him to hear me, see me, to stop...you’re breaking me, I thought, you’re breaking me apart. Then everything went quiet.
I could hear ragged breathing, great gulps of wet sobbing air. I thought it was me, but my moans were underneath that lung-punctured sound. I took my hands away from my face and as I did I heard my Auntie’s voice, steel strong and even.
“You step back John McBride. Step back now.”
I looked up at my husband. He stood over me, his face a twisted, crooked thing. Tears poured down his cheeks. His stomach heaved. He looked down at me as though he had no idea of how I’d fallen. He brought his bloody fists up in front of his own eyes and began to howl like a wild dog. He pounded his own face, first with his right hand, then his left, sparing no force.
“Bastard!” he cried, “Bastard!”
“Stop this! Stop this now! You hear me!” Auntie Betty stood in the doorway behind John. She filled the space with her square bulk. Her long grey braid was decorated with megis shells. She was dressed for serious ceremony work. Ribbons in her spirit colours on her skirt and blouse. Medicine pouch. In her left hand she carried the hawk wing fan, in her right the sweetgrass basket containing her pipe, tobacco, other things known only to her.
John hit himself square in the face with both fists.
Auntie Betty put her basket down and walked up behind him. She reached up and smacked him on the back of the head.
“Don’t be any more of a jackass than you already are. There’s been enough hitting for one day, eh?” She glared at him as he spun around. She raised the hawk wing fan and fluttered a circle in the air around his head. John let out a strangled noise, clamped his hand to his mouth and pushed past her out the door. I heard retching noises.
“Good. Puke up all that bad stuff,” said Auntie Betty, coming toward me. “Come on little one; let’s see what kind of shape you’re in.” She bent down and helped haul me to my feet. I was shaky. There was blood on my dress, dripping down from my nose.
“Looks like I got here just in time. You’ll live. Could hear it in the wind this morning. Time to come visit. Had Jimmy drop me off in the truck down the road a ways. Didn’t think this’d be the time for him to come calling.” She leaned me up against the counter and ran the tap water good and cold. She wet down a tea towel and put it in my hand. “Press that up against your face. You need ice.” She waddled her wide, bow-legged walk to the ‘fridge.
I started to cry, salty tears burning into my split lip. I heard the tires of our pickup squeal as John skidded out the drive and down the road.
“Don’t waste your time crying, girl.” She rolled ice in a plastic baggy. “Here, use this. What we need is a cup of tea. He’s not coming back for a while. I guarantee. Sit,” she ordered and I did as I was told as she puttered around my kitchen and fixed the tea. She reached into her basket and took out a skin pouch, sprinkled some herbs into the teapot. “This’ll help the hurts, inside and out.”
I didn’t feel much of anything just then, except glad Auntie Betty was there, glad someone else was taking control of things. I felt as limp as a newborn baby and just as naked. We drank the tea. I held the ice to my swelling-up eye. Auntie Betty held my hand.
Later she reached into her basket.
“I brought this for you,” she said, and laid a carton of rat poison on the counter. “You got yourself a vermin problem.”
“Poison?” I knew Auntie would never suggest such a thing, it went against the natural respect she had for one of all-her-relations, spirit rats or full bone and fur. “I don’t need that,” I said, my chest tight as a drum.
“I think you do. You got these kinda rats, you got to get rid of ‘em. White man’s rats need white man’s measures. This here’s white man’s poison.”
“You can’t be serious. You’ve lost your mind!”
“No, and you better remember to respect your elders! I ain’t lost my mind, but you better start using yours. I ain’t talking about poisoning nobody, not that some people don’t deserve it,” she snorted with disdain, “but I been given it some thought. Rat spirit chose to show up here, not no other. No bear or wolf or snake. ”
“You’re scaring me Auntie, and I been scared enough for one day.”
“Well, let it be the last day anything scares you. You shed that fear skin and maybe you’ll shed that fat skin too. Oh, don’t look at me that way, you know it’s true. Big woman’s a fine thing, but not the way you’re going at it. You can’t grow another baby in you by trying to stuff if down your mouth. You weren’t meant to be as big as you are; you ain’t got the bones for it, not like me.” She patted her belly and cackled. “But that’ll take care of itself once you start taking care of yourself, and for now, that means getting rid of this big old rat.”
“He didn’t mean it. You saw how sorry he was. It’s the pressure. We been going through some hard times.”
“What a load of horse shit! Times is always hard. That ain’t no excuse for what that man’s doing. He needs to learn.”
“I can’t leave him.”
“You can and you will. He might be able to get away with taking out his shit on soft minded little white women, but no Indian woman’s gonna stand for it.” She leaned over and took both my hands in hers, looked into my battered up face.
“You think he’s gonna stop unless you make him stop? You think it’s not going to just get worse? Don’t you watch Oprah?”
I didn’t say nothing.
“Nellie. Answer me. You think it’s gonna get any better unless he knows he’s gone too far, knows exactly what it’s cost him? Look me in the eye and tell me that.”
She was right. I knew she was right and it caved in my heart to know it.
“I know.”
“Well then.”
“But Auntie, I....”
“Don’t you even think about telling me you love that man! The man you fell in love with is gone. I don’t know whether he’ll be back or not, but what you got living in this house with you at the moment, sure as hell is not a man to love. This is an evil thing, all twisted over on itself.” I made a motion to protest. “Don’t interrupt me. Sometimes you put poison out for rats and like magic they disappear. Seems like they know it just ain’t safe no more.” She looked at me, her eyes flashing like stars among the wrinkles. “You understand?”
And I did.
She stayed all afternoon and as night fell she smudged the house up good. Then she called Jimmy and had him pick her up. She waited out at the end of the driveway so he wouldn’t come in and see me. Jimmy’d be just as likely to go off into town with his rifle and look for John, and nobody wanted that kind of trouble.
John didn’t come home that night, and I shouldn’t have expected him because Auntie Betty’d told me as much. Still, I lay in bed all night straining to hear the sound of his tires on the gravel. I finally fell asleep around dawn, too tired to mind the aches and pains, and didn’t dream about nothing at all.
The
