Love Medicine: The Good Tears Part 1 Summary & Analysis

People have never understood Lulu Lamartine. They often call her “a cat” and say she is incapable of loving anyone, but that isn’t true. Lulu is in love with everyone and everything. Lulu claims she is not cruel, nor is she “a shameless man-chaser,” and she doesn’t want people to forget how she has loved. Still, Lulu knows it isn’t exactly her behavior that has surprised people over the years; it is her absolute refusal to apologize or shed a single tear. It isn’t right for a woman not to cry, they say.

“I’m going to tell you about the men,” Lulu says, and the “handsome, distinguished man who burnt my house down.” Nector had burned Lulu’s house down not long after she married her third and final husband. Lulu’s head was burnt bald in the fire, and it was all Nector’s fault.

Nector was Lulu’s first love. She remembers meeting him behind the dance hall to kiss, and she remembers when she realized he was seeing someone else. After Nector took up with Marie, Lulu went to live with Moses Pillager, but when Moses refused to move off the island, she married “a riffraff Morrissey for hurt and spite.” When Lulu married the second time, she did so out of “fondness,” but she always made a point to avoid Nector.

Lulu’s second husband was Henry Lamartine, and he was killed when his car stalled on the train tracks. Of Lulu’s eight sons, not one of them was the “factual” child of Henry, but he had claimed them all the same. It has been 26 years since Lulu has lived in Henry Lamartine’s house. Henry had built the house on tribal land, and after he died, it was where Nector came to visit Lulu, slipping through the window late at night.

Although no one knows it, Lulu found a dead body in the woods when she was a child. She told no one about the dead body and returned the next day. The man still sat near her playhouse, and she removed his hat to make sure he was still dead. His eyes had clouded over, and Lulu put his hat back and went about cleaning her playhouse. It was late summer, about the time to leave for the government school. Lulu knew that some kids never came back from the school, and that is why she did what she did.

Lulu went to the dead body and pulled the old red scarf holding his pants up. The scarf fell to the ground and the man’s pants popped open. Startled, Lulu jumped back. Now, she has absolutely no idea what she saw, if anything, or how long she stayed with the body. Not long after, Lulu got on the bus to go to the government school and began to cry. She cried all the tears she would ever cry, and afterward, her eyes simply dried up.

Lulu has always been happy, but Nector has been the one exception to this general rule. Still, Lulu could not turn him away, and he spent five years sneaking in her window after Henry’s death. During this time, Lyman was born “half Kashpaw,” which is why he is so good with money, Lulu says. Soon, however, Nector proved to be a politician, and their love suffered.

Lulu has never believed in “human measurement,” and she doesn’t believe in “numbering God’s creatures.” She absolutely refuses to let United States census takers in the house, and she believes that the only reason the government counts Native Americans is so they know how many “to get rid of.” Because of this, Lulu immediately disliked the government surveyors who came to measure the land where Henry’s house sat. Henry never did buy the land officially because he didn’t care much for measuring either. Henry believed just as Lulu does: if you want to start measuring land, you must “measure right” and realize that every inch of it “belongs to the Indians.”

After Lulu received the eviction notice signed by Nector, he came to the house to talk to her. He claimed the eviction meant nothing and begged for her to let him in. He said the tribe was willing to move Lulu and the house, but she had refused to move. The Chippewas had already been moved from the other side of the Great Lakes, and she would not move one more inch west for anyone. She intended to stay right where she was. 

Soon after, Henry’s brother, Beverly, came to visit and claimed he wanted to get married. He had been waiting for Lulu for years, he said, and she believed him. She always had a soft spot for Beverly, and she thought he would make a fairly easy husband. Lulu told Nector when he came to visit that she was going to marry Beverly, and he looked at her with a coldness in his eyes that said he would kill both Lulu and Beverly if she did.

The tribe wanted to build a factory on the land where Henry’s house stood that manufactured “equipment of false value.” The factory was to make beaded bracelets and “plastic war clubs. Dreamstuff,” Lulu says, so she went to the tribal council to fight. When she got there, Nector formally recognized Lulu on the floor, allowing her to speak. “Mrs. Lamartine has the floor,” Nector had said, and Lulu heard someone remark that she also had half the men on it.

Lulu argued her case to the tribal council. Their tomahawk factory “mocked” them all, she said, and everything in it would be of “false value.” She said that the Lamartines have always lived on that land and her family deserved to stay. Lulu heard the crowd whispering about her sons and their different fathers. “Ain’t the youngest Nector’s?” someone asked. Lulu stood up straight and faced the council. She offered to name each of the fathers, right there in front of the entire council, and the men grew visibly nervous. Some had forgotten that Lulu even had their sons, but she hadn’t.

The council quickly decided to offer Lulu monetary restitution, and it wasn’t long after that her house burned to the ground. After the fire, Lulu had wished that Beverly had been there to stop it, but he was back in Minneapolis. Lulu had already married Beverly with her sons as witnesses, but after a week, Beverly told her that he already had a wife. She was furious and sent her son, Gerry, back to Minnesota with Beverly to make sure he got a divorce. Lulu had no idea who Beverly’s wife was, but Lulu was sure that she needed Beverly more than her.

Beverly and Gerry never did come back from Minnesota, and Lulu is pretty sure that Beverly somehow got Gerry thrown in jail. This thought, however, doesn’t upset Lulu too much. She knows that her son can never be confined to a cell for very long. Even though she can’t prove it, Lulu knows that Nector was the one to burn down her house because she could see it in his eyes.

On the day Nector burned down Lulu’s house, all the boys were gone except for Lyman, the youngest. Lulu had left Lyman in the house for just a moment and ran next door to trade some rice for cigarettes and eggs. She agreed to have a cup of coffee with her neighbor, and then she noticed the smoke billowing from the windows. Lulu ran into the flaming house, looking for Lyman, and finally found him hiding in a back closet. She got him out of the house and fell in the front yard, her hair singed and gone. The reservation’s fire truck was broken that day, although Lulu supposes “that was their plan.”

After the fire, people in town were kind to Lulu and even offered to take her in. She refused, however, and instead stayed on the land in a tiny shack made from tin siding. Each of Lulu’s boys stayed with her, and they lived there until the tribe built Lulu a new house on a better piece of land overlooking the entire town. “I accepted their restitution,” Lulu says.

When Lulu turned 65, she began to go blind. She was able to get a small apartment at the senior living complex, and her sons helped her move in. Lulu’s sons bought her some used furniture, and she bought some pictures to hang on the wall, including a copy of Plunge of the Brave.