The Beet Queen, by Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich’s 1986 novel The Beet Queen tells a story of intersecting lives through different voices, from 1932 to 1972. Our primary narrator is Mary Adare, an eleven-year-old abandoned by her mother, her baby brother snatched from her arms in a crowd, her older brother Karl hopping back on the freight train that brought them to the tiny North Dakota town where their aunt Fritzie lives with her butcher husband and a daughter, Sita - who also contributes her point of view. Sita’s best friend, Celestine, whose affection Mary steals, is half Indian, tall and wild.

The jealousy that runs through these characters’ lives is less an undercurrent than an underground river, sweeping them into actions whose sole purpose is to hurt each other.  Mary is jealous of Sita’s long blond hair and good looks; Sita is jealous of her parents' welcoming Mary, and the interloper's friendship with Celestine. Later Celestine has a child with Mary’s mostly-absent brother Karl, and the way Mary interposes herself between mother and daughter makes Celestine wild with jealous anger. But as spiteful as they are to each other, they remain connected: Celestine and Mary work in the butcher shop Fritzie and her husband leave to Mary when they retire to a warmer climate. Mary hates Karl for abandoning her when they were desperate children, but Karl takes up with Celestine, driving Mary to fits of rage.

Celestine and Karl’s daughter, named Wallacette in honor of Karl’s onetime lover Wallace, who shelters Celestine on a frigid night and helps bring the baby into the world, is immediately called Dot by Mary. The name sticks, and Wallace can only stand on the sidelines, longing for recognition. Dot, meanwhile, is demanding, selfish, and vengeful, a terror at school. Celestine’s attempts to parent the girl are thwarted by Mary’s interference - no matter how outrageous Dot’s behavior, Mary takes her part, ignoring every version of events but the girl’s. And Dot, latching on like a starveling to Mary’s defense of her, pushes away her mother who would force a reckoning.

The story has fantastical elements - when Karl visits Sita at her lovely home, he sits in a painted wrought-iron chair on their manicured lawn conversing with her second husband. And while they eat tiny sandwiches, Karl’s chair sinks steadily into the grass till finally the earth swallows him altogether. For the Christmas pageant in which Dot plays Joseph, Celestine brings a jello salad full of old bolts and nuts, having labeled the pan “MARY” - this act of spite arises from Celestine’s dislike of the sliced radishes in Mary’s jello salads.

Who are these people? you may ask. But they make some penetrating observations. After leaving Celestine’s brother Russell, a scarred and decorated veteran who has suffered a stroke, Celestine asks,

“Everything that ever happened to him in his life,” she said, “all the things we said and did. Where did it go?”

            ...I [Mary] could not help drawing out Celestine’s strange idea in my mind. In my line of work I’ve seen thousands of brains that belonged to sheep, pork, steers. They were all gray lumps like ours. Where did everything go? What was really inside?... I felt the live thoughts hum inside of me, and I pictured tiny bees, insects made of blue electricity, in a colony so fragile that it would scatter at the slightest touch. I imagined a blow, like a mallet to the sheep, or a stroke, and I saw the whole swarm vibrating out.

            Who could stop them? Who could catch them in their hands?

Reading Erdrich’s books is a visceral experience - I find myself wanting to shout at characters, or their duplicity wrenches my guts, or the traumas they must endure spark tears in my eyes. Her feral imagination provides us with extreme examples of people we encounter, and helps us recognize the instincts that trap us.