The Painted Drum - Louise Erdrich [91]
“Yes, boozhoo! We’re getting a blizzard sometime today,” she informed Ira. “We’re really lucky it wasn’t yesterday.”
Ira was glad she’d said we; it would have been an accusation if she’d said you. Seraphine left the room and Ira followed her silently, numb in her thoughts. They went down the hall and entered a little office with a wall of gray shelves and cabinets, stacks of papers and boxes of tongue depressors and rubber gloves. A dead computer and a fake plant were on the desk.
“Let’s just squeeze in here, it’s private,” said Seraphine.
There was a padded desk chair and metal folding chair. Seraphine swept her hand at them both and let Ira choose where to sit. Ira took the metal folding chair.
“Now let’s go over things,” Seraphine said. There was a pen chained to the top of her clipboard. A tribal ID hung from her neck on a bright pink, canvas ribbon. Her dress was stone gray with soft little sage-green flowers on it. Seraphine’s face was extraordinarily beautiful, finely made, a haughty Michif face. Her skin was the pale gold color that white people broil themselves on tanning machines to achieve. John was right, thought Ira, his wife is very good-looking. He had also said that she knew medicines, and Ira wondered if she would act all spiritual. But Seraphine was quietly matter-of-fact.
“First of all,” she said, after she had confirmed Ira’s basic information, “what are you now doing for a living?”
“I sew a lot. Quilts and powwow outfits. And I bead. I had a thousand-dollar men’s fancy regalia burn up with my house,” Ira said, remembering and missing, as she would now for years, something lost in the fire.
“That’s a chancy living.”
“True.”
“I think I saw one of your bead yokes—I know your style.”
“All my dad’s things are gone now, too,” Ira went on, and a strange feeling overtook her momentarily. Those things that had burned were all that her father had left behind in his life. Now there was nothing to remember him by but his grave. “Oh, no,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.” Ira touched her face.
“Tell me what happened the day before yesterday,” said Seraphine. “Can you explain why your children were left alone for an extended period? I have to set this down in my report, so take it slow.”
“They weren’t alone,” said Ira, “they were with Shawnee.”
“Shawnee is a minor. The law says you can’t leave your children with a minor overnight. Of course, you’re under tribal jurisdiction, but the judge usually upholds the same standard.”
“I didn’t know it was against the law.”
“Have you done this often?”
“Never, no, maybe once. This was an emergency. I went to the office to get some heating assistance and a food voucher or whatever. You can ask the personnel, Itchy Boyer, some others. I hitched in but I had trouble getting a ride back.”
Seraphine made some notes on her pad of paper, then rested her clipboard on her knees.
“Look,” she said, “I know all about it. John told me.”
Heat flooded Ira’s face. How much was told? What had John said?
“Morris gave me a ride out to my place.”
“And John and you walked to Morris’s place.”
Ira hesitated. “Yeah.”
Seraphine frowned at her paper, then shook her pen to get the ink to flood into the tip.
“Hey,” said Ira suddenly. “I met John at a bar, but he was only interested in getting me to Morris’s place. He gave me money for groceries.”
Ira rubbed her hands together. Her skin was tender.
“Okay,” Seraphine said, writing down some words. “So far your stories match.” She was only joking, and she smiled as she wrote, but Ira felt her throat go dry and scratchy. If Seraphine wrote up a bad report on her, what? Could they take her children? Her breath snagged in her chest. Seraphine kept talking. “So you met John at a bar and he gave you money for groceries and then left you over at Morris’s house.”
Ira nodded. The red cotton placket-front blouse she was wearing, the too large bra, the baggy black pants, and the hospital slippers made her feel poor and beggarly. But I am poor and beggarly, she thought. Everything I have is burnt. She remembered Shawnee’s school