Summary

Terese Marie Maillot opens Heart Berries by writing that her "story was maltreated" (3). In her words, "the words were too wrong and ugly to speak" (3). When she did try to speak them to a man, he thought "it was a hustle" and she "was silenced by charity" when he took her "shopping with his pity" (3). Terese kept her hand out but, instead of marrying "one of the men and sitting with my winnings," she took their money and went to school. Since then she has "gained the faculty to speak [her] story" but she also knows she has "given men too much" (3). She them stopped "answering men's questions or their calls" (3).

Terese's grandmother taught her about Jesus but when she died nobody noticed Terese. As she writes, "Indian girls can be forgotten so well they forget themselves" (4). Terese began to have nightmares which...