Round House, The: A Novel by Louise Erdrich

Author:Louise Erdrich
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780062065247
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2012-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

The next morning Sonja and I left early. I didn’t see Whitey.

He’s gonna walk it off in the woods, said Sonja. Don’t worry. He’ll be good for a long time now. But maybe you better stay with Clemence tonight.

We rode to town, no music. I watched the ditches out the side window.

Let me off right now, I said as we passed by Clemence’s and our turnoff. Because I quit.

Oh, honey, no, she said. But she pulled over and stopped the car. Her hair was up in a ponytail, a green bow tied around it. She wore a flashy green track suit with white piping, and spongy shoes. That day she had painted her lips a deep carmine red. I must have given her a very long tragic look because she said, Oh, honey, no, again. I was thinking something of this sort: that deep red of her lips, if it were printed on me, kissed on me, would become a burning solidified blood that would brand itself into my flesh and leave a black seared brand shaped like the lips of a woman. I felt sorry for myself. I still loved her, worse than ever, even though she had betrayed me. Her blue eyes had a devious sheen.

Come on, she said. I’m onna need help. Please?

But I got out of the car and walked up the road.

The back kitchen door was open. I walked in and called out.

Auntie C?

She came up from the cellar with a jar of Juneberry jam and said she thought I had a job.

I quit.

That’s lazy. You get back there.

I shook my head and wouldn’t look at her.

Oh. They at it again? Whitey’s back at it?

Yeah.

You stay here then. You can sleep in Joseph’s old room—the sewing room now, but anyway. Mooshum’s in Evey’s room. I set up a cot for him there. He won’t sleep on Evey’s soft bed.

That day I helped Clemence out. She kept a nice garden like my mother used to and her snap peas were in already. Uncle Edward was working on his backyard pond, trying to get the drainage and flowage just right, measuring mosquito larvae, and I helped him too. Whitey dropped my bike off, but I never went out and saw him. We ate fried venison with mustard and browned onions. Their television was as usual in the repair shop sixty miles away and I was sleepy. Mooshum tottered off to Evey’s room and I went to Joseph’s. But when I opened the door to the room and saw the sewing machine wedged in next to the bed and the folded stacks of fabric and the wall board covered with hundreds of spools of bright thread, when I saw the quilt pieces and the shoe box labeled Zippers and the same heart-shaped pincushion only Mom’s was dusty green, I thought of my father entering our sewing room every night and how the loneliness had seeped from under the door of the sewing room then spread across the hall and tried to get to my bedroom.

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