books mentioned in the sentence by louise erdrich

‘And don’t forget,’ I said, pleased by her needy snuffling, ‘you’re a big winner!’ Two days before, Danae had scored a once-in-a-lifetime ca- sino win. ‘It’s all right, you are safe,’ I said in my huskiest voice. Or maybe bulwark gives a more accurate pic- ture. When she curled against me, I felt my heart surge and I became her shield against the world. Though she was older than me, Danae was spindly as a downy pre-woman. ‘Tookie! Tookie! Where are you?’ I dragged myself up onto her cabiny moose pillows and tried to soothe my deranged dear, rocking her, clutching her frowsy yellow head against my shoulder. She doesn’t know what to do with his body! Danae flung the phone away and vaulted back onto the couch, howling and thrashing her spidery arms and legs. Clasped the phone with both hands and screwed her face shut. The phone rang and Danae fumbled the receiver to her ear. The day I committed my crime, I was sprawled at the skinny white feet of my crush Danae, trying to deal with an interior swarm of ants. Books contain everything worth knowing except what ultimately matters. Collections of words between cardboard covers.

Of course, now that I am rehabilitated, I only sell words. I enjoy lying, for instance, and am good at selling people useless things for prices they can’t afford. Not the kind of ugly that guys write or make movies about, where suddenly I have a blast of blinding instructional beauty. Now that I have a better idea, I will tell you this: I am an ugly woman. For many reasons, I didn’t know who I was yet. It was 2005, but 1999 was how I partied, drinking and drugging like I was seventeen, although my liver kept trying to tell me it was over an outraged decade older. Although in my thirties, I still clung to a teenager’s physical pursuits and mental habits. I was at a perilous age when I committed my crime.

Without a doubt, had the dictionary not arrived, this light word that lay so heavily upon me would have crushed me, or what was left of me after the strangeness of what I’d done. So the word with its yawning c, belligerent little e’s, with its hissing sibilants and double n’s, this repetitive bummer of a word made of slyly stabbing letters that surrounded an isolate human t, this word was in my thoughts every moment of every day. The first word I looked up was the word ‘sentence.’ I had received an impossible sentence of sixty years from the lips of a judge who believed in an after- life. But as she had known, this one proved of endless use. Other books were to arrive from my teacher. This is the book I would take to a deserted island. While in prison, I received a dictionary.

Books mentioned in the sentence by louise erdrich