Steal the North: A Novel (25 page)

He turned the night-light back on. “I’m sure they do.”

“Do
you
love Beth?”

He looked tired. “I barely knew—know her.”

“Lena barely knows me, and she told me three times that she loves me.”

He grinned.

After lunch, Reuben drove me to the library to look through herb gardening books. I wanted to save Aunt Beth’s garden. Mom was on her way from Europe. I still hadn’t talked to her. Uncle Matt said Spencer was bringing her. They’d be here the day after tomorrow, which was as soon as they could get connecting flights. Once I was seated at a library table with gardening books, Reuben walked off to check out the enlarged photo of Chief Moses hanging on the wall. I saw one of the librarians hurry over to him. He’d told me just yesterday that most people liked Indians in theory—in libraries, in history books—but not in practice. Mom said the same thing about educated people and communism: they liked it in theory but couldn’t fathom it in practice. I’d grown up watching the triumphant collapse of communism on the news, but it seemed to go hand in hand with cities being gutted in Eastern Europe and kids dodging snipers—completely confusing to me. Parts of Reuben’s reservation looked as poor as Sarajevo.

He came back with a book. Sitting down, he whispered, “Librarian Deb recommended I check this out.” He handed it to me. It was a book of Northwest Indian tales, but it had a picture of Raven, not Coyote, on the front. “Recently compiled,” he said. “White people, I swear.”

“You don’t mean me, of course.”

“Of course I mean you,” he joked.

“What do you want to study in college?” I was tired of avoiding the subject.

“Fish biology. I want to help bring salmon back to the rivers on the rez.”

“That’s awesome. Seriously, Reuben. And I believe in you with all my heart.” I had to get that out in case we went mum again on the subject of college.

He looked away for a moment. I probably embarrassed him. “What about you?” He turned back. “What do you want to study?”

“I just want to be a teacher.”

“Why do you say
just
?”

“Mom’s already talking PhD. She thinks I should be a college professor. But I mean teach little kids.”

“I like that.” He smiled. “Miss Emmy.”

I told him he should go see if the library had any books on fish or ecology. “We can study, like we’re in college.”

“You’re kind of a nerd.” He stood up. “It’s kind of a turn-on.”

While he was gone, I came across a warning list of herbs that shouldn’t be used during pregnancy, especially not brewed as teas, which “concentrated the chemicals.” Many herbs used by nonpregnant women to regulate periods actually stimulated the uterus and caused miscarriage. What the fuck? Even rosemary, not as a spice, but as a tea. Blue cohosh could induce labor. Black cohosh ripened the cervix. The list went on. I returned to the gardening section and found a book on medicinal herbs. Same warnings. I had to sit down on the step stool.
Oh, Aunt Beth.
Even the chamomile we drank together before bed.
She didn’t know. She was hurting herself, and she didn’t know.

Fuck the church. Fuck God. Mom was right: this place sucked. If Aunt Beth could’ve just come here and checked out even one book. How could a library be off-limits? That seemed like communism. Knowledge? The Tree of Knowledge? Beth was naive and trusting. And ignorant. Not stupid. My English teacher mom had explained the difference to me many times. How could a doctor be off-limits? How could a book be evil that warned you not to stimulate your uterus if you wanted a baby more than anything in the world?

I stood up, too pissed off for tears. I wanted to call the hospital right away and tell Uncle Matt. I found Reuben back at our table with ecology books. My hands shook with anger.

“Jesus, Emmy, what is it?” he whispered.

“Beth’s been misusing herbs.” I sat down beside him. The next sentence was almost too painful to say out loud. “She’s been causing or, at least, abetting her own miscarriages.” I explained in more detail, showing him the warnings in the books.

“Jesus. I’m sorry, Emmy.” His eyes looked watery. Not mine.

“Let’s go.” I shoved the books away from us. “I need to call Matt at the hospital.”

During the drive back to the trailer park, I sat stewing. “People here—white people—are so ignorant. Not in California.”

“That’s not really fair,” he said.

I knew it wasn’t. I was just so pissed. “Why do you defend them?”

“I don’t. I think there’s ignorance everywhere.”

“Yeah, but it abounds here.”

“It abounds in that church.” He was right. “Do you hate it here? Not enough intellectual stimulation?”

“It’s been the most stimulating summer of my life.”

We pulled into Quail Run Mobile Home Park. We both stared at Aunt Beth’s garden.

“Hey,” he said, then hesitated. “Don’t tell Matt about the herbs, not yet.”

“What? I
have
to.”

“If—when Beth recovers, then you can tell Matt so he can make sure his wife doesn’t take the wrong herbs again. For now, though, don’t say anything.”

“Why?”

“I’m sure your uncle is already feeling a lot of guilt. At the healing, he—”

“What do you mean
at the healing
? Were you there?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It certainly does.” I got goose bumps. “Were you there?”

“I saw that preacher put his hands on your aunt. Matt wanted to kick his ass.”

I couldn’t believe Reuben had been at the park that day. He’d been so watchful of me all summer. “Fine,” I said. “You’re right. I’ll wait to tell Matt.”

We sat quietly for a few minutes in his truck. Then I moved close to him, needing to feel the weight of his body beside me. How could he have been at the healing without my noticing? It reminded me again how just three months ago I could’ve passed right by him on the street and possibly felt no connection. I scooted even closer. Still not enough. I needed to feel him
in
me. Teresa was gone. I reached up my skirt and carefully took off my underwear. He didn’t protest, even though a neighbor was out a few trailers down. Then I took his hand and slid it slowly up my skirt as I parted my legs just enough. “Hold your hand still,” I told him. “I’ll move.”

We migrated inside—to the couch, where Reuben tasted me, the bedroom, where he undressed me and I took him into my mouth, to the couch again, where he tried to just hold me until I reminded him that I’d left my underwear in his truck. He took me back to bed one more time before Teresa and the kids got home. We were young. Our bodies told us we were, no matter how heavy our thoughts.

Aunt Beth died the next day while I was outside working in her garden. The heat was oppressive. For the first time since I’d been in eastern Washington, no breeze lifted my bangs. Teresa’s chimes were silent. I’d already pulled up a few dried plants and trimmed back the leaves and stems on others. I’d left the door and windows open (and the air conditioning off) so I could hear the phone. Reuben was at the med clinic with Kevin. The other kids were at some babysitter’s house. Uncle Matt sounded so far away that I knew he wasn’t just calling to give an update. “She fought hard, sweetie,” he said. “But she passed peacefully.”

How had she fought hard? Just lying there? And fuck Matt for making me leave Spokane.
Fuck you, Mom, for not making it on time.
Mom’s voice and touch might have snapped Aunt Beth out of her coma, at least briefly. If I’d had a sister, I would’ve never left her.

I went into my bedroom and shut off the night-light. I cut the threads holding up the origami birds. They fell without a sound or a flutter into the crib, just as Aunt Beth had slid silently into death in that hospital room. I went back outside. I felt totally removed from myself. I watched my hands prune. I accidentally pulled up a plant. The roots came right out. I pulled up another and another. I tugged. I got the spade and dug. I’d dug up more than half of Aunt Beth’s garden before I realized what I’d done. Ashamed and drenched with sweat, I saw myself lie flat down on my belly in the grass, in a patch of shade. I wouldn’t get up for Reuben when he returned, no matter how tender, frustrated, mad he got. Finally he went inside and called Teresa, though I didn’t know until I heard her clunky van pull into the driveway.

“Take Kevin and leave,” Teresa said to Reuben. “I called Roxanne to bring Nelly.” Reuben tried to protest, but she held firm. “No men.”

“Let me help you get her into the house, at least.”

“Leave her alone, brother. She’s in shock.” He asked her if the ritual would work on white people. “It’s not going to work,” Teresa said, “if
you
keep staying here.”

Teresa waited until Reuben’s truck pulled away. Then she said something to me in the same language Reuben had spoken to me. I saw her help me off the grass. We went inside her trailer, where it was cool. Another Indian woman, about Teresa’s age, showed up and that old, old lady who’d been at Teresa’s before. She was older than Reuben’s great-aunt Shirley. They didn’t speak English as they washed me, then performed the ritual or the prayer or whatever it was. I smelled herbs, and there was smoke. They slowly circled me until I had memories of things I didn’t remember: my grandmother in a lake, my mother standing by a muddy waterfall, Aunt Beth holding me as a baby. Suddenly I was with Beth by the Columbia. The wind was fierce, but I could hear her voice because it was inside me. I don’t remember what she said.

I woke up in Teresa’s bed. The house was still. It was half past eight in the evening. I needed to find Reuben so he could tell Teresa to come home with her kids. I couldn’t take over their house and lives. Teresa had now done two unforgettable things for me, though I still didn’t think she liked me. She’d really done them for Reuben. I opened the front door. He was right there. He’d probably been waiting on the porch since Teresa and those other women left. Of course he had.
Reuben.
I looked at him through the ripped screen. It was almost dark. The wind had returned. Aunt Beth was gone from this earth. Mom would be here tomorrow. I went to him. His chest heaved, as Matt’s had in the hospital, only more than once as I sobbed against him.

We walked around to the back steps to sit. The wind was warm, like on the evening of the healing. Reuben said Teresa and the kids had left for the night. He kept rubbing my back, touching my face. I assured him I was doing better.

“I feel your mom getting close,” he said.

“She can’t make me leave.”

“She can, Emmy, especially now.”

“You don’t let your mom boss you around.”

“I do more during the school year.”

I lit a cigarette, or tried to in the wind. “If she called you right now and told you to come home tonight, would you?”

“Yes, if she really needed me.” He lit the cigarette for me. “Or if Lena did. Sure.”

“If she said you
had
to live in the apartment with her and Harold, would you?”

“Fuck, no,” Reuben said. “But I have lots of relatives I could live with. You don’t.”

“I have Uncle Matt. I can live with him. He’d let me. I can replant Aunt Beth’s garden. You can move in with Teresa. We can go to high school together.” I smiled, hugging his arm. “Every morning in your truck.”

“I’d love nothing more.” But when I looked up at his face, he wasn’t smiling. “Matt may not want to stick around,” Reuben said. “He may take off. I sure as hell would.”

“He’d stay for me.”

“He would.” Reuben squeezed my knee. “And so would I.”

“Mom can’t make me leave,” I insisted, though legally I knew she probably could, especially without my dad to intercede. Then it came to me. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Probably because it was kind of preposterous. More preposterous, even, than asking Jamie for help. But I was desperate. “Come inside.” I took Reuben into Teresa’s bedroom.

“I’m not in the mood,” he said as politely as possible.

“Lie beside me, is all.” I hesitated, trying to muster the courage and to not sound trashy. “Get me pregnant, Reuben. We’ve been so careful all summer.” He looked instantly pained. “Hear me out. Mom can’t make me leave—or she can’t make me stay away if I’m pregnant with your baby.”

He rolled onto his back, putting his arm on his forehead to block his face. He lay there like that so long, I thought maybe he’d fallen asleep.

He jumped when I touched him lightly and said his name. He got out of bed. “Can you give me a little time? I need to take a drive—alone.” He looked frightened. “I’ll be back.” He absolutely wouldn’t make eye contact. “Will you be okay? I’m really sorry about your aunt.” I tried to go to him, but he backed away. I tried to speak. “Don’t say anything more, Emmy. Not yet. Will you be okay? Don’t leave.”

Where
exactly was I going to go?

He walked past me without giving me a hug good-bye. I heard his truck start. It wasn’t quite ten. I knew he was going to the reservation, and it would be hours. I pictured him driving through the scablands, past Coulee Dam, or maybe he knew another way or a back way. He liked to brag that Indians knew pathways that whites didn’t. If only I’d had my license, then at least I could’ve driven Beth’s car to the lake. Instead I cleaned the kitchen, even inside the fridge. I scrubbed both bathrooms. I did tons of laundry. I liked washing Reuben’s and my clothes together. We’d find a way to make it with a baby—through high school, even college. We’d manage. Mom had.

Reuben looked exhausted when he finally returned at 4:00
A.M.
But he also seemed sure of something. I was sitting on the couch, sleepily folding laundry and thinking about how if I had a baby girl, I’d name her Beth. “Don’t get up,” he said. He came to me. He put all the laundry back into the basket, the folded and the unfolded, and moved it out of the way. He sat beside me. “Listen, Emmy. I love you more than I love anyone—my dad, Teresa.” I started to speak. “Wait. And because of that, I can’t—I
won’t
get you pregnant at sixteen.”

“I’ll be seventeen in a few weeks. Please, Reuben. You promised to do everything you could to keep me.”

“I won’t do this. No way. My mom. Your mom. Teresa. We can do better for ourselves. We’re smarter.”