Love Medicine

A

“A — all from.

“You made me! You forced me!”

“I made you!” She laughs and shakes her hand, letting the pillowcase drop clear so that I can see the ugly wound.

“I didn’t make you do anything,” she says.

Her hand looks bad, cut and swollen, and it has not been washed.

Even afraid as I am, I cannot help but feel how bad her hand must hurt and throb. Thinking this causes a small pain to shoot through my own hand. The girl’s hand must have hurt when I threw her on the ground, and yet she didn’t cry out. Her head, too. I have to wonder what is under the bandage. Did the nuns catch her and beat her when she tried to steal their linen?

The dead birds feel impossibly heavy. I untie them from my wrists and let them fall in the dirt. I sit down beside her.

“You can take these birds home. You can roast them,” I say

“I am giving them to you.”

J Her mouth twists. She tosses her head and looks away.

I’m not ashamed, but there are some times this happens: alone in the woods, checking the trap line I find a wounded animal that hasn’t died well, or, worse, it’s still living, so that I have to put it out of its misery. Sometimes it’s just a big bird I only winged. When I do what I have to do, my throat swells closed sometimes. I touch the suffering bodies like they were killed saints I should handle with gentle reverence.

This is how I take Marie’s hand. This is how I hold her wounded hand in my hand.

She never looks at me. I don’t think she dares let me see her face.

We sit alone. The sun falls down the side of the world and the hill goes dark. Her hand grows thick and fevered, heavy in my own, and I don’t want her, but I want her, and I cannot let go.

bob..-, THE BEADS r a S (1948)