The Personal History of Rachel DuPree (11 page)

But it was too late to say such a thing. “Please,” I said, pointing at the rockers. “Stay awhile. If you can.”

Mrs. Fills the Pipe hesitated for a moment and then nodded. Like me, she knew it was too late to turn around and go back to her wagon. Lifting her skirt a little, she stepped up onto the porch and sat down in one of the rockers.

“Mary,” I said, “get the other rocker for Inez.”

After that everything went by in a big hurry. Mary carried out my bedroom rocker and pulled the three rockers close to the house to catch the shade. I brought out a pitcher with a little water in it and, giving Liz a warning look, I told her to pass the cup around to the boys what stood stiffly at one end of the porch. Liz was just as stiff. She glared at them as they took long drinks from the cup. I offered the biscuits to the boys. Mrs. Fills the Pipe said to take only one. I told my girls to take the boys down to the cottonwood where there was a touch of shade. I could tell Mary wanted to stay on the porch with us; she was staring at Inez, admiring her city clothes. I shook Mary off, telling her with my eyes that Inez was all grown up now and that she wasn’t.

“Let Rounder out of the barn,” I said to the girls. “If you think he’ll behave. It’s too hot in there.”

The teakettle whistled. In the kitchen I got out my third porcelain cup for Inez. There was a dried-up spider in the bottom; I turned the cup over, then dusted it out with my apron.

“Beautiful plate,” Mrs. Fills the Pipe said a few minutes later when I passed her the biscuits. She took one. Inez did too.

“Why, thank you,” I said, my heart puffed up with pride. “It was a wedding present.” I eased myself into the rocker on the other side of Mrs. Fills the Pipe. The three of us were lined up in a row, the sun on our knees but our laps and our faces in the shade. “It’s from my brother, Johnny. He lives near St. Louis now.”

Inez caught my eye. She was on the other side of her mother and had crossed her legs at the ankles like a lady does. But it was her shoes I couldn’t stop looking at. They were the color of a newborn tan calf and they fit as tight as kid gloves. A row of cloth-covered buttons started at the instep and ran clear to the top, just a few inches above Inez’s anklebone.

That must be what fashionable women were wearing in Chicago. Folks there would take one look at me in my shapeless brown dress covering my big belly, see my scuffed, dusty work boots, and take me for a backward country woman. And they’d be right.

I blinked back the tears of shame that came up from nowhere. Through the blur of them, I watched the string of children as they meandered to the cottonwood, Mary going out of her way to stop and pat Jerseybell, tethered by the root cellar.

Mrs. Fills the Pipe blew on her tea, then took a sip. She nodded her pleasure. “Chokeberry tea.”

“Oh,” I said, coming back to myself and remembering my manners. “Chokeberry’s my favorite. Glad you like it too.” I put my hand over the mouth of my cup; my water was plain. “Wish I had something cold to offer. Wouldn’t it be something if we could stretch some of that winter ice clear through summer? The last of ours ran out mid-July. A cold drink of water would be such a treat on a day like this.”

“I would not take it,” Mrs. Fills the Pipe said, “when there’s chokeberry tea.”

“Oh. Me neither, I don’t suppose.”
That was polite of Mrs. Fills the Pipe,
I thought. I gave her a sideways smile. She smiled back. I took a small sip of water. As I did, I saw that her moccasins were decorated with red, blue, and white beads. Around the ankles, the beads were in the shape of zigzags, making me think of lightning, making me think of courage. To my surprise I said, “I’m so glad you could stop, that you weren’t in too much of a hurry.”

“My cousin’s place is between here and home. We will get there before dark.”

“How nice,” I said, relieved that Mrs. Fills the Pipe knew this invitation to tea did not mean staying on for supper. “You’ll get to visit with family.”

“That’s right. This is Inez’s last time home before she leaves.” There was pride in her voice. “She will be gone two years.”

“Mercy, Inez. Where you going?”

“Minneapolis,” Inez said. “The nuns have a place for me there.”

“You’re going to be a nun?”

“No. Nursing school. They want me to be a nurse.”

“Why, my goodness.”

“It’s not my idea. I want to go to California. Hollywood, California.”

Mrs. Fills the Pipe clicked her tongue. “Doesn’t matter what she wants,” she said to me like Inez wasn’t sitting right there. “The nuns are giving her an opportunity.”

Opportunity. The word set me back. That was the very thing Isaac had said about coming to South Dakota. Now here was Mrs. Fills the Pipe, a Sioux, sending her daughter east. Suddenly I ached with envy. I wanted to be able to send my daughters east to school. I wanted my daughters to become beautiful young women in fashionable clothes. Where did Mrs. Fills the Pipe get the money to do so much for her daughter? Must be another handout, I decided. Just like free land and free food. But instead of the government, this time it was the Catholics.

A gust of wind caught and lifted our skirts. We each pressed them back into place before they could bellow even bigger, but in that one instant, I saw a mended tear in Inez’s right stocking just above her knee.

Something about that made me feel better, and I had to look away to keep from smiling. A little way off from the cottonwood the older boy had a long strand of rope knotted into a lariat. Our horses stood nearby. The boy twirled the rope near his feet. Then he played it out a little and let it loop big and loose over his head.

“Showing off,” Mrs. Fills the Pipe said, also watching the children.

Envy was the devil’s work, that was what my mother used to say about that. I told myself to put it behind me. The dress was a handout. I put my teacup to my lips and blew on it, giving me time to push away the envy. Everything the Indians had was a handout. Me and Isaac would never stand for such a thing.

I said, “How’s your sister-in-law? Is she feeling some better?”

“If she stays in out of the wind, stops eating the dust. My brother does not see to Eleanor right.” She pointed her chin at the children. “Those two are his. Franklin and Little Luther.”

“I’m sorry my boy John isn’t here. He’d like your nephews.”

Mrs. Fills the Pipe smiled. “Boys.”

“Aren’t they something?”

Mrs. Fills the Pipe nodded at my belly. “That one’s a boy.”

I couldn’t keep from smiling. “Nothing would please my husband more.”

“Men,” Mrs. Fills the Pipe said.

I laughed, surprising myself.

Side by side the three of us sat, each of us thinking, I supposed, our own thoughts. Our rockers creaked over the wood-planked floor as we rolled our feet, ball to heel, back and forth. The wind, caught on the south corner of the dugout, howled low.

I said, “When you came by last, you had that quilt you’d made for your sister-in-law. It was so pretty. She must be proud of it.”

Mrs. Fills the Pipe smiled, accepting the compliment. “My brother’s neighbor, Sadie Horn Cloud, has a new pattern. There’s a sun in the center, rising. Each square has its own sun. Some are coming up, some are higher, others are in between. It’s pretty. But it makes me hot to look at it.”

“I can just imagine. But come winter, all those suns will do a world of good.”

Inez said, “It never gets cold in California.”

Mrs. Fills the Pipe ignored this. “The nurse at the clinic gave my sister-in-law cream for the dryness in her skin. It helps in the winter.”

“That’d come in handy.” I ran the tip of my tongue over my cracked lips. “That reminds me. For Christmas my sister Sue—she lives in Chicago—she sent me a big bottle of something called aspirin. It’s a little white pill. It takes the heat out of a fever. Do you know it?”

“Yes. Cures headaches too.”

“Is that right?”

“So many good medicines,” Mrs. Fills the Pipes said. “But . . . then there is my cousin, Margaret Two Bulls, old enough to know better, looking for the fountain of youth. Thinks it comes in a bottle. Keeps ordering tonics from big-city catalogs.”

“The fountain of youth, mercy. Has she found it?”

Mrs. Fills the Pipe flapped her hand in the air. “A younger man, that is the fountain she needs.”

Inez laughed, and then I did too. How good it was to talk woman talk.

By the cottonwood, Mary was spinning the lariat now. She was a good roper and would practice for hours on end if it weren’t for chores. She threw the rope and caught Liz around the waist. Liz squealed, untangled herself, and then everyone took off running before Mary could rope the next person. It lightened my heart to see Liz play.

“Please,” I said, holding out the china plate. “Have another biscuit.”

Mrs. Fills the Pipe shook her head no, but Inez helped herself to another piece. Mrs. Fills the Pipe shot her a warning look.

I said, “The drought’s something else again, isn’t it?”

“Bad,” Mrs. Fills the Pipe said.

“I miss the meadowlarks. Can’t hardly wake up without their singing.”

“One of the elders claims they are all at the Missouri.”

“Is that right? I wondered what happened to them. I was afraid they were all dead.”

Franklin, the older boy, had the rope now. He spun it fast. It whipped through the air and lassoed Mary. Franklin reeled her in. Mary laughed.

I said, “How’s the water table at your place?”

“Low, but still filling the bucket.”

I almost told Mrs. Fills the Pipe about our well and how two times now we’d had to send Liz down. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It wasn’t the kind of thing a person talked about. I said, “Sometimes I think about moving to the city.” I stopped, embarrassed by what I’d just said. “I mean to Interior. Or maybe Scenic.”

Mrs. Fills the Pipe glanced at my belly. “Neighbors,” she said.

“I could stand a few.” Then, because that sounded like a complaint against my home, I said, “As soon as it rains, I’m doing my wash. I’m going to let my wash soak for days. Get all this grit out. Scrub down the house, my hair too.”

Mrs. Fills the Pipe agreed. “Half the Badlands is in my house.”

“The wind never stops.”

“This is a hard place. Hard to take, hard to like.”

I looked at her in surprise. I said, “But aren’t you from here?”

“No.”

“Oh.” I waited for her to tell me where she’d been born and bred. When she didn’t, I said, “I was born in Louisiana.”

Mrs. Fills the Pipe put her hand to her chest. “The Platte,” she said.

“The Platte River?”

“In Nebraska,” she said. “That’s my home.”

“My goodness,” I said. “My husband soldiered there.”

There was a small hesitation, then, “Did he?”

“At Fort Robinson.”

Mrs. Fills the Pipe’s rocker went still.

“Mother,” Inez said. “Don’t.”

Startled, I looked at the two of them. Mrs. Fills the Pipe stared straight ahead, her mouth set in a hard line. Inez’s hand was on her mother’s arm. Wind whipped around the house, making a shrieking sound. At the cottonwood, the children laughed as Rounder barked and pounced on the rope that Little Luther flicked back and forth in the dried grass. But on the porch a sudden heavy tension wrapped itself around the three of us.

Mrs. Fills the Pipe said, “This is the home of an army man?”

“Well, yes, but he’s been out a long time.”

“I was there. Fort Robinson.”

“Mother.”

I said, “Well, then, you—”

“They rounded us up, held guns to us.”

My breath caught.

“Said the Platte was theirs now. Made us live at the fort. It stank. Then they moved us here. Good enough for Indians, they said. Nobody else would want this land.”

Sweat broke out on my forehead. Mrs. Fills the Pipe was an agency Indian, the kind of Indian what Isaac hated. Agency Indians were worthless drunks; agency Indians were bloodthirsty. They stood in line, their palms up, all too willing to take government handouts. Agency Indians were the worst kind of Indians, and I had two of them sitting on my porch.

Mrs. Fills the Pipe said, “I remember those army men.”

A chill ran up my spine. Bloodthirsty. I had to get rid of Mrs. Fills the Pipe and her daughter and those boys what were playing rope with my daughters. “My ironing,” I said, my nerves talking. “It just never goes away. That’s what I was doing. Even when there isn’t any washing, there’s always ironing.”

She didn’t seem to hear me. She stared off toward the children what were running, laughing, tagging one another. From the corner of my eye I looked over at Inez. She watched her mother, a wary look on her face. She had uncrossed her ankles and had her feet square on the floor. She leaned forward slightly as if she were ready to leave.

“Wounded Knee Creek,” Mrs. Fills the Pipe said.

My skin crawled. Soldiers had been killed there.

“Buffalo soldiers,” Mrs. Fills the Pipe said. “Saturdays around dark. I remember that too.”

“Mother.”

“It wasn’t enough that they killed us. They had to have our women too.”

Her words pinned me to my chair. Hot liquid rose up from my chest, burning my throat. I swallowed. “No,” I said.

She put her porcelain cup on the floor and stood up; Inez did too. I tried to get up but my belly held me down and my hands were filled up with my cup and the china plate with two half biscuits. By the time I scooted to the edge of the rocker, by the time I put my cup and plate on the floor, Mrs. Fills the Pipe and Inez were off the porch and halfway down the rise, the wind pulling at their skirts from all four directions.

At the wagon, Mrs. Fills the Pipe whistled once, sharp and shrill. Little Luther, Liz, and Alise popped out of the low end of the wash, Rounder zigzagging around their legs.