The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich

is varied and often strange so there is always enough to think about. Of course, there is now Kurt, who in his suffering has become dangerously close. But the important thing, I think now, is to preserve what Elsie and I have made between us. Our breakfasts and dinners. Our net of small doings. Our thank-you notes. Our web. Our routine.
    Which is about to be disturbed.
    Three things happen in swift order.
    My mother begins to sing to me. We are raided by the town police. My blackberries boil to a purple foam and then overflow the blue kettle I have transferred them to. It is a much heavier pot, sort of a large Dutch oven, sandcast and coated with thick enamel. But first, the singing, which mother often does. I don’t mean that she actually serenades me. Her singing occurs when we are together in the same room pursuing mutually exclusive tasks. This afternoon, even in the heat, she is knitting an intricate afghan. After I brought the berries in, I showered so I am cool. My hair is slicked back and braided. I am washing away the detritus of the woods, swirling leaves and thrips down the drain, when Elsie starts to hum. Soon, there are words. Of course, as these are songs from my childhood, these words fill me with an awful poignancy. “Bye-bye Blackbird.” “Autumn Leaves.” And yes, a few songs in Ojibwe, mainly hymns that my grandmother sang in the old language. From way back, we have been converts. As for the love songs, which she returns to, “Green Fields” and “Greensleeves” and “Silver Dagger,” they have solemnly bitter endings. All the good ones do. Still, can you stop your mother from singing to you? Who would do such a thing?
    I pour sugar into the berries ready to boil in the blue enameled kettle. The berries soon fill the kitchen with a fruity steam, and stain the insides of the pot blue-black. As I stand there stirring down the dark mass, the calming motion of my spoon and the sweet curls of fragrance allow me to think with indulgence about the old controversies that once surrounded the kettle I am using. This kettle was a source of enmity between my mother and my father, and so it remains for me a souvenir of their eternal contest. They argued viciously about this pot. It seems a humble thing to argue over, but for them, everything was monumental. Nothing was too small.
    My father didn’t like that my mother had spent so much money on it. And yet she made most of the money in the family—her business was well run even then. She even met my father through the business—he was there when she came in to assess the contents of his mother’s house. They married quietly. He was fascinated with her background, I think, as though she had some mystical connection to the natural world that he lacked and loved. That was, perhaps, true enough. Their main pleasure in their first years was planting, gardening, digging wells, ponds, making patios, and setting up benches where, still, one can sit and watch the fireflies signal. I came along and surprised them, and my sister a little more than two years after. Although she was younger and followed me everywhere, her personhood was always stronger than mine. Netta had all of the sandy-haired sun in our joint personality. She burned hot. She was just my opposite. Where I was quiet, neat, untiring when it came to detail, Netta was bold and impatient; she could be careless and even cruel.
    When she was still six and I had just turned nine we caught fireflies in Mason jars. We wanted lanterns, so we filled the jars with at least a dozen bugs each, then lay in the backyard across an old car blanket and played a game of memory, our favorite game that summer. We played with three decks, the cards spread facedown all around us. By dusk and by firefly light we matched the cards slowly, one to the next, concentrating fiercely on the placement of each. I think that early training is the reason I remember anything at all. The lights ebbed and burned, but at last the fireflies