The Plague of Doves - Louise Erdrich [81]
I stopped and flung my arms wide and I turned in six circles. Sky over me, sky under me, sky to my north and south. Sky to my west. One person underneath it all alive and wondering, soaked in the great surround. When I wheeled and bucked dust from my feet I was running for the pure joy of moving in the air, in this life, in this goodness soaking up through the dirt.
That, I brought back to my discipline.
The first two hours of schedule were the worst. The standing motionless seemed impossible. Every muscle that would ache hurt and every bone protested and the heart, bored with so much reverse direction and taut stillness, beat sullenly in my chest. I could hear it and the feeling of that bird moving in the cage of my ribs was a whir of sickness. The third hour, that was better, and the fourth was nothing. It passed like a hand on my forehead, for I was lost in what I was seeing. A warm curtain of pain billowed in, out with each breath, and then parted. Through the jammed sensation a door opened and my serpents slid out to speak with me. My prince of diamonds, my queen of red dust. They talked to me in low, protective whispers, and told me what to do.
I listened and questioned and made certain that I understood each step. Then I bowed to them for my freedom. I thanked them for my life. I saw how I’d hold my prince rattler’s head to the cloth, and how I’d carefully milk the venom from his fangs into the small spice jar I’d cleaned and washed. I’d use three snakes more that way until I had enough venom to fill the syringe I’d taken out of Bliss’s medical cabinet—she had a whole box in there. I’d let the snakes go. I’d break their aquarium to pieces and grind the glass up and pour it down the well. I’d stick the tip of the loaded syringe into an apple and I’d roll it in a piece of coloring paper. I’d carry it. Anguish would demand to see what kind of picture Lilith had drawn, but I would paste on a great glittering grin and tell her that I couldn’t, that it was a surprise for her father, which was true.
IT’S ON YOU, I can see it.
What’s on me? What?
It’s on you, I can see it, you’re gonna kill.
I WAS DOWN, I’d collapsed, and the only way I could possibly get out of my situation was to have professed a vision, which I did. I’d learned from Billy about telling what I was going to do in advance. I whispered in his ear. I saw how I was going to fuck you. The hatred was an animal so big I wanted to let it take Billy in its jaw. But I couldn’t, not yet. There would be days and there would be days. There would be a time to run and a time to halt, a time to kill and a time to harvest. There would be a time to assemble and dissemble, a time to understand my vision and a time to carry it out. A time to hold myself away and hold myself away and a time very finally to give.
That time finally came.
I climbed my husband hotly and set my two thumbs at the pulse beneath his jawbone and I pressed and stroked until I had him cornered and weak and then like a cat I stole his breath. All that night I robbed him with my greed, making him hard with my mouth and drawing from him with all the rest of me, furious and careful, instructive when he waned, and punishing. Then good to him. Ironing. He lay still under me as under a warm iron. I drew myself over and over the sheet of his back and across and down his legs, molding to every part of him, soothing the evil twin away, unwrinkling that bad one who’d crumpled himself into Billy like an igniting wad and me the kerosene. I tied his hands to the sides of the bed and I measured his face with my own faceless hunger. Kissed him with my speechless lips. Set him task after task and then, when he’d finished, as the light increased, I decided that I hated him so much that