Steal the North: A Novel (19 page)

How did Narcissa, born and raised in New York State, handle the bleakness of the land out west, especially after her only baby drowned? She adopted eleven children, mostly orphans from the Oregon Trail, trying to fill the emptiness.

“I can almost hear the falls in the wind,” Emmy says. “Can’t you, Aunt Beth?”

I get back in the car, but she stands there a long time by that marker, looking down at the river. Emmy belongs here, more even than I do, more than Kate. The Columbia scares me. It always has, and the wind close to the river is too harsh. Kate wanted to love the rivers and lakes of eastern Washington, even the rocks she used to collect, but Dad kept her back, and then the land for her became symbolic of Jamie. Emmy accepts the wind and the barren cliffs for what they are, and she finds beauty. She accepts me also. What more can a person ask from a niece, or even from a daughter?

On the drive home from the gorge the next day, I start to feel weary and heavy in my bones. I don’t say anything to Emmy, but I wish she knew how to drive. We stop for lunch at a café in Umatilla. Emmy likes the Russian olive trees that grow in dense strands here. To me they appear ancient and biblical. I sip coffee. The cook is Indian and looks more like Reuben the longer I stare at him. He brings out our plates because the waitress, who has Kate’s hair color and suddenly looks like Kate, is too busy flirting with a couple of cowboys in the corner booth.
Sister
,
is
that you?

“Are you okay?” Emmy asks.

I nod, sipping more coffee. I try to eat as much as I can so Emmy won’t worry and the baby will be nourished. The waitress touches my arm, inquiring a little too late how everything is and if I want her to box up my leftovers. I don’t remember my reply. Only her touch.
Kate?

Emmy smiles wide when we pull into Quail Run and see not only Matt’s truck but Reuben’s. She thought Reuben would still be in Omak with his mom or on the reservation chopping wood for the elderly. Matt and Reuben stand in the driveway talking about fishing, obviously, because Matt is pretending to cast. I missed him incredibly. Emmy notices Reuben’s black eye and busted lip before I do. Her eyes widen. But thank the Lord, no broken arm this time. He quickly comes to Emmy’s side of the car as Matt comes to mine. The kids hug. Emmy is worried. They walk to his truck, for privacy, I assume.

Matt hugs me tightly. “You look tired, darling. A long drive?”

“The wind got to me.” He helps me inside. “I just need a nap.” I get a drink of water and then head for the bedroom. Matt tucks me in. “Did Reuben say what happened to him?” I ask. I’ll prepare some herbs for him. Emmy has been telling me since she first got here that in California I could make money off my oils and herbs. But I can’t imagine I could. Only the missionary wives in service overseas, who occasionally visit our church to raise funds, show the least interest in my tonics.

“The kid assured me he isn’t in trouble,” Matt says. I think my husband is feeling a little fatherly toward Reuben. He’s fatherly with Emmy, but that makes more sense. Matt has blood nephews: his brother has a son, and his sister has two boys. Matt loves them dearly, but he thinks they’ve been given too much. They don’t need him. Maybe he thinks Reuben does.

The bed feels so nice. “Will you sit beside me, Matt, until I fall asleep?” I tell him to let me rest only a few hours. I sleep until the next morning. I dreamed all night of the river. Emmy made me eggs and potatoes and kept them warm in the oven. I’ve been teaching her to cook. She already knows how to bake all kinds of cakes, cookies, and muffins. She does charity bake sales at her school, which makes me so proud. I feel much better. By Friday I feel well enough to go into the church and help.

Brother Mathias is excited to see me. He tells me how much the congregation missed me. “It doesn’t feel the same without you, Sister.” He almost hugs me, but then gives me a lengthy handshake instead. “How are you feeling? And your lovely niece?” He invites me into his office, even shuts the door. But once inside, he seems to have forgotten what he was going to say to me.

I thank him again for the healing. He put everything on the line for me.

“It was the best evening of my life,” he says. “I should be thanking you for your belief in me.”

We sit in silence a few moments. He stares intently at me. I feel uncomfortable and levitated at the same time. He’s an attractive man, in a different way from my husband. I never believed Matt until after the healing that Brother Mathias has feelings for me. Which, in truth, is a tiny part of why I wanted to take the trips with Emmy: to get away from Mathias’s eyes. But are the feelings mutual at all? I don’t think so. I never intended.

“Eastern Washington is a desert,” he says. “All great men in the Bible did time in the desert.” I nod. He sometimes has a roundabout way of speaking. “I’m not a great man, but you have been like a balm to me in this desert.”

Does he mean my faith has been like a balm?

“I should get started on the bulletin,” I say.

“Stay five more minutes. You are a dear friend.” He puts his hand up to his heart. “And a deeply loved sister.”

His confession of love shakes me like a gust of wind from the river, but it doesn’t scare me. It saddens me, and I begin to weep. Have I in any way led him on? Led him astray? If so, I have wronged two men. “And you, Mathias, a dear brother.” I wish he were my real brother, my handsome younger brother that I could watch fondly and loop arms with occasionally and encourage to find a wife to soothe his loneliness. Wiping my eyes, I say, “I should go.”

“Stay, Bethany. Please. I’ll never ask again.”

I give him five minutes, or maybe ten. We don’t talk. He just looks at me, and I look at him, and then he bows his head in prayer. I pray too, and silently like him, with him.

The bleeding begins the following night. I wake to it.

I am sixteen weeks pregnant, further along than I’ve ever been, so the bleeding should feel heavier, but not this heavy. Matt’s hand slipped off my belly in sleep. In fact, he has his back to me, which is better, or he’d be sticky. The pain isn’t sharp. It’s a deep, dull ache. It presses me to the bed, and I feel it even in my teeth. I remember Kate’s teeth hurting while she was pregnant. My heart races, then slows. Races. My pulse has been unsteady for years, but nothing like this. I sit up and pull back my side of the covers. In the moonlight I can see the swath of blood.
When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee.
If I can just make it to the bathroom before Matt wakes up.
And through the rivers.
I find myself in the kitchen.
They shall not overflow thee.
I leave a trail, despite keeping my legs together to hold what remains of my baby inside me. I make a phone call to my minister, Brother Mathias. I whisper frantically into the receiver for him to pray for me because I have no prayers left. I hang up before he can reply. I need clary sage oil to calm me. I accidentally drop the first bottle. The moans start deep inside me, like the pain, and I can’t stop them. The second bottle I smash. I tear open my precious bags of different tea leaves and scatter them, but there is no wind in here, no breeze, no air at all.

Then I smash another jar and another and another.

How long has Matt been standing there? At first, his look is one of love and sorrow, then a shadow passes over his face. Fear? Terror? I cannot bear it. I will my vision to blur, but then I see Emmy to my left. Her eyes are wide, and she covers her mouth with both hands. Matt yells at her to stay back. He yells again. “Emmy, damn it, I said stay back!” Why would he tell her to stay away from me? He keeps trying to approach me, but I moan louder and won’t let him. He begs me to calm down and not to move or I’ll cut my feet. I feel so weak. Hours seem to pass, but of course it’s only minutes. My pulse slows. Years and years in this kitchen making oils and teas.

Finally I give up. I am done making a spectacle. Matt catches me.

I hear a siren, and men I don’t know strap me to a gurney. My heart races. They fit a mask tightly over my mouth and nose, and they carry me outside. I see Emmy with Reuben. She again tries to reach me, but he holds her close. May he always. Is that the minister? My brother? Did I summon him? I’m cold. Where is Kate? Bright lights temporarily blind me, and the siren deafens. I am all alone. No, Matt is here. Matthew is right beside me in the ambulance and talking to me, but I can’t hear him.
Speak up.
He holds my hand.
Don’t let go.
Don’t let me
go.
He brings my hand to his mouth and kisses it. That is how he first kissed me.
Do you remember, my love?
My sister wasn’t the only one to get her first kiss at camp that summer. Jamie talked Matt into taking my hand, even though it was against church policy. But the kiss was all Matt’s idea. And it wasn’t a shy peck on the back of my hand. He waited until we were alone before he opened my palm and pressed it to his lips for what seemed a full minute, and for what has lasted all these years.
I am sorry, Matt. You are more to me than seven sons.
I have one last prayer left in me, and it is not for a baby. I want to live for Matt.

For you alone, my only love
.

Reuben

I wake on the couch to the sound of a siren. It gets louder. Too loud. I sit up. Too close. Fuck, not next door. Please, no. I look out the blinds. Sure enough.
Fuck.
Emmy loves Beth so much. I get dressed as fast as I can. Twice I bump my busted lip. Fucking Benji. I’m not through with him yet. He slammed Emmy, so I punched his face. Then he got two hits on me. The bastard’s quick, like his brother, who used to cage fight before he killed himself. Benji’s last words to me were to tell my white bitch she could suck his cock again anytime. I’m going to bust more than his nose, but I have to wait until Ray’s not around to step between us. Teresa and the kids are in the front room. I’m trying to put on my shoes, but Emilio clings to my legs. Teresa pulls him off, tells me to hurry. I run outside, but then I don’t go into the aunt’s trailer. The door is open, the screen propped. I pace by the steps. The blood on Beth’s nightgown says it all when the EMTs carry her outside on the stretcher. Emmy rushes to me in hysterics, then tries returning to her aunt. I don’t let her. Matt asks the EMT for one second. “Take Emmy,” he tells me. “Don’t let her back in there.” He turns to Emmy. “Leave the mess.” I hold her close so she can’t get loose. “Don’t follow. You’ve seen enough.”

“Go home,” I say to the other neighbors, who have gathered around like fuckheads.

I put Emmy in the cab of my truck to wait, while I grab blankets from Teresa’s and some of my warmer clothes for Emmy to put on over her pajamas. We can take a drive and maybe even sleep somewhere in my truck. Anything to get her away from the scene. As I start to drive off, I realize the door to the Millers’ place is still wide open. I stop and get out. I run up the steps. I avoid looking inside as I reach for the knob. The smell of herbs is strong as in a shaman’s shack. As I walk down the steps, I notice a man standing in Beth’s garden. Why do trailer parks always have freaks? “Dude,” I say. “Show’s over.” When he turns around, he looks vaguely familiar. It’s the minister from the healing. He wears jeans instead of a suit. He mumbles something about Bethany, but I can’t make it out. He keeps studying his hands, then staggers off toward his car.

I drive fast toward the Columbia. It’s the first place I thought to take Emmy. She won’t move close or take the warm clothes I offer. She hugs the passenger door, leaning her head on the window. After a while she sits up abruptly, as if just remembering something, and tells me she’s been reading her mom’s old Bible at night. She says there are lots of verses about harlots underlined in her mom’s Bible. “As if just for me.” I don’t respond.
“‘
For a whore is a deep ditch
,
’” she says, barely taking in air before quoting another. “Thou hast polluted the land with thy whoredoms.
’
”

“Stop it, Emmy.” When did she leap from being a nonvirgin to a whore? I drive faster. No one is on the road. No white person knows the spot along the river where I’m taking Emmy, or at least none knows the legend associated with it, which is the same thing.

She quotes another verse about a girl playing the whore in her father’s house and how the men in the city stoned her.

“Quit saying stupid shit.” I raise my voice. “You’re smarter than that.”

“Smarter than to believe in the Bible?”

I can’t answer that.

We make it to the river. I park my truck. The moon is bright. “I’m sorry I yelled. Come here.” She doesn’t budge. She’s shivering. “It’s not your fault, you know.” She opens the truck door. “Wait.” But she doesn’t. She gets out and walks nearer the water. I follow right behind. She could easily fall down the bank. She’s wearing fucking flip-flops. Is that all people wear in California? “Be careful.” She’s in a daze, like the minister in the garden. I wonder what all she saw before the paramedics showed up. “Be careful,” I repeat. I shouldn’t have brought her here. The Columbia may not be as swift or cold as it once was, but it’s still dangerous. Even Coyote, who created the Columbia, was often rendered powerless by it. I can’t yell or she might slip. I can’t try to grab her for the same reason. She freezes when I warn her sternly in my native language. She looks at the river, then at her foot so close to the edge of the bank, then at me.

“None of this shit is your fault.” I cup her face. “It’s
not
your fault.” I tell her how pure she is, how good. I tell it to her over and over, but she just shakes her head. Frustrated, I say, “Fuck the word of God.” I know, not cool. And it only further upsets her. “Take
my
word instead, Emmy.” Then I whisper into her ear that she already took my heart.

She reaches up and kisses me so hard that it hurts my busted lip, but I’m glad of the pain. She kisses me again with urgency. Everything is about to change, and she’s terrified. What she needs from me at this moment I can’t give to her by just holding her like this. I spread the blankets in the bed of my truck. We lay facing each other for a few moments before touching. The wind blows all around us, through us. It smells like the river, and when she reaches for me, so does her skin. Her touch is painful, though not physically so. I almost pull back, but I won’t flinch again. As I move inside Emmy, it’s not just my body responding at a level it never has before. I slow and hold perfectly still for half a minute, and she does too. Part of my spirit settles into hers. Then again my body and my blood take over, and I make love to the only girl I ever will. I promise this to myself and to Emmy and to the river.

We return to Teresa’s at first light. Emmy is frantic for news about her aunt. Teresa left a note for me to wake her up as soon as we get back. She must have news. I leave Emmy on the couch and go into her bedroom. Teresa tells me Beth was airlifted from the Moses Lake hospital to a larger one in Spokane. Just as my dad—fuck,
fuck
—was transported to Spokane from the local hospital in Omak. Matt will call back around three to give an update.

“I’ll take Emmy to Spokane right now,” I say.

“No.” My sister sits up. “Matt doesn’t want Emmy seeing Beth until she stabilizes.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“He specifically asked that you
not
bring Emmy to the hospital just yet.”

“I don’t fucking agree.”

“He doesn’t think Emmy can handle it. We have to respect his wishes.”

“Says who?”

“Just wait a day or two, brother.” For now she tells me to bring Emmy into her room. We can have her bed, and she’ll sleep on the couch for a while.

Hours later Teresa sticks her head in the bedroom door. Emmy finally fell asleep. She was distraught, begging me to take her to Spokane, swearing if she knew how to drive, she’d take herself. I almost caved a dozen times. Teresa gestures for me to come into the kitchen. Her new washing machine is spinning. I like the sound.

“Hey, kid. We have to go clean that place.” She nods toward the Millers’ trailer. “I used a sick day at work and took the kids to Rosa’s.” Rosa is Emilio’s Mexican
tia.
She’ll watch Emilio for free but charges a fortune to keep the others. My sister points to a tub of cleaning supplies by the front door. She says an orderly from the hospital who has a crush on her brought them by. “They’re industrial strength.”

“Matt said not to go back in there,” I say. “I thought we
had
to respect his wishes.”

“Reuben Tonasket.” I rarely backtalk her for real. “How much blood was there? Did you see? We
can’t
leave blood.”

“There was a lot of blood.” It’s Emmy. She’s in the kitchen. “I’ll go clean it,” she says. She looks small in my sweatshirt, which completely covers her pajama shorts. Fuck, my heart.

“We’ll help,” Teresa says before I can. Emmy tries to protest, but my sister insists. “You both need to eat something small first. Sit down.” She makes us toast and strong coffee. Then we head next door. What a mess of blood and oils and herbs. The stench is sickening. Nurse Teresa takes charge. We open all the windows. I find garbage bags. Emmy looks faint, but she won’t let us clean without her. Neither will Teresa let Emmy go into the master bedroom. She and I go in there. I throw up twice in the back bathroom. We get the sheets off the bed. I make a run to the park Dumpster. The mattress is ruined. Matt will have to take it to the dump. In the meantime, we pour solvent on it. Matt will also need to pull up the bedroom carpet. We spend about three hours altogether. Emmy thanks Teresa numerous times, and then she hugs her. Surprisingly, or maybe not, my sister hugs her back.

“She-who-hugs-white-girls” will be my new name for her.

Emmy wants me to wait in the bathroom at her aunt’s while she takes a shower. After she starts the water, she asks me to close my eyes so she can get undressed and step behind the curtain. “Come in with me,” she says a minute later. “I’m scared.” The hot water feels so nice after scrubbing all that blood. I can’t quit staring at Emmy’s body, entirely naked as I’ve never seen it. Her breasts look fuller, but not her hips. We wash each other’s hair, though not playfully. The hot water runs out. We move to her bed.

I feel a little guilty afterward. Her uncle told me to take Emmy away from here, not to bring her back and have sex with her. He trusts me with Emmy. He has family in the area, but he chose me. I tell her to pack some things because she’s staying with me at Teresa’s. Before we leave the bedroom with her name in pink letters on the wall and a dozen paper birds floating above an empty crib, I suggest she shut off the praying hands night-light for safety.

She panics. “Beth leaves it on day and night. I can’t. Don’t make me.”

“I’m not going to make you.”

“Okay, Uncle Matt, but I
want
to see her. . . . Yes. I love you too. Can’t I
please
come today?
Please?
Reuben says he’ll bring me. . . . Okay. I understand. Tell her I love her. . . . No. I’ll try calling Mom too. . . . I just love you guys so much.” Emmy crumples on the kitchen floor after hanging up. Teresa is asleep in the kids’ room. She was going to organize it while they were away and she was still in the cleaning mood, but then she fell asleep on Grace and Audrey’s bed.

I sit on the floor beside Emmy and rub her back until she gets control.

“Aunt Beth’s in a coma from hemorrhaging,” she finally says.
Fuck.
“Uncle Matt said the coma, for now, is her body’s defense. Do you believe him?” I nod. “I miss her.”

I take Emmy back into Teresa’s room. She sobs in my arms. I feel undone, already, and things are only going to get worse. I need Virgil’s sweat lodge. I need to drum. I need to see certain views on the reservation. I need to show them to Emmy. What if I never get the chance?

“I don’t want to call my mom,” Emmy says. Her mom is in Europe with her boyfriend. Emmy likes her mom’s boyfriend, a lot. I try not to be jealous of her fondness for him or to be annoyed by how many times she’s told me she wants her mom to marry him. “I don’t want Mom to come here,” she says now, “but I’ll hate her if she doesn’t. I already hate her.”

I can’t picture Emmy’s mom in this trailer park, or by the lake, or anywhere in eastern Washington. I can’t picture her period.

“You’ll hate her too after you meet her. She’s so different from her sister. And she did this to Aunt Beth. She broke her sister’s heart when she left here with me.”

Damn. I am going to hate Emmy’s mom because she’s going to leave here again with Emmy. I know it. I have to think of a way to keep her.

“Will you take me to Spokane the day after tomorrow?” she asks. I nod. “Matt wants me to wait until then, which I think is kind of bull. But he sounded so sad.”

It’s total bull the way adults don’t want kids to see their relatives—all fucked up or not—in the hospital. I argued to stay every minute with my dad, but my bossy aunts and even bossier sister claimed it was better for me to remember my dad the way he was before the accident. Bullshit. Then why did I hold Emmy back from her aunt all bloody on the stretcher?

“I have plenty of money for gas,” she adds.

“I have money, Emmy.” Though not much. Not enough.

She falls silent. I think she sleeps, so I close my eyes.

When I wake up, she isn’t beside me. I linger in Teresa’s bed for just a minute before getting up to find Emmy. I slept with Teresa for weeks after Dad died. I had such a hard time keeping it together. Finally a medicine man was called.

Neither Teresa nor Emmy is in the trailer. Teresa’s van is gone. Is Emmy next door? I go over. I knock, but no one answers. I enter and call her name. I hear a sound from the master bedroom. “Emmy?” She doesn’t answer, so I go in there, even though I really don’t want to. Emmy is standing in the middle of the room, staring wide-eyed at the stained mattress and floor.

“Help me,” she chokes. “I can’t look away.”

I grab her arm. “We’re leaving here. I’m taking you to Omak.” She needs to get away from this trailer park. And Omak isn’t that much farther from Spokane than here.

Teresa talks me into waiting until the morning to leave for Omak. Emmy tries to call her mom’s hotel in Paris, but the room line just rings. The second time she calls, she speaks to the manager—in French, for fuck’s sake. I had no idea she spoke French.