The Game of Silence

by Louise Erdrich

  Nokomis’s garden was very old. She had inherited it from her mother, who had inherited it from hers. The earth had grown rich from generations of careful replenishment. All around the edges of the garden a stout fence of driftwood, hung with cheerful rags of clothing, protected the earth and the tender plants. But the garden was more than the space it occupied. Its seeds, too, had been handed down for many generations. During the worst of the family’s hunger, two winters ago, Nokomis had finally insisted that they eat half of her seed beans, but only because she’d saved extra. Nobody even thought of eating more. Nokomis’s seeds, after all, were the future. While Nokomis piled beach weeds around the new shoots of beans and muttered to herself or the plants, Omakayas was never sure which, Andeg made a game of perching on one driftwood fence pole and then the next, as though trying each one out. Some made him critical. From others, he cawed joyfully. Everything felt so right and familiar to Omakayas that the sudden thought that they could be removed from their home was a crash of impossibility.

  “They can’t send us away, can they?” she asked Nokomis as they helped the pumpkin vines twine toward the stalks of corn, which would shortly be tall. “They can’t do anything, really, Nokomis, can they? There are so few chimookamanag and so many of us!”

  Nokomis leaned back, kneeling in the dirt. Omakayas was surprised that she had stopped her work. Almost nothing got Nokomis to stop once she started on her garden. But now her face was serious.

  “Listen, my little one,” she said, “for I’m going to tell you the truth. The chimookomanag we see here are only the first drops of rain. A storm of them lives past the sunrise, in the east. They can flood us like a river.”

  “Can’t we stop them?”

  “We have seen what happens to others when they resist, go to war. The river wipes them out. Our way is different. We have always found out how to live with them, work with them, trade with them, even to marry them!”

  Nokomis’s eyes fixed on Omakayas with amusement and Omakayas smiled back. Deydey’s grandfather had been a French trader, one of the first. Deydey had grown up in a house made of trees, like the cabin he’d built for his family. This alone marked him out as different.

  “I think Deydey is figuring out a plan,” said Omakayas. “He is always staring at the fire, thinking hard.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Nokomis said. Her look rested tenderly upon her granddaughter. “This is a good place, and I hoped for you to grow up here and become a strong woman.”

  “I love it here so much,” Omakayas admitted. Suddenly her eyes grew hot, her chest tight. “It is where my little brother rests.”

  Nokomis patted her hand and smoothed Omakayas’s hair back with gentle fingers. Omakayas leaned into her grandmother’s arms and for a long time the two sat in the garden, on the sun-warmed earth, listening to the birds call and talk to one another unseen in the dense green of the woods. If they ever had to leave, Omakayas felt, her heart might fall right out of her body to lie forever on the ground it loved.

  THREE

  FISH SOUP

  Mama and Nokomis were weaving reed pukwe mats outside in the shade of a maple tree. They used long flat matting needles that Deydey fashioned of bone. As he did with everything that he made for his beloved wife and her mother, the needles were extra special, decorated with circles and crosses. The matting needles and the reeds ticked and rustled together, and the sitting mats grew bigger and bigger. While the two women worked, the new little baby, Bizheens, watched each mat develop under their hands. The women laughed, for his baby gaze was as critical and solemn as an old man’s. Just as Mama predicted, he was growing plumper so quickly that he seemed rounder every morning, as though he was adding baby fat in his sleep. They touched his nose, jiggled the tiny dream catcher that dangled just over his forehead. His cradle board hung off a low branch and from time to time Nokomis swung him lightly. When she did, his eyes sparked with alarm first, then pleasure, and he made a sharp little cooing sound of happy surprise. Still, he never laughed.

  “Can I go to Auntie Muskrat’s?” Omakayas asked.

  Even though the Angry Boy was living at Auntie Muskrat’s, Omakayas decided to risk his burning glare in order to play with her cousins.

  “Go ahead,” said Mama, “you helped me a lot today.”

  With a grateful shout, Omakayas shot off down the path. Andeg swooped out of the tree where he had perched, waiting, and followed her down the trail. All the way to her cousins’ house, Pinch followed her, too. He stayed just out of sight, making the sounds of bear grunts as though he thought she would be afraid. Sometimes he threw a small stick at her or ran ahead beside the path, hidden by woods, to see if he could ambush her. But always Andeg found him out and gave a harsh, mocking call that sounded just like a laugh. From all her years of living with her brother, Omakayas was used to this. In her hand, she carried a long thin stick of whiplike green wood. When Pinch tried to creep up behind her to frighten her, Omakayas, listening to Andeg, turned at the exact right moment and gave him a whack with the stick. She did so without thinking, by reflex.

  Whack! Absentmindedly, she thumped the stick about an inch from her brother’s head.

  “Missed me!” he cried, trying to mock her but a little warier. She’d come very close!

  Omakayas swung again. Life as an older sister wasn’t easy. A brother like Pinch made it especially hard. Luckily, she had Andeg. And Twilight also understood her situation perfectly, for she had to handle a sister, Little Bee, who seemed to have a special way of doing just the right thing to drive her crazy. And both Omakayas and Twilight also had to contend with their cousin Two Strike Girl, who was difficult and even explosive.

  Just now, as they turned into the camp where Auntie Muskrat and her husband, Albert LaPautre, lived, Omakayas sniffed the air and suddenly knew what was coming. A fishy fresh soup smell greeted her, that was the good part. The not-so-good part was the more powerful smell of raw fish blood. The nets had been unloaded. A big catch had just come in and there was work to do. The fish must be gutted, cut apart, and dried in the sun. Even now, Twilight, Two Strike, Little Bee, and the angry new boy cousin were using spruce-root fibers to tie twigs together into fish-drying racks.

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  “Just in time!” Auntie Muskrat waggled her sharp knife at Omakayas, who looked around to find, of course, that Pinch had disappeared at the first sign of work. Little Bee carried the doll she had won in a little backpack tikinagun. Omakayas saw that Twilight had sewn her ribbons carefully onto the straps of her dress. They fluttered a bit, the tails touching the tops of her arms. Twilight was very neat, and careful to keep the satin of her ribbons away from the fishy work. She calmly smiled, nodded at her cousin as she approached, and proceeded to expertly slice each fish down the underside of its belly. After she gutted the fish she tossed it to her mother, who then boned it with a thin knife so sharp that their uncle used it, each morning, to shave the twenty-three hairs off his chin.

  Omakayas tried to contain her dismay. She gulped, sighed. There was a big pile of fish at her elbow. She’d managed to evade one set of chores only to find herself trapped at the very place where so often she found freedom. But, as Omakayas had a practical nature and the soup smelled delicious and was thick with little blue-skinned potatoes from Auntie Muskrat’s garden, she shrugged and set to work. She took her knife out of its sheath on her belt. The sheath was beautifully beaded, a gift from Nokomis. Omakayas slit open a fish as long as her arm and plunged her hands into the slippery fish guts.

  “Meegwech, Nimisay,” said Twilight gratefully, calling her sister, “the sooner we finish, the sooner we can go play at our place!”

  Two Strike, who liked anything to do with knives, jumped to the task eagerly. She was strong, her muscles were hard ropes. Her face was stubborn-chinned with a sensitive mouth. All around them, dogs from the village soon gathered. Whenever there was fish or meat to be cut up, dogs appeared instantly, as though a mysterious call went out all over the island. One
dignified black dog belonging to Old Tallow even stalked in to sit companionably just outside the circle. The dogs watched every tiny movement of the girls’ hands, their eyes fixed and focused. From above, Andeg also waited. As soon as a hand paused to flip a fish scrap to the side, a mouth was there to catch it and bolt it down with a doggy gulp, or Andeg darted down to snatch it on the wing. The girls worked swiftly. Every time a hand moved, there was an almost simultaneous snap from dog teeth. Omakayas, of course, tossed the best scraps to her crow. Twilight had a favorite dog, a spotted one who must have had a chimookoman missionary’s dog for a father. This puppy was not light-boned and thin, with long wolf legs like the other dogs in camp. He was heavier and a little odd, with one ear that stuck up and one that flopped down, and a strange mottled coat of black and red and even a little white. Twilight made sure that her favorite dog got plenty of scraps, while Omakayas and Two Strike, who liked them all the same, were careful to feed each one in turn.

  With all of them working, the pile of fish was soon done. Auntie Muskrat, with a comfortable swish of her wood ladle, dipped out makakoon of fish soup. Then she wiped her knife clean on a leaf and sliced off long thick pieces of that morning’s bannock. They dunked the bread in the soup and used the tough bread for spoons. With the softened bannock they polished up the last bits of soup. At last, Auntie Muskrat gave them each a special treat and sprinkled a pinch of salt carefully along each stick of soup-softened bannock. They slowly ate each bite, lingering over the salty goodness.

  THE MUD PEOPLE

  After they were finished eating, the cousins left to set up their play camp. They had made a clearing next to a fascinating slough filled with swampy thick water, mud for frogs and turtles, tiny fish for herons, and lots of weedy shallows for ducks. Usually, when the air was still, the place swarmed with mosquitoes. But as there was a breeze today, there were only a few to bother them. A great gnarled willow reared up near the water, its shape excitingly monstrous. The tree looked like a big creature crawling up the bank, leaving one trailing tail-root to suck up water. Omakayas and Twilight prepared their camp around the base of the tree, while Little Bee helped. Two Strike made her home in the tree itself, where she could scout for enemies. She was in the tree now. Suddenly Two Strike shouted that she saw the imaginary approach of Bwaanag warriors who were really leaves and squirrels.

  “If you shout like that,” said Twilight, standing at the base of the tree, “the enemies will know just where you are. Better to climb down, whisper in my ear, then go bash them dead.”

  Two Strike scowled, knowing that her cousin had a good point. She was as irritated with her cousins for being sensible as they were irritated with her for having a loud and ferocious nature. Her behavior included what Twilight called those “Two Strike ways”—yelling loudly and jerking things out of people’s hands and rushing impatiently here and there to fix things or hunt things down. Twilight had her own ways, though, of dealing with her cousin.

  “We do need a strong warrior scout right now,” she said in her most convincing voice, “someone to watch for two warriors who will try to sneak up on us. One will probably look like Pinch, the other might look like that angry stranger Mama let into our house. Don’t be fooled, they are enemies! Tell us when you see them!”

  Omakayas looked at her cousin in admiration. With one suggestion, she had satisfied Two Strike by giving her just the important job she liked, plus they would now have warning when the boys approached. Also, with Two Strike on their side instead of against them, they could surely prevent the boys from trampling their camp, knocking over their pine bough shelters, spilling their water, stealing their mats, and kidnapping their children.

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  Their boys and girls were made out of reeds and corn husks. They slept on tiny mats near the fire and ate stick-mud stew from off flat rocks. The children had a great many toys made of little pebbles, and they used acorn-cap bowls and leaves for dishes. With Two Strike watching over them, they worked at their play with great attention. They took care of each child in turn, then set up a small lodge using thin poles and some old discarded bark from the edge of the summer camp.

  “Let’s pretend it’s night and we have to go inside,” said Omakayas, admiring the little lodge.

  It looked so cozy that she wanted to crawl inside, but it was small. The three girls squeezed in, then reached out and dragged their children in along with them, and closed the door. The hut was so small that they could barely take a breath, but they sat inside anyway, proud of what they’d done. Carefully, making only the smallest of cramped movements, they put their husk and reed children to bed. The girls smoothed down the leaf bedcovers and sang lullabies, gently smoothing back their children’s invisible hair. They touched their babies’ invisible noses, kissed their mouths and cheeks.

  Wham! As though a tornado slammed into the hut, the girls went tumbling every which way. The bark covering flew off, bounced, and rolled into the slough. The carefully constructed roof floated into a clump of weeds. Twilight tumbled one way and Omakayas the other. Their reed children scattered in pieces and all of their dishes and foods were tossed in a wild heap. Even before she saw him, Omakayas knew that Pinch was the burst of bad weather that destroyed their play world. She bounded to her feet, determined to punish him, but he’d made his quick, destructive raid and then disappeared.

  “Where’d he go?” cried Little Bee. Two Strike Girl jumped out of the tree with a hideous yell, to defend her cousins, but tripped on the trees roots and sprawled flat. She hadn’t seen Pinch vanish. Narrowing her eyes, she controlled herself. Stamping her feet, she called with a menacing pleasantness in her voice. “Piiinch, Piiinch, come on back so we can play. I just want to play with you, Piiinch!”

  There was no answer and Pinch was not fooled.

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  Only because she happened to glance up did Omakayas notice that Pinch had clambered up the hunched willow tree and was now trying to stay hidden, flattened out on a high branch that hung above the water. Shushing her cousin, she pointed out Pinch’s whereabouts to Two Strike, whose eyes lighted with vengeful pleasure.

  “Wait here, pretend you don’t see him,” said Two Strike Girl. “I have an idea.”

  With that, she ran off to Auntie Muskrat’s. Omakayas looked at Twilight, who whispered to Little Bee. They shrugged and decided to play along. They wailed and wrung their hands beneath the tree. Above them, Pinch, filling with huge satisfaction at the success of his attack, kept quiet and listened with delight to their voices.

  “It was a warrior,” cried Twilight.

  “Powerful!” Omakayas agreed loudly, adding in a whisper, “We’ll make him sorry when he comes down!”

  They continued to lament, while Pinch swelled with satisfaction. Two Strike Girl returned. Sneaking around the base of the tree, she launched herself into the branches. She was carrying something. Omakayas and Twilight crept below to look and saw that she was steadily climbing toward Pinch. They started with horror. Between her teeth, her mouth stretched wide to hold the weapon, she carried her uncle’s hatchet!

  “Noooo!” Twilight screamed at the sight of her cousin, advancing murderously toward Pinch.

  “Gego! Gego!” Omakayas ran to the tree, sure that Two Strike meant to use the hatchet on her brother. No matter how awful he was, she couldn’t let anything happen to him. But Two Strike had different intentions. When she reached the branch upon which her cousin was hiding, she stopped near the base. Pinch, his eye on the hatchet, inched backward in fright. His mouth dropped open as, with strong, sure strokes, Two Strike began to chop.

  She did not stop for Pinch’s pleading. She did not stop for her sister’s laughter. She did not stop to mock Pinch. She concentrated on her chopping. Whenever Pinch plucked up the courage to edge toward her, she brandished the hatchet with such a horrible growl that he cringed in fear. She kept chopping, chopping, until at last, with a great crack, the branch gave and Pinch toppled off the leafy end into the green slough mud b
elow.

  He did not splash. The slimy ooze simply gulped him in. When he came up, and with a great yell of outrage began to stalk out of the muck, the girls were overcome with laughter. He dripped absurdly, tufts of stinking weed sprouting off his shoulders and hair.

  “Hiyn!” Pinch grabbed the one closest to him, Twilight, wrestled her quickly to the edge of the wet grime, and shoved her into the muck. He ran back for Two Strike and Little Bee. Omakayas yelled but stayed just out of her brother’s reach. Fueled by muddy rage, he was irresistibly strong and quick. He managed to get into a clinch with Two Strike Girl, a hold so fierce that neither of them could break it. Suddenly, from behind a screen of leaves, the angry boy jumped. Before Omakayas could drag Pinch away or help Twilight and Little Bee from the mess, he had grabbed the kicking, scratching, screaming Two Strike Girl. Together, the boys carried her to the edge and dumped her into the mud, which had gathered a rich mold on top. In she went! Twilight dragged Pinch back in with her. Suddenly there was only Omakayas and the angry boy, the two of them face-to-face.

  “Oh, it’s you again,” said the boy.

  He didn’t say it in a mean way, but he looked at her with those raging eyes and before she knew it Omakayas surprised herself. She grabbed him by the shoulders. Taken off guard, he stepped backward. Then he pushed back. They were both strong, and there is no telling who would have pushed who in first had not the ones from the slough, now completely doused with mud, jumped out and pushed the two clean ones before them, sending them flying farthest of all with one great heave.