The Painted Drum - Louise Erdrich [65]
Too shy to ever marry anyone! That was it. Her name was Kakageeshikok. She was named for a very old woman who gave her name away when she grew too old to use it anymore. Kakageeshikok was named for the eternal sky, though she was just called Geeshik, sky. Like her name, she was always in the background of things and seemed a woman of endless patience. She lived alone. People didn’t bother her because she never bothered anyone and she was poor—there was nothing to steal. Yet though she didn’t talk to people, my grandfather remembered, she would always be seen just outside the circle when the old people talked. She was always in the lodge listening in silence to the teachings and absorbing all that happened. She was so forgettable, and yet she was always there. Geeshik never put herself forward. Shaawano now smiled at certain memories of her. Whenever an important person wanted to park his ass in her spot, Geeshik always gave way and moved. If there wasn’t enough food to go around, it was Geeshik whose bowl, of course, went empty. Children loved her—they played all over her, Shaawano remembered, until they reached a certain age. Then they forgot about her. She wasn’t even of enough substance for the bad ones to torment. Geeshik: the thought of her somehow gave him hope. Did she live yet? Was she even around?
Nobody knew at first, though she had never lived far off in a tangle of bush, but right out in the open on the east side of town, just off the main road. But her house was as forgettable as she was and blended into its surroundings in a quiet way. It was just a little whitewashed cabin with a yard of matted grass. Her door was a plain wooden plank with an antler for a handle. Nobody had seen her go in or out of that door, and nobody ever saw her walk anywhere either, yet she was present at all events of any note, sitting in the background against the wall, overlooked. She existed in such an invisible way that maybe, thought my grandfather, she did not really exist at all. Maybe she had died in her house. He would have to find out. He would have to go there. But in a way he dreaded this as much as he had ever dreaded anything. He could not get a certain idea out of his mind—the notion that he’d find her in her house, dried out, motionless, curled up like a dead gray spider. Only she would be alive. Her eyes black and liquid as tadpoles. She’d come toward him rattling like an old seedpod. She’d call him. She’d speak his name.
So as he rapped on her door and rattled the antler handle, he called her name out first. Geeshik! He waited. Stunted trees grew here and there around her cabin. Wind ticked in the leaves. He knocked again. Once more, he leaned toward the wood and called her name. Geeshik! He caught a whiff, as he did so, of mildew and cinnamon. Then a soft voice, a whispering voice, said out loud, “I am coming.”
And of course she was not frightful at all.
As she opened the door to let him in, for she knew him immediately, she knew his voice, my grandfather saw that she had grown into a fine-skinned, fragile, oddly young-looking woman. She was shadowy and small. Her eyes were not dark or wild, but open and blinking. He thought at once of a soft little owl. She fluttered a hand at his feet, and he slipped off his shoes. Her dirt floor was covered with skins and clean blankets. She had a real glass window. In her own house, she was bolder