[In the following essay, Zeck examines the sensual relationship between the characters of Eli and Marie in Love Medicine.]

In the chapter of Louise Erdrich's novel Love Medicine entitled “The Beads,” Eli plays the role of the father to Marie's children when Nector is absent. Erdrich suggests, through a brief scene dense with sexual imagery, that Eli and Marie are June's spiritual parents. In a subtle, tender scene, they make love without touching, and June is the fruit of their union.

On one particular evening in 1948, Eli stays late at Marie's house singing Cree “hunting songs used to attract deer or women” (69). On this night, he succeeds in capturing both a deer and a woman. Certainly, Eli's song attracts June, who is frequently referred to as a deer. The next day, the young girl will leave her surrogate mother's house and live with Eli, her surrogate father. Marie is also attracted to Eli. She comments that he is uncharacteristically forceful and charismatic in his singing, and she acknowledges her own attraction to him: “He wasn't shy when he sang … I had to keep to my mending” (69). When the children fall asleep, Eli helps Marie tuck them into bed and then, like a husband, he remains with her in the living area, even though this is unusual for him. Each adult engages in a homey activity: Eli rolls tobacco, while Marie mends seams. Yet these activities have sexual undertones: the cigarette as a phallic symbol suggests fire, passion, and sexual desire. The open seams that Marie works on suggest the labia. She sews them closed, suggesting her rejection of Eli's offer of lovemaking, which he proffers by simply uttering her name as a question: “‘Marie?’ he asked, very quiet.” (71). Though she rejects the actual act of intercourse, the two of them exchange their desire delicately, without touching.

Aware of the sexual tension between them, Marie does not “dare move” (71). The lamp burns, signifying heat and passion, while Marie thinks of “lake-shore pebbles, naked as eyes and smooth” and of “his lean hands” (71). Her refusal to move suggests her rock-solid dedication to her marriage despite Nector's infidelity and alcoholism. Yet her image of pebbles, small and easily washed away by the tide, reveals her vulnerability. Paula Bennett discusses the significance of such imagery in her examination of Emily Dickinson's poetry. She says that nineteenth-century women poets often used images of small, round, delicate objects to symbolize female genitalia. Pebbles, stones, buds, peas, berries, and pearls are among the most frequently used clitoral images (154). Louise Erdrich's choice of a pebble to describe Marie's attraction to Eli is especially appropriate in light of Bennett's research. For Marie, who simultaneously thinks of a pebble and Eli's hands, the pebble may very well be a subtle, clitoral image. This suggests a sensuous connection between her body and his. Marie is sexually aroused by the thought of Eli's intimate touch.

The act of making love may give pleasure, but it also presents the possibility of spiritual risk and emotional erosion. In Erdrich's novel, pebbles and stones represent women and their sexuality. Both women and men are frequently depicted as being immersed in water; men are often described as water itself, a sensuous but eroding force. They may handle women lovingly, brutally, or with indifference, but erosion is inevitable. Love is a risk. Marie barely allows herself to consider making love with this man who is her husband's twin, who behaves more like a husband to her and a father to the children than Nector does. Perhaps for a moment, Marie feels that she chose to marry the wrong twin.

Three times in four sentences, words for eyes and looking are used in this scene. Eli's eyes rest on Marie, but she does not dare return his look. The pebbles, which are “naked as eyes,” perceive the sexual attraction that she cannot afford to acknowledge (71). Erdrich may be continuing the sexual imagery here with a subtle suggestion of the pebbles as ova: inwardly, Marie's body responds to Eli. The author suggests that the woman and the moment are spiritually, emotionally, and sexually fertile. Describing the scene, Marie states, “Something dark and wavering, fringed like a flower's mouth, was collecting in the room between us” (71). The image of the flower is reminiscent of a Georgia O'Keeffe painting; it describes both the delicacy of the moment, and the labia and clitoris responding to sexual stimulation.

Despite Marie's careful avoidance of Eli's eyes and her refusal to answer him, she and Eli are immersed in a love scene. When he leaves, the child June appears standing in the doorway, which is suggestive of her emergence from the birth canal. The sexual attraction between her surrogate parents has drawn June out. Marie notes that the child waits and watches “for what she [feels] in the air,” although she cannot name it (71). And Marie, like a mother who has just given birth, holds the child in her lap “for the first … time” and, poignantly, for the only time (71). Cherishing the rare moments of intimacy with her new daughter, Marie cradles her and sings a lullaby: “I held her and I stroked her hair and hummed in her ear” (71). So dear are the moments that Marie holds June long after the child has fallen asleep.

This tender lovemaking and birth scene is followed by Nector's appearance after a night of drinking. He brings Marie money rather than the communion that Eli offers. He does not call her name or ask her permission to make love with her. Instead, he lays money on the table and unceremoniously says to her “C'mere now” (72). His actions may suggest that Nector is fulfilling his role as breadwinner but they also suggest that Marie's role as wife resembles that of a prostitute.

In the nonphysical love scene between Eli and Marie, she feels like pebbles washed by the tide. A few hours later, when she has sex with her husband, she describes herself as a stone being eroded by water. Interestingly, Marie's image of herself changes slightly but significantly. With Eli she is a pebble; her vulnerability, delicacy, and sexual attraction are apparent. With her own husband, however, Marie must be larger, sturdier, and less vulnerable: she is a stone. Describing the intercourse with her husband, Marie states, “I rolled with his current like a stone in the lake” (72). When the sexual act is over, Nector leaves “no sign he'd been there” (72). Marie remarks that her husband's presence was so insubstantial that he “might not have even come home” (72). Lovemaking without communion leaves no trace: Marie does not conceive a child with her husband as she has symbolically conceived June with Eli.

Works Cited

Bennett, Paula. Emily Dickinson: Woman Poet. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1990.

Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine. New York: Holt, 1984.