefoot in the snow!" 

But, no search party forms at her words. 

I take Mary's elbow and steer her out the back entrance. 

"We'll look for her in your truck," I say, "and don't worry, I'm sure she put on boots." 

We drive slowly up and down the streets of Argus. There are so many new streets that sometimes we hardly know where we are. We drive back, stop in at Mary's, and finally make it all the way home where we find Dot bundled in a blanket sitting on the living-room coffee table with her bare feet by the heat ducts. The pair of red boots that she took are drying out on a plastic mat. 

"Young lady!" I shout in relief, marching toward her, but Mary gets there first. 

"Wait," says Mary, holding me back, "She is hurt." 

Sure enough, Dot is hiding something. She sits clutching her play beard, shaking with the cold or maybe holding herself together. Defeated, wrapped in a blanket, she looks oddly like an ordinary middle-aged man. Her face is pale, streaked with misery, and her blue eyes are distant, unfamiliar with not even a hint of anger. 

"Dot," I say, opening my arms. 

She hesitates, wants to come, won't let herself. Won't look at my face, but she starts to move toward me. Mary, however, is in the way between us. Mary kneels with a stiff creak and then suddenly, fiercely, lunges and catches my daughter full across the chest and neck with a stranglehold. Right then, I don't even care it is Mary who holds her, because I can only feel Dot's sadness. But Dot charges suddenly into my arms; runs right over Mary like a bull, sends Mary tumbling in a heap of black signs. Then Dot bolts up the stairs the door to her room slams. 

Mary thumps so loudly, falling over, that I pause just a moment to help her. But she's not hurt, and even tries to look perversely delighted over what Dot has done. She pushes away my helping hands and lifts herself up. 

"That's my girl," she says adjusting her turban. 

I go upstairs. 

"Dot," I say, tapping on her door. 

After a while, I hear her muffled voice and so I enter. I sit down with her in the dark on the cot where has thrown herself and slowly let my arms fall around her, as if by accident. She doesn't move. She is tense as an animal in fear, ready to snap or go limp beneath its keeper's grasp. I adjust my hands, flattening my palms so I touch her by inches. When I move them, pressing my fingers in her hair, stroking down the side of her neck, she almost shrugs me off. But she cannot, the fight has left her. And she needs me too much to resist when I gather her close. Her heavy head falls against me, salty smelling of sour wool. Her shoulders rock, but I can't tell she's crying until my skirt sticks to my thighs, damp, and she breathes out harsh and deep.

 It is so long before she draws another breath that I almost shake her in alarm. She's just asleep and nothing will disturb her now. I don't leave, even though my arms go numb and Mary waits downstairs. I don't leave when she tosses in her first dream, throwing more weight against me. I sit perfectly still. 

Then her fingers uncurl as if sand is trickling out. She seems lighter. The radiator shudders in the corner. Dot's room smells like the nests of shoes and socks she's made this week. It smells of the mildewed stuffing of her battered and abandoned dolls, like the sawdust where her hamsters hide. It smells of the oils she put on her softball glove, lilac water that she dumps on her hair. It smells of cold grit between the window and the sill. It smells of Dot, a clean and bitter smell, like new bark, that I'd know anywhere. 

I fall asleep in the peace like that. And when I wake up I can't tell how late it is. I go downstairs and see that Mary is sitting by the gas heater. She has a piece of bread and butter in one hand and a mug of weak coffee in the other. The clock says midnight. 

"I made a pot," she gestures toward the kitchen. "Get some for yourself." 

So I do, and for a while we sit munching and sipping without a word. 

"Wallace must have stayed back to talk to the parents," I say at last. "I suppose somehow the nuns salvaged the event." 

"The kid deserved it," Mary says. "He was really the donkey's ass." 

I agree with her. Mary speculates that he is a new child in the area, one of those who live in the big six-plexes. I tell her that children have had their moments of violence since time began and this will pass. She begins to talk about the supper. How the- About how they'll all mill back and fill their plates and talk about her specially concocted Jell-O. She has found a recipe she never tried before. I am dreamy and half asleep after sitting with Dot. And so, when I tell her about the dish I brought, I don't think. 

"Did you know notice that I brought a special pan?" I ask. 

"No," she says. She doesn't even ask what it was. I touch her chair and laugh. 

"Well, listen a minute," I say, "It had your name on it." 

"My name?" Now she is interested. 

"I taped it on the bottom of the pan," I tell her, "although I made the dish myself." 

She's silent now and curious. 

"What was in it?" she asks. 

"I made Jell-O salad." 

"Oh," she says, "what kind?" 

"The kind full of nuts and bolts," I say, "plus washers of all types. I raided your toolbox for the special ingredients." 

Her pupils hardened to pinpoints. She trains a long look on my face, then she turns away and huffs on her coffee as if to cool it. I expect she will laugh any moment and see the joke. I expect from her anything but what actually happens. For she never speaks, her shoulders slump down and her back relents, and then in the odd print of her dress, I finally read that she is hurt. She won't admit it, I know, but Mary wanted this evening to be successful even more than I did. She wanted to taste here and there among the hot dishes and discuss them. She wanted to boast about her niece's starring role. It was the first time that she was ever included to this extent in the life of Dot and unless a wind hits and the shop is completely leveled, this will probably be the last. She has no excuse to stay here, even now. 

"I'm going," she says. "I left the shop unlocked and the dogs are out." 

She puts on her coat and walks out the door. I am left standing in the entry as her lights swing away into the dark. I hardly ever think about Mary's feelings, but now I do. I think of her alone in the small, throbbing cave of her vehicle. She's worn thin, fancy gloves for the play, and now the night is so cold that she can only keep one hand at time on the wheel. As she drives, she blows on the other hand to warm it. Then, she changes hands. It's three miles between my house and Argus, and the road is bad. I watch Mary's car move cautiously down the dangerously frozen gravel ruts. Her red taillight trembles at the far intersection then winks out. 

End of that section, I'm going to just read one other thing. And I'm going to, I, I read this when I read in North Dakota once before, and I sort of stumbled over it, and I want to try and read it well this time because it's a special poem that I'd like to dedicate to my father. It's called "The Butcher's Wife".

Once my braids swung heavy as ropes.
Men feared them like gallows.
Night fell
When I combed them out.
No one could see me in the dark.

Then I stood still
Too long and the braids took root.
I wept, so helpless.
The braids tapped deep and flourished.

A man came by with an ox on his shoulders.
He yoked it to my apron
And pulled me from the ground.
From that time on I wound the braids around my head
So that my arms would be free to tend him.

 Part Two.

He could lift a grown man by the belt with his teeth.
In a contest, he'd press a whole hog, a side of beef.
He loved his highballs, his herring, and the attentions of women.
He died pounding his chest with no last words for anyone.

The gin vessels in his face broke and darkened. I traced them
Far from that room into Bremen on the Sea.
The narrow streets twisted down to the piers.
And far off in the black, rocking waters, the lights of trawlers
Beckoned, like the heart's uncertain signals,
Faint, and Final.

Of course I planted a great, full bush of roses on his grave.
Who else would give the butcher roses but his wife?
Each summer, I am reminded of the heart surging from his vest,
Mocking all the hives stern angels 
By pounding for their spread skirts.

The flowers unfurled, offering themselves, 
And I hear his heart pound on the earth like a great fist, 
Demanding another round of the best wine in the house. 
Another round, he cries, and another round all summer long,
Until the whole damn world reels towards winter drunk.

Thank you all very much for being here.

[~Transcription by Sarah Scholler, reviewed by Dr. Crystal Alberts 14 December 2009]