Antelope Woman by Erdrich Louise

Author:Erdrich, Louise [Erdrich, Louise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Historical, Contemporary, Adult
Amazon: B00MMG187O
Goodreads: 31763731
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 1998-03-10T08:00:00+00:00

13

Rozin

IT IS NOT SO SIMPLE being Rozin Roy. You have a missing carpet stasher for a husband, an ardent baker who keeps dropping off boxes of ginger-frosted gingersnaps, a mother with a secret glitzy place, a job you must go to every day even if the week after Thanksgiving weekend one daughter wakes up with a headache and the other has a sore throat and both are experiencing a sense of loss because their father will soon be divorced from their mother. No matter that he was not around much, or when home, dimly lit or even smashed. He is their father.

“I never thought you’d be divorced,” Cally weeps. “We hate Frank.”

“No,” says Deanna, “we love him, remember? But as our uncle, okay, Mom?”

Deanna quietly broods on her cereal. Both are mourning with reversals of mood. Rozin looks at the clock and thinks how when she was late just a week ago her supervisor gave her one of those looks of cool skepticism that signal the beginning of lack of trust. It was wrong for Rozin to have spent her three-month perfect record of goodwill. She had coffee this fall, too often, with Frank. All that dependability she’d built up, spent now that her children need her. She should certainly have anticipated this, but she made the mistake a so-called functional parent makes about a so-called dysfunctional parent. Yes, they do miss him! Of course the girls are sad! And now the grandmas have returned home saying they couldn’t eat more of Frank’s cookies. The cookies kept appearing once Grandma Giizis said she liked them. Irresistible cookies. Irresistible like Frank. But perhaps like Frank overbearingly sweet, Rozin thinks, an unworthy thought. He has become her lover. Their blood sugar has also shot way up into the heavens.

“I have to go to work now,” Rozin tells her daughters. “I just have to. I’m going to get in trouble!”

Cally and Deanna look at each other and big burps and bubbles of sobs come up as they feel the same thing together. The feeling bounces back and forth, getting larger. This happened to them when they were babies. Rozin had to separate them to calm them.

They hear a flamenco tattoo, as if a tap dancer was merrily clicking across the floor on the other side of the wall. It is Sweetheart Calico. Tapitty tap tap, tapitty tap tap. Faster and faster. Tapittytaptaptap. The girls’ sobs turn to fascinated hiccups. A door slams. They walk to the window as Sweetheart Calico, now silent, flashes across the weeds. Rozin bolts out the door.

“Wait! Come back!”

Sweetheart turns, eyes wide, and walks back toward Rozin’s beckoning hand. Sweetheart is dressed in tight jeans and a flowing pale pink shirt. Her tiny black boots have steel clips on the toes and heels. Her hair is combed and braided on one side. It loops long down the other. Rozin doesn’t tell her about the lopsided hairdo—maybe she’s got only one hair band.

“Could you please, oh please, babysit the girls? They are too upset to go to school.

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