Читать книгу Rat Medicine & Other Unlikely Curatives - Lauren B. Davis - Страница 3

I saw the first rat next to where we stored the chicken feed. It was a week before John used his fists on me. I was out by the sacks and felt like somebody was watching me. The hair stood up on places of my body where I didn’t know I had hair. I put down the tin pail I used to scatter the feed and picked up a shovel leaning against the shed. We’d never had no trouble. Living so far out of town like we did criminal types didn’t seem to have the gumption to haul ass all the way out to our place, but there was always a first time. I turned around and there he was, sitting back on his hind quarters like a little rat dog begging for a titbit, up on the shed roof. He didn’t flick a whisker, bold as brass. Just kept looking at me, his little front paws tucked up in front of his belly, his eyes bright as black glass.

“What do you think you’re doing up there?” I said, but of course the rat didn’t say nothing back.

“Don’t think you can get in and eat up all this good feed.” The rat kept looking at me, straight and firm like.

“We got a big old tom cat round here. He’s going be picking his teeth with your bones, my friend.” If rats could be said to smirk, that’s what he was doing.

Now, most people, they really hate rats. Not me. I don’t hate anything about the animal kingdom. Not snakes, not spiders, not coyote, not buzzard. That’s the Ojibway blood, from my mother’s people. My Granny used to tell me, you dream about a rat, you dreaming about some sickness, maybe a bad one, soon to come on. Granny was usually right about these things. I set store in omens, in symbols and signs. It’s all there if you know what to look for. So I looked at the rat, recognised it for a fellow who’d come to tell me something.

“You got news for me, rat man? If you do, you better tell me. I ain’t got all day.” The rat cleaned behind his ears. Then he turned and stuck his bald tail straight in the air and disappeared toward the other side of the shed roof. I tried to get around to see where he was going, fast as my size would allow, but when I looked there weren’t no sign of him.

I didn’t tell John about the rat because I knew he’d just blame it on me. Tell me I didn’t keep the place clean enough. Which was a lie, but true facts never matter much to John when he got a good rage going. I got a couple of old oil drums John kept about the place and put the sacks of feed in there, put old boards on the top and weighted them down with rocks.

When John came back that night he was in a mood even fouler than the night before. His moods had been getting worse for some time. He slammed the screen door so hard I thought the wood frame’d splinter.

“Nell!” he yelled. “This place looks like a goddamn pigsty! What the hell do you do all day?”

There wasn’t no point in answering. He was just looking for a fight.

“C’mon in here and get your dinner, John.”

He sat down at the kitchen table, his filthy work boots leaving marks on my clean floor. He stank of sweat from working at the mill in this heat. ‘Course he wouldn’t have thought to wash up before dinner. I didn’t dare say nothing. I served us both up our food and set the plates down on the table.

“Fat as you are,” John said, “don’t think you’re going to be eating all that. Take half off, Nell. You need to loose some goddamn weight.”

I just looked at him.

“I mean it. You are getting to be a big fat squaw. I can’t hardly bear to look at you.”

I am a big woman, I don’t deny it. I wasn’t always this size, though I never have been small. It was after John Jr. died that I really started packing it on. Seemed like I didn’t want to do much more than try and fill up the hole his dying left. Slipped away in his sleep, silent as a leaf falling in the dark and him not a year old. But I found a way to keep going without turning mean, turning against the force of life. Which is more than I can say for his father. We’d lost the baby more’n three years then and John never did get over it.

That and the farm failing.

John said the reason the farm failed, why the crops all withered up and got ate by every sort of crawling creature, was the land was poison. Said the poison came from up the mine that started digging great wounds in the side of South Mountain. Well I don’t know. Maybe yes, and maybe no. It wasn’t that John didn’t work hard, it’s just he never had his father’s touch. Everything just turned to rot as soon as he came near it. It made him bitter.

The worst was last month, when we couldn’t make the mortgage. It hurt his pride, faced with the choice to go down to Rickett’s mill and beg for work, or hand over the land that’d been in his family for generations to the bank. It was hard on a man, sure hard. Years of too little money and too much whiskey and a small town where a man could never get ahead of his reputation. John liked his whiskey more and more. Me, I never touched the stuff. My mother and grandmother both impressed on me that you didn’t get to be no spirit walker with a bottle in your hand. That might be OK for whites, but it wasn’t for Indians.

So I tried to understand. That’s the way women are, I think, that’s the medicine we carry. To try to understand a man and stay soft about it. But that don’t mean the hurts aren’t there, deep in the marrow.

I looked across the table and saw the contempt in his face. I scraped half my food off my plate, but it didn’t matter. I’d lost my appetite anyway.

That night I dreamed about a rat. It was sitting on the roof, like some sort of weather vane. It faced east and its nose scented every little breeze that came along.

Three days later I was washing dishes, up to my arms in warm, soap-creamy water. I like washing dishes; it’s like meditation, just looking out the window at the back garden. That year I’d put in nasturtiums, because I like their peppery taste and they look so pretty. I got a crop of the three sisters: corn, beans and squash, plus tomatoes, zucchini, carrots and such, set about with a border of marigolds to keep down the bugs. I have a good hand at gardens, although I don’t brag about it, because it sets John off to distraction the way things just seem to jump to life under my fingers.

So, anyway, there I am, looking out the window and day dreaming about the sorts of things a women day-dreams about when her man don’t want to touch her anymore, and I realise there’s a face in the window looking back at me. A rat face. There’s the bugger, just sitting on the windowsill, staring me down. His fur’s all clean and glossy brown and he’s got a white stomach and little pink ears. He reaches out and puts one little paw up against the glass. I put my finger up against the glass on my side. He doesn’t budge and the two of us stay like that for a minute or so, like somebody visiting a prisoner in a jail, although it was hard to figure out who was who. I had half a mind to open the window up and let him in; I was almost getting fond of the little guy.

Lying out on warm stones back of the house was Oscar, our tomcat, and the mouser supreme. He stretched himself into one of those contortions only cats can do, all sinew and pretzel.

“You better get gone, little buddy,” I said to the rat. The rat just looked at me and put both paws up on the window. I tapped on the glass, trying to scare him off. Oscar often jumped up on the sill so I could open the window and let him in, and I didn’t want to see the little guy get eaten up. “Go on! Go on!” I hissed, trying not to draw Oscar’s attention. Too late, Oscar was hightailing it over, ready to pounce on the rat. I closed my eyes.

Next thing I heard was Oscar’s whining meow, demanding to be let in. I opened my eyes, figuring the rat had taken a quick dive out of there. On one end of the ledge was Oscar, as expected, but on the other end, not a foot away, was the rat. Calm as a cream-fed cat himself, eyes directly on me. Oscar didn’t even notice. I opened the window to let Oscar in, wondering if the rat planned on jumping in as well, but he stayed put. Oscar scattered in, upsetting a glass left to dry on the drain board. I dove to grab it before it fell to the floor. When I turned back, the rat was gone. I shook my head and looked at Oscar.

“Well, some fine hunter you are, you big hairball.” Oscar looked at me with the same complete lack of interest he always has, unless there’s fish guts involved.

That night, John threw his plate of food over my head where it shattered into a hundred pieces. Said the chops were burned, which was nonsense. He shoved me up against the counter and smeared a dishrag in my face. Told me to clean it up and fix him something decent to eat. By the time I cleaned it up and cooked him some new chops, crying all the while, he’d passed out in the Barca-lounger in front of the TV with a bottle of Jack Daniels in his fist. I put a blanket over him and left him there.

That night I dreamed a swarm of rats were churning under our bed, their tails all tied together in knots.

In the morning I had a big purple bruise on my hip from where I connected with the counter. I had five small, separate storm cloud-coloured bruises on my upper arm. As I fixed John coffee and eggs and didn’t talk to him at all, he came up behind me and, seeing the marks, kissed every one of them and said he was sorry. His damp lips felt so good on my parched skin.

“I’m sorry baby, I’m sorry,” he kept muttering. I could have sworn he shed a tear.

John is a good-looking man. The first time I saw him, coming to buy smoked fish off my Uncle Joe, and me only eighteen at the time, I was a goner. This big old cowboy in the skin-tight jeans was the one for me. Looked just like Clint Eastwood. Auntie Betty said I was crazy to go off and marry some white man. We didn’t know his family stories, didn’t know what kind of past he was hauling around with him. But I didn’t care. My eyes were firmly focused on his round little white man’s butt in those Levi’s.

“I don’t know why you put up with me sometimes,” he said and cradled my face in his big callused hands. He said he was sorry again and took me in his arms right there in the kitchen. I forgave him. You bet I did.

Two days later I was sitting in the kitchen having coffee with my friend Joelle when I look up over her shoulder to the top of the refrigerator and what do I see but my rat pal looking out at me from in between the fat chef cookie jar and the empty plastic ice cube trays.

“I’ll be damned. Joelle, turn around slow and look up on the top of the ‘fridge.”

“What?” she said.

“Up there, look! Look at that damn rat!”

“Rat!” she shrieked. “What rat?”

“There, right there - look at it!”

“What are you talking about? I don’t see no rat.”

“You don’t see him. Right there. That rat?” The rat sat up on his haunches, spit into his paws and gave himself a good old cleaning.

“Where are you looking?”

“There, Goddamn it! Washing his ears!” I pointed frantically.

“I don’t know what you’re smoking, but there is no rat on the refrigerator. You’re giving me the creeps.”

Now there were two of them. Something caught my eye. I looked over by the sink and there was another one.

“You don’t see anything at all strange in this kitchen?” I asked.

“The only strange thing in this kitchen is you.”

When Joelle left, I called over to the rez. I called my Auntie Betty.

“I got rat problems.” I said.

“You got rats,” Auntie Betty said, practical as always, “You got to go out to the field they live in and explain to them you ain’t got no extras to go round but you’ll try and leave them out some of what you can spare if they agree to respect your stores.”

“Ain’t that kind of rat,” I said.

“Well, what kind are they?”

“The kind only I can see. And I been dreaming about them, too.”

“Oh. That kind of rat.” She paused. “I’ll call you back.”

I knew she was going to go pray some and ask her spirits what was going on over at my place. I’m not as good at this direct stuff as she is. I drank two more cups of tea waiting for the phone to ring.

“You got problems in your house, eh?” she said. “You got marriage problems.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“He’s got some bad stuff around him. Very dark stuff.”

I didn’t say anything. I remembered the look on his face when he threw the plate.

“He’s got anger twisted up in him, that one. You got to be careful. You know what I mean?”

“What should I do?”

“What you asking me that for? You gonna listen to me? You gonna come back home? You gonna leave that white man?”

I didn’t answer.

“Uh-huh,” Auntie Betty said. “I thought so. OK, now you listen to me. Animals don’t take the time out of their busy day unless they got serious business. You hear me?”

“I hear.”

“You got to listen to them. You got a bad sickness coming into your house. You need to clear things out. I don’t know if it’s too far-gone, but you got to smudge out your house good. You got sweetgrass? You got sage?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, use ‘em. Smoke that house up good, smoke your bed up good. Put a red blanket on the bed.”

“OK.”

“Then you go get these plants and boil ‘em up. Drink the tea.” She named some herbs and plants.

“One thing Nell. One thing I got to ask. Is he hitting you?”

“Naw. Not really.”

“What the hell is ‘not really!’ Either he is, or he ain’t! You better get ready. His anger’s gonna bust out all over you. I’ll do what I can, but I don’t know. You should come home for a while.”

“I can’t. I love him, Auntie.”

“Love! Phooey! Should go back to the old ways! Let your aunties pick you out a good red man. Stay where we can keep an eye on you! You young people! All the same!” She went on for a while, but I didn’t listen much. I knew this part by heart. And besides, I was too busy watching the rats run back and forth from the bedroom to the bathroom.

“Nell? You listening?”

“Yes, Auntie.”

“OK, one last thing. Fat as you are these days, you ain’t gonna be able to dodge him if he comes at you. You offer tobacco to these rats and ask them for a tuft of their hair. You braid it into your hair. That’ll make you nimble like they are. Give you a chance if you need it.”

“I never heard that one before.”

“Yeah, well, it ain’t strictly ours, eh? That one’s from Africa. I learned it from that black nurse works with me midwifing. We trade stuff sometimes. Don’t matter. All the same medicine. You just use it, you hear? Spirit rats or flesh and blood, they’ll give you what you need. They’re here to help.”

“Yes Auntie.”

I promised to call her tomorrow and made her promise not to tell my mother, not to tell my brothers, for what good it would do. I know how gossip passed around out on the rez. Wouldn’t be long before everybody knew what was going on at my house. Which maybe wasn’t such a bad thing. Get a few of the old timers burning tobacco for me. Long as my brother Jimmy didn’t find out. He’d be over wanting to kick some white man’s butt.

I went out and offered my tobacco and found a tuft of rat fur up on the windowsill. I braided it in my hair. I picked the herbs. I drank the tea. I smudged the house. I put the red blanket on the bed.

It was Sunday the next day, and I knew John’d be out drinking with his buddies late that night. It could go either way. Maybe he’d just come home and pass out. Maybe he’d come home mean. I slept with one eye open, tucked up under the protection blanket. I didn’t see no rats, but didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad. Rats abandon a sinking ship, or a house where there’s a fire coming

I heard the truck skid through the gravel around 3:00 a.m. He was drunk as a cowboy after a long dry cattle drive. He came in the kitchen, slamming stuff around and stumbling and cursing as he barked his shins and banged his elbows. I heard him pissing in the bathroom, then heard him coming down the hall. He stood in the doorway a few minutes, swaying. I knew he couldn’t see my open eyes, dark as the room was, and I sure wasn’t going to close them, not knowing what was coming. He took a couple of wide-legged steps toward the bed, trying to keep his balance, and finally toppled like a cut pine across my body. I heaved him over and left him snoring on top of the red blanket. Man, he smelled bad. Whiskey and smoke and beer and, although it broke my heart to admit it, some woman other than me.

I got up and went to the living room and cried myself to sleep, dreaming about rats on river rafts and rats in sewer drains and rats caught in traps.

I woke up the next morning to the sound of John puking. I went to fix him some coffee and orange juice, figuring that’d be about all his stomach could handle. I reached into the cupboard to get his favourite mug, the big one with the bucking bronco on the side of it. Sitting in it, with his little pink paws hooked over the top was the rat.

“Morning, little buddy.” I said. The rat jumped out and stood next to the coffee-pot. I opened the ‘fridge to get the orange juice. A rat sat on the stack of cheese slices. He didn’t budge when I reached in. I wondered if he’d learned how to turn the light on in there when the door was closed.

I heard John behind me and turned. He was still in his boots, his jeans, only his shirt was gone, and I guess he’d puked on it. Even mad at him as I was there was a twinge down in my belly at the sight of his naked chest, all hard muscle and sinew, his stomach flat, with pale golden hair running down into the top of his jeans. There was a rat sitting on the top of his head, yanking up his hair between its long pointy teeth.

“Oh man. My head’s killing me.” His eyes were bloodshot and yellowish, like two ketchup-covered eggs with runny yolks.

“Serves you right.” I wanted him to be hurting. I handed him his coffee. The rat on his head jumped off and disappeared into the living room.

“I ain’t in the mood Nell.”

“But I guess you were in the mood last night.” I stood with my hands on my hips. I could feel the hurt starting to switch around to righteous anger. I knew I should keep my mouth shut, but I was too mad, too hurt.

“Leave it alone.” His voice was ragged and dangerous.

“I don’t want to leave it alone. You smelled like a goddamn whorehouse when you came in last night, you bastard. I want to know who you been with!” Out of the corner of my eye I could see a flurries of rat fur, diving under counters, through the window, skittering around door jams and out of the room.

He slammed the cup down on the table, sloshing the coffee over the rim. His hands balled up into fists. He leaned towards me.

“Well you can bet your fat ass it was somebody under 200 lbs.”

Tears sprang to my eyes and my face went red.

“Look at yourself, you think any man’d want you?” He ran his eyes up and down my body and sneered. “You used to be a good looking woman, but now you ain’t nothing but a sack of lard.”

“I am a good wife to you John McBride. I can’t help it if I gained weight.”

“What the hell do you mean, you can’t help it? I ain’t the one stuffing food down your throat! If you’d get off your floppy ass and do some work around this place, maybe you’d lose some of it, maybe I’d want you again!”

“I do all the work around this place! You don’t spend long enough here to do no work.”

“You saying I’m to blame for how disgusting you got? You blaming me, bitch?”

He took two steps toward me and I backed up until I found my self up against the counter.

“I ain’t blaming you, but Goddamn John, it ain’t me who’s the problem here - it’s you!” I couldn’t stop myself. “Out whoring around, mean drunk all the time - I ain’t gonna take it no more, you understand?”

I didn’t even see the blow coming.

Even with the rat fur charm braided in my hair, I couldn’t duck the first punch or the second, or the one after that. I lost count then. He went for my face, I guess, because it would be the place where the hurt would show the most. Proof that there was some small spot in the world where he could have an effect. My nose. My lips. My cheeks.

I went down, and, a gal my size... well, I went down hard and stayed down. I could see his boots in flashes of motion, misted in red.

I think it was all this flesh that saved me from getting worse than I got, and that was bad enough. But I was bundled way down deep inside the womb of myself and even though his hands left bruises, they didn’t break no bones. It didn’t hurt. I kept thinking it should hurt more, but it just felt like numbness everywhere, great stains of frozen places bursting out from under his icy fists and feet.

“John, John,....” I just kept repeating in a whisper. My heart speaking to his, willing him to hear me, see me, to stop...you’re breaking me, I thought, you’re breaking me apart. Then everything went quiet.

I could hear ragged breathing, great gulps of wet sobbing air. I thought it was me, but my moans were underneath that lung-punctured sound. I took my hands away from my face and as I did I heard my Auntie’s voice, steel strong and even.

“You step back John McBride. Step back now.”

I looked up at my husband. He stood over me, his face a twisted, crooked thing. Tears poured down his cheeks. His stomach heaved. He looked down at me as though he had no idea of how I’d fallen. He brought his bloody fists up in front of his own eyes and began to howl like a wild dog. He pounded his own face, first with his right hand, then his left, sparing no force.

“Bastard!” he cried, “Bastard!”

“Stop this! Stop this now! You hear me!” Auntie Betty stood in the doorway behind John. She filled the space with her square bulk. Her long grey braid was decorated with megis shells. She was dressed for serious ceremony work. Ribbons in her spirit colours on her skirt and blouse. Medicine pouch. In her left hand she carried the hawk wing fan, in her right the sweetgrass basket containing her pipe, tobacco, other things known only to her.

John hit himself square in the face with both fists.

Auntie Betty put her basket down and walked up behind him. She reached up and smacked him on the back of the head.

“Don’t be any more of a jackass than you already are. There’s been enough hitting for one day, eh?” She glared at him as he spun around. She raised the hawk wing fan and fluttered a circle in the air around his head. John let out a strangled noise, clamped his hand to his mouth and pushed past her out the door. I heard retching noises.

“Good. Puke up all that bad stuff,” said Auntie Betty, coming toward me. “Come on little one; let’s see what kind of shape you’re in.” She bent down and helped haul me to my feet. I was shaky. There was blood on my dress, dripping down from my nose.

“Looks like I got here just in time. You’ll live. Could hear it in the wind this morning. Time to come visit. Had Jimmy drop me off in the truck down the road a ways. Didn’t think this’d be the time for him to come calling.” She leaned me up against the counter and ran the tap water good and cold. She wet down a tea towel and put it in my hand. “Press that up against your face. You need ice.” She waddled her wide, bow-legged walk to the ‘fridge.

I started to cry, salty tears burning into my split lip. I heard the tires of our pickup squeal as John skidded out the drive and down the road.

“Don’t waste your time crying, girl.” She rolled ice in a plastic baggy. “Here, use this. What we need is a cup of tea. He’s not coming back for a while. I guarantee. Sit,” she ordered and I did as I was told as she puttered around my kitchen and fixed the tea. She reached into her basket and took out a skin pouch, sprinkled some herbs into the teapot. “This’ll help the hurts, inside and out.”

I didn’t feel much of anything just then, except glad Auntie Betty was there, glad someone else was taking control of things. I felt as limp as a newborn baby and just as naked. We drank the tea. I held the ice to my swelling-up eye. Auntie Betty held my hand.

Later she reached into her basket.

“I brought this for you,” she said, and laid a carton of rat poison on the counter. “You got yourself a vermin problem.”

“Poison?” I knew Auntie would never suggest such a thing, it went against the natural respect she had for one of all-her-relations, spirit rats or full bone and fur. “I don’t need that,” I said, my chest tight as a drum.

“I think you do. You got these kinda rats, you got to get rid of ‘em. White man’s rats need white man’s measures. This here’s white man’s poison.”

“You can’t be serious. You’ve lost your mind!”

“No, and you better remember to respect your elders! I ain’t lost my mind, but you better start using yours. I ain’t talking about poisoning nobody, not that some people don’t deserve it,” she snorted with disdain, “but I been given it some thought. Rat spirit chose to show up here, not no other. No bear or wolf or snake. ”

“You’re scaring me Auntie, and I been scared enough for one day.”

“Well, let it be the last day anything scares you. You shed that fear skin and maybe you’ll shed that fat skin too. Oh, don’t look at me that way, you know it’s true. Big woman’s a fine thing, but not the way you’re going at it. You can’t grow another baby in you by trying to stuff if down your mouth. You weren’t meant to be as big as you are; you ain’t got the bones for it, not like me.” She patted her belly and cackled. “But that’ll take care of itself once you start taking care of yourself, and for now, that means getting rid of this big old rat.”

“He didn’t mean it. You saw how sorry he was. It’s the pressure. We been going through some hard times.”

“What a load of horse shit! Times is always hard. That ain’t no excuse for what that man’s doing. He needs to learn.”

“I can’t leave him.”

“You can and you will. He might be able to get away with taking out his shit on soft minded little white women, but no Indian woman’s gonna stand for it.” She leaned over and took both my hands in hers, looked into my battered up face.

“You think he’s gonna stop unless you make him stop? You think it’s not going to just get worse? Don’t you watch Oprah?”

I didn’t say nothing.

“Nellie. Answer me. You think it’s gonna get any better unless he knows he’s gone too far, knows exactly what it’s cost him? Look me in the eye and tell me that.”

She was right. I knew she was right and it caved in my heart to know it.

“I know.”

“Well then.”

“But Auntie, I....”

“Don’t you even think about telling me you love that man! The man you fell in love with is gone. I don’t know whether he’ll be back or not, but what you got living in this house with you at the moment, sure as hell is not a man to love. This is an evil thing, all twisted over on itself.” I made a motion to protest. “Don’t interrupt me. Sometimes you put poison out for rats and like magic they disappear. Seems like they know it just ain’t safe no more.” She looked at me, her eyes flashing like stars among the wrinkles. “You understand?”

And I did.

She stayed all afternoon and as night fell she smudged the house up good. Then she called Jimmy and had him pick her up. She waited out at the end of the driveway so he wouldn’t come in and see me. Jimmy’d be just as likely to go off into town with his rifle and look for John, and nobody wanted that kind of trouble.

John didn’t come home that night, and I shouldn’t have expected him because Auntie Betty’d told me as much. Still, I lay in bed all night straining to hear the sound of his tires on the gravel. I finally fell asleep around dawn, too tired to mind the aches and pains, and didn’t dream about nothing at all.

The next day I fasted. I smudged the house again. Around my neck I put the leather pouch with the lightening stone in it that Auntie’d given me. She’d dug up the round red stone from between the roots of a tree where lightening’d struck last spring. It was powerful protection. I wore my ribbon dress. Green ribbons, white ribbons, black and rose. This was my ceremony.

I fixed the food just so. All the things John liked. Fried chicken. Lima beans. Mashed potatoes. Carrot salad with raisins.

I heard the truck in the yard just before 6:00. I took a deep breath. Smoothed my hair. Said a prayer. I heard the screen door shut and then John was in the kitchen. He stood in the doorway, a bunch of red roses in his hand. He was wearing the shirt I’d given his brother Philip last Christmas, so I knew where he’d spent the night. His hair was combed down neat. He looked like a school kid showing up at my door to pick me up for a date.

“Jesus Nellie, I’m so sorry. I’m gonna spend the rest of my life making it up to you, I swear.” He winced when he looked at me. My left eye was swollen and black, my lips were swollen, my cheek had a big bruise on it. I looked a mess. He didn’t mention my clothes, although I was in what he called “Squaw gear.”

“Come on baby. You just got to forgive me. It’ll never happen again, I mean it, cross my heart. Here, sweetheart.” He held out the flowers. I took them but didn’t say nothing. I put them in the sink. He came to put his arms around me from behind. I cringed as he squeezed my bruised ribs.

“Don’t,” I said.

“OK, OK. I’m sorry.” He put his hands up like I was holding a gun on him and backed away. “Christ. I really am sorry, Baby. I don’t know what got into me. You know how much I love you.”

“I fixed some food for you. Fried chicken. Your favourites,” I said.

“Oh, Honey, you’re just the best. I knew you wouldn’t stay mad at me.” He hugged me and this time I let him. His arms felt so good. For a second I felt safe there. Then I pushed him away.

“Sit down.”

John swung his long leg over the back of the chrome chair and sat, a grin on his face. I opened the oven and brought the plate I’d kept warming over to him. Then I went back and leaned up against the kitchen counter, next to the open box of rat poison. He picked up his knife and fork.

“Where’s yours?” he said.

“I’m not eating. This here’s special food. Just for you, eh?”

“I don’t want to eat alone, Sugar.”

“But I want you to.”

He looked puzzled. He looked down at his plate. Looked back over to me and then his eyes flicked to the box of poison. The colour drained out of his face.

“No,” he said.

“Why not?” I asked, folding my arms against my chest.

“You eat it,” he said.

“Fine,” I said. “See, it just don’t matter to me anymore.” I made a move toward the table, leaned over the plate, brushing my heavy breasts against his shoulder. I took the fork out of his hand and shovelled up a gob of mashed potatoes. I chewed it up and swallowed. He looked at me. I offered him the fork.

“Go ahead,” I said.

“No. Eat some of the chicken.”

I cut off a piece of chicken and ate it. “Um, um. I sure am a good cook. Yessir. That’s one thing you’re gonna miss.”

He pushed his chair away from the table and stood up.

“What’re you talking about?”

“I going home John. I’m leaving you.” I felt it then. Knew my heart had just broken.

“You ain’t going nowhere.” The colour rushed back into his face, his eyes dark and cloudy.

“Yes I am. And, John McBride, you’re going to let me walk out that door and drive back to where you found me. You know why?” I walked back over to the counter and stood near the poison. “Because if you don’t, you will never eat another meal in this house without wondering. You will never get another good night’s sleep.”

“Bitch!” he said, in a rush of air like he’d been punched. He made a move toward me.

I stood my ground, drew myself up and out, became full of myself and my own spirits.

“You will never hit me again and live.” I spoke very slowly, softly. “Is this what you want to be doing when you go to meet your maker, John?”

He heard me. I watched my husband’s face crumple. He slumped down on the chair and put his head in his hands.

“Don’t leave me. I’m begging you. Don’t go.”

I walked into the bedroom and picked up the bag I’d packed that afternoon. I carried it back into the kitchen. I picked up the keys to the truck from where he’d left them on the hook beside the door.

“You take care now,” I said. “I’ll have Jimmy drop the truck back later.” I closed the door behind me, and started walking, but I could still hear him crying. I stopped by the shed and put down a tobacco tie and some corn and seed for the rats, saying thank you. I didn’t see them, but I knew they were around.

Walking to the truck was like wading through hip deep mud, but I made it.I drove down the road back to the rez and felt like I was dragging my heart all the way, tied to the back of the bumper like an old tin can.