The Game of Silence

by Louise Erdrich

  LOUISE ERDRICH

  THE GAME OF SILENCE

  To Aza,

  migiziins,

  n’dawnis, gizhawenimin

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  NEEBIN (SUMMER)

  ONE

  The Raggedy Ones

  TWO

  The Game of Silence

  THREE

  Fish Soup

  FOUR

  The Red Dog’s Puppies

  FIVE The Canoe Makers

  SIX

  The Ricing Disasters

  DAGWAGING (FALL)

  SEVEN

  The Rabbit Blanket

  EIGHT

  The Trader’s

  NINE

  Two Strike’s War

  BIBOON (WINTER)

  TEN

  Old Tallow’s Coat

  ELEVEN

  Deydey and the Soul Stealer

  TWELVE

  The Messenger

  THIRTEEN

  The Wedding Vest

  ZEEGWUN (SPRING)

  FOURTEEN

  Deydey Guides the Black Robe

  FIFTEEN

  Alone with the Spirits

  SIXTEEN

  The Return and the Departure

  AUTHOR’S NOTE ON THE OJIBWE LANGUAGE

  GLOSSARY AND PRONUNCIATION GUIDE OF OJIBWE TERMS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OTHER BOOKS BY LOUISE ERDRICH

  CREDTIS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  PROLOGUE

  Six black dots wavered on the far shore. Omakayas was the first to see them approach over the glittering waves, but there was no reason to call anyone yet. The sun was high, the wind against the travelers. There would be enough time. She was standing on her favorite rock, and she was thinking. Omakayas liked to arrange things in her mind. When she was deep in thought, she did not like to disturb herself, especially if her subject was as important as the order of all she loved.

  The dots became the prows of canoes, jeemaanan. One by one, the tiny sticks of people and paddles appeared, heading right for Moningwanaykaning, her island, the Island of the Golden-Breasted Woodpecker. She skipped a flat rock four skips, and then another four skips. Eight. One for each of those she loved the best. Carefully, Omakayas set their names into a design.

  There was Andeg, her pet crow—black wings and a clever beak. Andeg was perched in a branch above the lakeshore, cleaning his feathers. He flew to her now, and landed on her shoulder. He knew she carried hazelnuts for him. Omakayas fed him a nut and kept thinking. There was Nokomis, her kind and accepting grandmother, the one who taught her to love plants and to use them as medicine. Next came Old Tallow! The thought of the old woman made her heart beat faster. Her love for the hunter Old Tallow was a fierce and tangled ball of feeling. As for her love for her brother, Pinch, it actually stung the roots of her hair. That was easy enough to feel! Pinch had pulled her braids only moments before, then run away. Underneath these loves was love for her older sister, Angeline, so beautiful and scarred, and of course her mother (even when she got mad) and her father (even when he was stern and distant). These loves were strong as earth. Last, there was the love loss of her tiniest brother, Neewo, who died two years ago, during the smallpox winter of 1847. That love was a deep black hole, bitter and profound.

  She thought of these loves as she watched the six jeemaanan approach across the rough water. Andeg hopped down and plucked at her dress for another hazelnut. She took one from a small bag she kept at her waist, clenched it between her teeth, and smiled at Andeg. The crow knew the game and stretched his neck to delicately pluck the nut from Omakayas. She sat down to wait, then lay back in the sun and squinted at the jeemaanan. The party of canoes was battling a stiff wind offshore, but where she sat the air was calm.

  Her name, Omakayas, meant Little Frog. She was nine winters old. On that rich early summer day, the jeemaanan approaching with possible excitement, anything seemed possible. The picture enlarged. She could now see people of all ages in the jeemaanan, including children. Omakayas jumped up and stared hard. Her interest was stirred. So many people weren’t coming just to visit family, and if they were coming to trade, there would be packs of skins visible. None were apparent. The presence of women and children meant that these people had left behind their camps and homes.

  Image

  As they drew closer now, she saw the poorness of the canoes—some of them struggled to float. Behind the lead paddlers, the passengers bailed for their lives. No eagle feathers, beads, or red vermilion paint decorated the head men. There were no ribbons or beads on the clothing of the women—the poor rags barely covered them. Omakayas shouted. They were close enough now for her to see the expressions on their faces—open and pleading. She began to run and Andeg dived after her. Something was wrong. She didn’t know what. It was a day she would think of long after as one in which her fate, and that of her family, took a great looping turn.

  NEEBIN

  SUMMER

  ONE

  THE RAGGEDY ONES

  When they were close enough to touch bottom with their paddles, the people poured out of the nearly swamped canoes. The grown-ups held little ones and the little ones held even smaller ones. There were so many people jammed into each boat that it was a wonder they had made it across. The grown-ups, the ones who wore clothes, bunched around the young. A murmur of pity started among the people who had gathered on shore when they heard Omakayas’s shout, for the children had no clothing at all, they were naked. In a bony, hungry, anxious group, the people from the boats waded ashore. They looked at the ground, fearfully and in shame. They were like skinny herons with long poles for legs and clothes like drooping feathers. Only their leader, a tall old man wearing a turban of worn cloth, walked with a proud step and held his head up as a leader should. He stood calmly, waiting for his people to assemble. When everyone was ashore and a crowd was gathered expectantly, he raised his thin hand and commanded silence with his eyes.

  Image

  Everyone’s attention was directed to him as he spoke.

  “Brothers and sisters, we are glad to see you! Daga, please open your hearts to us! We have come from far away.”

  He hardly needed to urge kindness. Immediately, families greeted cousins, old friends, lost relatives, those they hadn’t seen in years. Fishtail, a close friend of Omakayas’s father, clasped the old chief in his arms. The dignified chief’s name was Miskobines, Red Thunder, and he was Fishtail’s uncle. Blankets were soon draping bare shoulders, and the pitiful naked children were covered, too, with all of the extra clothing that the people could find. Food was thrust into the hungry people’s hands—strips of dried fish and bannock bread, maple sugar and fresh boiled meat. The raggedy visitors tried to contain their hunger, but most fell upon the food and ate wolfishly. One by one, family by family, the poor ones were taken to people’s homes. In no time, the jeemaanan were pulled far up on the beach and the men were examining the frayed seams and fragile, torn stitching of spruce that held the birchbark to the cedar frames. Omakayas saw her grandmother, her sister, and her mother, each leading a child. Her mother’s eyes were wide-set and staring with anger, and she muttered explosive words underneath her breath. That was only her way of showing how deeply she was affected; still, Omakayas steered clear. Her brother, Pinch, was followed by a tall skinny boy hastily wrapped in a blanket. He was the son of the leader, Miskobines, and he was clearly struggling to look dignified. The boy looked back in exhaustion, as if wishing for a place to sit and rest. But seeing Omakayas, he flushed angrily and mustered strength to stagger on ahead. Omakayas turned her attention to a woman who trailed them all. One child clutched her ragged skirt. She carried another terribly thin child on a hip. In
the other arm she clutched a baby. The tiny bundle in her arms made no movement and seemed limp, too weak to cry.

  The memory of her poor baby brother, Neewo, shortened Omakayas’s breath. She jumped after the two, leaving the intrigue of the story of their arrival for later, as well as the angry boy’s troubling gaze. Eagerly, she approached the woman and asked if she could carry the baby.

  Image

  The woman handed over the little bundle with a tired sigh. She was so poor that she did not have a cradle board for the baby, or a warm skin bag lined with rabbit fur and moss, or even a trade blanket or piece of cloth from the trader’s store. For a covering, she had only a tiny piece of deerskin wrapped into a rough bag. Even Omakayas’s dolls had better clothing and better care. Omakayas cuddled the small thing close. The baby inside the bag was bare and smelled like he needed a change of the cattail fluff that served as his diaper. Omakayas didn’t mind. She carried the baby boy with a need and happiness that the woman, so relieved to hand the baby over, could not have guessed at. Having lost her own brother, Omakayas took comfort in this baby’s tiny weight and light breath. She would protect him, she promised as they walked. She would keep him company and give him all the love she had stored up but could no longer give to her little brother Neewo.

  The baby peered watchfully into her eyes. Though tiny and helpless, he seemed determined to live. With a sigh he rooted for milk, for something, anything. Anxiously, Omakayas hurried toward the camp.

  The angry boy with the long stick legs and frowning face sat next to Pinch by the fire. He glared up when Omakayas entered the clearing, but then his whole attention returned to the bowl of stew in his hands. He stared into it, tense as an animal. He tried without success to keep from gulping the stew too fast. His hands shook so hard that he nearly dropped the bowl at one point, but with a furious groan he righted himself and attained a forced calm. Straining to control his hunger, he lifted the bowl to his lips and took a normal portion of meat between his teeth. Chewed. Closed his eyes. When Omakayas saw from beneath one half-shut eyelid the gleam of desperation, she looked away. Not fast enough.

  “What are you staring at?” the boy growled.

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t even bother with her,” said Pinch, delighted to sense an ally with whom he might be able to torment his sister. “She’s always staring at people. She’s a homely owl!”

  “Weweni gagigidoon,” said Angeline, throwing an acorn that hit Pinch square on the forehead. She told her brother to speak with care, then commanded him, “Booni’aa, leave her alone!”

  Image

  Omakayas was grateful to her big sister; still, she flushed and turned away. She was embarrassed by her brother’s teasing, and also she felt it wrong to witness such hunger in the visitor. She could tell the boy was proud and it had hurt him to have his ravenous eating observed. Besides that, she was, as usual, mad at Pinch. Sometimes the things he did were so awful that they instantly made her blood hot. At those times she had to run away before she hit him or screamed at him. Luckily, there were the other small children to occupy her immediately.

  The scrawny little wide-eyed children dove into the food. They ate all they could and even licked one another’s faces clean. When there was nothing in sight, they begged for more. At last, their bellies full, they fell asleep right where they sat, clutching some tattered old skins around them. That was when the woman, who ate politely and slowly, sighing with gratitude at each bite, spoke to Omakayas’s mother, Yellow Kettle.

  “This baby is not mine,” she said. “We have been running for our lives. The Bwaanag wiped out our village. We left our gardens, our food caches, all of our kettles and our makazinan sitting by the doors. Some people even got left behind in the crazy mess. They were captured. That is why we have nothing. I don’t know what happened to this baby’s mother and father.”

  Omakayas’s eyes filled with burning tears. She held the baby closer and let him go only when Mama, with a cooing lullaby and a cup of warm broth, took the baby to feed.

  That was how Omakayas gained a brother that day, and a cousin, too, for the angry boy with bold eyes went to live at the camp that included her Auntie Muskrat and Uncle Albert LaPautre, as well as her girl cousins and her father’s friend Fishtail.

  From the first, the baby fascinated Omakayas. He was very different from Neewo and that was good, said Yellow Kettle, for the baby was his own little person. He had his very own spirit, and shouldn’t be confused with the other. She, of course, never said the name of Neewo. Nobody said the names of those who had died. That was because to say their names would attract the spirits of the dead, even bring them back to visit the living. It was better to let even the most loved ones go along on their journey into the next world.

  Anyway, this baby soon stopped reminding anyone of anybody but himself, for he was clever-eyed with a watchful face and a sharp bow of a mouth that he held in a quizzical line. Mama loved to hold him and sing to him while looking into his eyes. He needed to hear her baby songs, get used to her voice, she said. But Omakayas, whose arms ached to hold the baby too, understood that Mama needed to hold the new little one for her own healing. Mama even put this baby to her breast and let him nurse. After a while, she said, the baby would cause her body to remember how to make milk. When that happened, said Mama, with a gentle and confident look at the baby’s pitiful legs and arms, the baby would rapidly grow fat. Nokomis quickly made the new baby a cradle board, bending a soaked piece of ash for the head guard and scraping a soft piece of fragrant cedar smooth for the back. Nokomis beaded two thick velvet bands to hold him against a soft cushion. As it was just the right time of year when the heads of the cattails explode into puffy sticks, Omakayas picked bags of cattail fluff to use as diapers. Once the baby was set inside the sack of the cradle board, he seemed to appreciate his new security and fell instantly asleep. But not for long. Whenever Omakayas turned around from her work, she’d see the baby watching her with such close attention that it seemed as though he was memorizing her every move. Nokomis gave him a nickname to match this sharp-eyed habit. She called him the little Bizheens, or baby wildcat, for the way the wild lynx stalks and watches its prey reminded her of the close and intent eyes of the baby.

  Image

  One day, as Omakayas was watching Mama and Bizheens, she felt her Deydey watching her. He sat down next to her. Omakayas’s Deydey was a prickly man—scratchy and remote sometimes, lost in his thoughts, or even cold as his name Mikwam, Ice. But he was also warmhearted and kind underneath. Often he seemed not to notice his surroundings at all as he worked on one of his many projects—nets, snowshoes, baskets, bows and arrows, traps…Deydey could make anything. Suddenly, he would lift his head from whatever he was doing and Omakayas would realize he had been closely observing the entire family all along. Now was one of those times.

  “N’dawnis,” he said, his hand warm on her hair, “don’t be sad. Soon enough that little baby will be too much for your mama! She’ll beg you to help her take care of him! And in the meantime,” he went on, excitement in his voice, “I have made something for you.”

  Deydey put a small bundle into Omakayas’s arms, folded her arms around the bundle, and hurried away. Giving gifts, the things he made, always embarrassed him. Omakayas recognized the scrap of hide, now cleaned and softened, that had first held Bizheens. Slowly, she pushed the edges away from a face that made her gasp. She saw beautiful hair, black bead eyes, and a tiny mouth reddened with vermilion. It was a wonderfully made doll with a dress of velvet sewed by Deydey and beaded by Omakayas’s sister. Seeing Omakayas’s longing, Deydey and Angeline had made her something to hold.

  “I have a good family,” Omakayas whispered. Holding the doll to her heart, she entered this precious being into the list of all she loved.

  Image

  TWO

  THE GAME OF SILENCE

  Words. Words. Words. Pressing up from her stomach, trembling on her lips. Words buzzing in her throat like caught bees.
Banging in her head. Harsh words. Angry words. Sounds boiling up in her like sap. Wild things she couldn’t let out.

  Yow! A kick from her brother almost caused Omakayas to blurt an exclamation.

  No! Omakayas sealed her lips together in a firm line and glared at her brother with all of the force pent up inside. If the fire from her eyes could scorch him, Pinch would be the first to yell out. Then he would lose the game of silence. But Pinch was used to receiving furious looks from his family. He knew just how to respond. First he looked innocently at Omakayas (as though he was ever innocent!). He pretended he was unaware of the raging energy stuffed up inside of his sister. Then, as Omakayas bored her eyes at him with increasing intensity, he lolled out his tongue and twisted his face into a deranged and awful mask. His features shifted into one ugly and absurd face after the next until suddenly Omakayas just about…almost…laughed. Just in time, she clapped her hand to her mouth. Closed her eyes. Concentrated. Yes. Eya’. She would be a stone. Asineeg. A pile of stones. Each one harder and quieter than the next. She would be silent and more silent yet. And in spite of her annoying brother, she would win. She kept her eyes closed, put her forehead on her knees. Thought stone, stone, stone. Asin. Asin. Filled her mind with the sound of falling rain, which was easy. Outside, it was not just raining but pouring down a drenching, cold, miserable, early summer shower.

  The rain had lasted for days, since the raggedy ones arrived. That was another thing. Besides Pinch, Omakayas couldn’t stand rain anymore. The water made mush of tender new ground around her family’s birchbark house. Droplets hissed through the roof vent into the fire, driving stinging smoke into her eyes. Everyone around her was affected. Nokomis’s old bones ached and she creaked like a tree every time she moved. The watery wind sent coughs racking through her mother’s chest. It was too wet to play outside, and cold when it should have been warm. Worst of all, Omakayas was stuck with Pinch.