The Painted Drum - Louise Erdrich [97]
“Oh, you shouldn’t have asked that, Alice.”
“But it was interesting,” said Shawnee.
“It was?” Ira could not help it, she was curious and still could not remember.
“A matron,” said Shawnee. “What’s that?”
“Oh, that’s in boarding school,” Ira said. “I’m not going to send you kids to boarding school.”
“That’s good,” Shawnee said.
“Bernard came,” said Alice.
“He said to tell you he has our food. He’ll bring it to wherever we go,” said Shawnee. Then stopped. Bernard had patted her shoulder and told her that she was a strong little girl, a good sister. Her mother had tried to touch her only that one time, since the fire. Shawnee almost wanted to force her mother to get angry with her just to get it over with, but at the same time she hoped her mother would say that Shawnee had saved her brother and sister, that she had dragged them through the snow, that she had refused to let them fly away as black skeletons.
“Where do we go now?” Alice asked.
Ira leaned over and put her arms around Alice. As she held her, rocking, she looked over at Shawnee, and that was when Shawnee thought her mother was going to say, in a mean and low voice, maybe, How could you have burnt down the house? But Ira didn’t say it, she just kept rocking Alice, and looking at Shawnee, and looking back down at Alice. After a while her mother’s face seemed to open up like a flower. She smiled and a softness flowed from her and wrapped around Shawnee and held her.
Apitchi was burbling weakly, coming out of his long still sleep. This time he didn’t know his mother, he could get no comfort from her and each breath wheezed and rasped in his chest. Ira sat with him, holding him. She thought he seemed to be losing weight. Even as they sat there, he was growing less substantial in her arms. She put him down and he was motionless, hot, his skin dry and burning. Ira got a washcloth and rinsed it in cold water, squeezed it out, and began washing Apitchi down with it. With every few strokes of the cloth against his skin, the cold was gone. She had to rinse it again. She kept on rinsing and wiping and then suddenly his eyes, which had been wide open, went glassy and blank and stared sideways. His arms and legs moved in climbing motions. He grinned terribly, his baby teeth clamped tight, and he shuddered. Ira pressed the nurse call button, yelled for help, tried to hold his arms still but he was twisting, snaking along the bed. She clamped herself over him. His mouth was open and he was choking on blood and foam. She turned him over and at last the nurse came, and then more nurses and two doctors, until people filled the room. Ira stepped back into the corner, frozen to the wall. All she could see of Apitchi was his foot, still jerking, then his foot went still.
They kept working on him, calling for things she didn’t know the names of. Nobody noticed her. He couldn’t be dead, she thought, as long as there was so much activity. She fixed on the bustling of the nurses. The low-key, businesslike voices of the doctors reassured her. If the doctors were giving orders there was hope. At last, one of them said, “His mother?” A nurse said Ira’s name and beckoned to her. The doctor turned from the bed and took Ira’s hand, an act that made her gasp with fear.
“Ira,” the doctor said, quiet behind the mask, “your son is very sick. But we think we have him stabilized.”
Now the nurses were moving away from the bed and the other doctor went out of the room. Ira could see Apitchi in the bed. He seemed to have shrunk yet again, he looked like a tiny monkey. He was far, far away. Ira could tell he wasn’t in his body.
“We’ve got a problem,” the doctor said, taking off her rubber gloves and removing her mask. “This seizure is probably related to the fever, but it could have some other source. Normally, I’d have your little boy helicoptered out, but we’ve got bad weather out there. We’re going to have to keep him here until the blizzard clears up. You’re staying nights, aren’t you?”
Ira nodded. She reached forward and held Apitchi’s foot. His foot was still fat and round. His