Heart Berries

Addressing Casey directly as “you”, Mailhot reflects on her feelings of inferiority and uncleanliness. She compares herself to a squaw, a derogatory term used by non-Natives to describe an Indian woman, with “greasy hair and nimble fingers” (86). She runs through her early history once again, explaining her marriage to Vito, her migration to a friend’s house in El Paso to escape the reservation, and the lost custody battle for her first son, Isadore. She writes about the shame and pain she felt nursing her newborn baby, Isaiah, after losing her first child. She compares herself to the White women that Casey has loved and flirted with, and the way he befriends them, which is something he has never offered her. She describes her tribal chief naming her Little Mountain Woman as her body grew, and how she fled the mountains and lost her power. She describes, lyrically, the pain of loneliness and grief, violent marriages, and her desire to be loved. 

Mailhot considers leaving Casey and goes to her friend Barbara’s house. They exchange traditional gifts: sweetgrass and silver rings. She feels like Casey’s anger is the anger of a White man; it has no purpose or depth.