The Dance Boots

THE DANCE BOOTS

LINDA LEGARDE GROVER

© 2010 by Linda LeGarde Grover

Athens, Georgia 30602

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Grover, Linda LeGarde.

The dance boots / Linda LeGarde Grover.

        p.       cm.— (Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for short fiction)

ISBN
-13: 978-0-8203-3580-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN
-10: 0-8203-3580-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. Ojibwa Indians—Fiction. 2. Minnesota—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3607.R6777D36 2010

813'.6—dc22                                          2009051211

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

ISBN for this digital edition:978-0-8203-3748-7

TO ALL THE LEGARDES

AND DROUILLARDS

BY BLOOD,

BY NAME,

BY MARRIAGE,

BY SPIRIT

HERE AND AANDAKII

Preface

The Dance Boots

Three Seasons

Maggie and Louis, 1914

Refugees Living and Dying in the West End of Duluth

Shonnud's Girl

Ojibwe Boys

Four Indians in the Mirror

Bingo Night

The mythical Mozhay Point Indian Reservation and allotment lands of the Ojibwe extended families in these stories are in the heart of the six reservations of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, a few hours' drive north of Duluth, Minnesota, which is a hill city on the shores of Lake Superior.

The Ojibwe are of the Woodland cultures. Half a millennium ago our ancestors made the journey we call the Great Migration in a route along the Great Lakes from the east coast of North America, near Newfoundland, to our home today. We have maintained and when necessary revitalized our language, history, and customs by way of our oral tradition as well as the determination and sacrifices of those we call the Grandfathers.

Our families are large and extended; we have many relatives. Sometimes we address each other not by name but by relationship (for example, Auntie or Cousin), as a term of affection or unity. At times we do not differentiate between degrees of relationship: all cousins, first-degree and beyond, as well as other relatives of the
same generation might be addressed as Cousin; relatives of one older generation might all be addressed as Auntie or Uncle, though they might technically be cousins; some whom we address as relatives may not be actual relatives but are honored with that title. We are all related.

Ojibwe names at times combine English and Ojibwe spelling and pronunciation. The Ojibwe language does not differentiate between the letters
p
and
f
; the letters
l
and
n
can be interchangeable when English language is spoken, as can the letters
l
and
y
and the letters
r
and
n
. Examples of this can be found in some of the names of characters in these stories: Charlotte is called Shonnud, and Helen is called Henen. In every day that passes, this speech pattern is heard less frequently, as elders who spoke both the old Ojibwe dialects and English in the old Ojibwe way pass on to the next world. I remember their way of speaking in these stories to commemorate, honor, and thank them.

THE DANCE BOOTS

We Ojibwe believe that God the Creator has put each of us in the living world with a gift or talent, something that we are supposed to search for in ourselves, thank Him for, and contribute to those we share the world with. We are each born for a purpose, each with tasks to accomplish. My aunt Shirley's was to remember by heart and teach by rote, mine to learn by rote and remember by heart. With Shirley gone, one of these days the time will be right for me to become the teacher. I will choose someone who, like me, might not know, at first, why.

When my daughters were still little girls and we lived in Mesabi, just about an hour from my cousins who lived at Mozhay Point Reservation, my aunt Shirley began to call me long-distance from Duluth, sometimes every couple of weeks, sometimes every couple of months, not much before the ten o'clock news, and after the kids had gone to bed. This was during the years that Stan thought I was the stupidest woman in the world, and so I worked at a series of jobs, sometimes at the hospital switchboard, sometimes at the
drugstore, sometimes at the concession stand at the movies, and started to take classes at the community college, too, all to try to show him that I was not a complete zero, except for my drinking, and that wasn't too bad most of the time. When I realized that my drinking was the one thing he liked about me because it proved everything he thought, I pulled myself together and cut down. That was in the middle of Shirley's story, and it made listening harder because without that thick white ground fog of liquor I could hear it so clearly.

When the phone rang I would have dishes to wash, or a load of laundry ready to fold, or a pair of girls' jeans to mend or to hem, and always a reading assignment or a paper to write. My days and nights were spent on the run; I thought sometimes about not picking up the telephone, but I always did because it might be Shirley. She was my aunt; she had something to tell me.

“H'lo?”

“Artense. How are you tonight, my dear?”

“Hi, Shirley. Oh, I'm good. How about you; what are you up to?”

She had bought a pair of knee-high fringed boots to wear with her powwow dress. Oh, that would look nice, I said, with her dark blue skirt and dark red blouse. She wondered, did I want her leggings, since because the boots covered her legs she wouldn't need them? They would go nice with my ribbon shirt, and she thought I could make myself a skirt and we could dance together. Embarrassed that I didn't know how to dance, I told her I thought she should keep them; she might want them in the summer, when her legs might get pretty hot in suede boots.

She had talked to her sister and told her that it was time to stop hanging around the house and start getting out again. Time to get out and see some people. “Says she misses the Russian. Why would she ever miss that old cheapskate, anyway? I told her, ‘Well, he's dead,
now. Find somebody else!' She was way too young for him, anyway, I told her. ‘Find yourself somebody younger this time,' I said! ‘Get yourself a boy-toy!'” She found this so funny that she repeated it several times. It took a few minutes for her to stop laughing.

She had driven the Indian Health Services van all the way to West Duluth to give her ladyfriend Mrs. Minogeezhik a ride to the clinic for an appointment. “Mrs. Minogeezhik, you remember her, she was at the Home Improvement Showcase down at the hockey arena, the lady in the wheelchair?”

I was sorting through the pile of newspapers by the back door, looking for the Sunday grocery coupons. “Yes, she was in front of the Mary Kay counter, right? She asked me who my mother and father are.” The Mary Kay lady had given Shirley a lipstick sample and looked nervously at Mrs. Minogeezhik's son, Punkin, that grinning charcoal drawing of a jack-o'-lantern shaded and contoured by ground-in grime from his job at the garage and so massive in his size triple-extra-large Carhartt jacket that he blocked one half of the perfumed and cluttered, pristine and pink display counter and shadowed the rest. “Punkin was there, too.”

“Remember that time when your Uncle John picked up Punkin's jacket off the back of the chair at your mom's house and said, ‘Hey, Punkin, looks like your jacket could use an oil change!' Gawd, we laughed! Everybody always has such a good time at your mom's. An oil change—that John. Anyway, she remembered you.”

Where were the cereal coupons? I dug through the Sunday paper. “Who did?”

“Wegonen, my girl? Who did what—oh, remembered you? Mrs. Minogeezhik. She said you have beautiful manners. She thinks you have a handsome husband. Ay-y-y-y.”

“Oh my.” We giggled. “Now, don't tell him that; he doesn't need to hear it!”

The night the story really started, she called to say that she was having a glass of wine and thinking of me and how I was doing.

“How is everything at college? What is it you're taking there?”

“History. And biology. It's just a couple of nights a week. After work I make supper and feed Stan and the girls and then go right to class.”

“White Man history, right?”

“It's called the Age of Exploration.”

“It must be hard, eh? But those are all things you need to know. And you're smart; you'll study hard and do good.”

“Well, the book is good, and I got an A on a test.” I was the only Indian student in the class and over thirty, the oldest person in the room except for the professor. I wanted to graduate, to be an associate of arts, whatever that might be, and with some practice was learning to eat whatever Dr. Morcomb put on the plate. Just that day it had been a lunch of Indian-European relations. Indians had infected early explorers to this continent with venereal disease, which was then brought back to Europe on return voyages and became epidemic, he told us. I snorted, which startled the young man who sat next to me drawing a picture of a pickup truck.
Fire and Ice
, he had written below the drawing. He had drawn decals of snow and Old Man North Wind on the hood and box, flames on the fenders.

“Is that really true?” I asked.

The young man looked at me with respect inspired by fear. I had the power of the clap. Indian Power.

Dr. Morcomb said, “This is actual documented history, researched by scholars. There is documented proof in the form of diaries, and also reports written by physicians themselves.”

Being no scholar myself, I took a big spoonful, opened my mouth and held my nose, and swallowed. In the margin of my notebook I wrote,
From the diaries of Cartier: What the hell is this?
CLAP
? I must of got it from that damn Indian!

The scratching of a match against a strip of roughened cardboard; the nearly invisible sound of flame struck from a red-tipped match; the
pf-f-f-ft
of Shirley inhaling ignited tobacco and paper into her lungs. “Oh, wuh! An A!” A dry cough; a sigh.

“But, my mom says it's no wonder I got an A; it's because I'm so old, I was there when things we're studying happened, she says, and the kids in class weren't even born yet!”