Steal the North: A Novel (3 page)

“Oh, fuck. Don’t start that again. Take off your pants. No, slower.”

I took off my pants quickly and threw them at him, as I had my shirt. He threw them both back at me a little too hard. Screw him. I walked to his window. I peeked out the curtains at the glittering water in his pool and tried not to cry. What if Mom’s sister had a miscarriage while I was there? Would my aunt blame me, especially if she found out I wasn’t a Christian, let alone a virgin? The closest I’d come to attending church had been last November, when I went to the giant Sikh parade in Yuba City with Harpreet’s family and saw the elaborate float with their holy book. I heard Connor sigh on his bed. Would Bethany be able to tell I wasn’t a virgin upon first glance? Connor bragged he knew I was a virgin when he first saw me. When he sighed again, I turned around. “I’d still be a virgin, you know,” I said, my voice shaking stupidly, “if it weren’t for you.”

“If you want, Emmy, I can stop touching you.”

“How could I go on?” I asked sarcastically. “Besides, you
don’t
touch me at school. You don’t even hold my hand.”

“I thought you were different from all the spoiled bitches at school. No? Maybe you just dress differently. Or your mommy dresses you differently.”

“Oh, I’m different. Not only have I never been to Disneyland, but I would
never
cut myself for you, like Alyssa.”

“Fuck you.”

“Don’t say that. I hate it when you say that to me.” I crawled onto his bed. “I’m sorry, Connor. Don’t get mean. Not today. I’m sorry.”

He told me to take off my bra and my “good girl panties,” and then we had sex. He was a little cruel, refusing to take my hand, then covering my eyes as he entered me. But he held me longer afterward. I loved to watch TV in his bed after sex. We didn’t have cable at our apartment. We had a TV on which I’d watched PBS as a kid. On the other channels Mom and I watched Bill Clinton be elected, then reelected. We watched images of the Gulf War, the L.A. riots, the Oklahoma City bombing, Bosnia—but never silly sitcoms. We watched movies on our VCR, mostly heavy or artsy dramas, but occasionally Mom let me rent popular movies.

“I’m going to miss you,” he said, but he sounded as if it were for good and he’d already resigned himself to it. “I’m going to miss how excited you get to watch the stupid fucking Disney Channel.”

“We’ll stay together, right?” The panic I’d been trying to keep at bay about leaving him, leaving Sacramento, even leaving my mom rushed over me, and I began to sob. It irritated Connor worse than soccer moms and golfing dads when chicks cried after sex. I only cried the first time we did it, but it was more out of anger at myself and embarrassment at the blood on his high-thread-count sheets. “You’ll wait for me, Connor, won’t you? Please, Connor.” Mom had said never to beg and never to tell a guy you love him first. I didn’t love Connor, but I could have—it was right there—if only he loved me the tiniest. “You’ll wait?” He held me closer, which I hoped meant yes. When I still couldn’t quit sobbing, he reached into his bedside table, where he kept his flavored and textured condoms and his collection of souvenir scrunchies and headbands (only two of which were mine).

“Here, take this.” It was one of his mom’s Vicodin pills. “It’ll help you chill.”

I stopped crying and sat up. “I don’t take drugs.” His mom probably did to put up with his unfaithful dad. Connor had told me stories. I got out of his bed. “I hate you.”

I expected him to remark, “How original.” Instead he said, “That’s too bad, Emmy. I could never hate you.” He rolled onto his stomach and buried his head under his numerous pillows.

Probably not, but that didn’t mean he loved me any more than he’d wait for me.

“Will you wait for me?” I had to ask one more time.

He didn’t reply, but at school the final week he held my hand every lunch recess in front of his friends, who smirked. We exchanged gifts in his bedroom our last afternoon. I gave him an amulet key chain with a Tibetan symbol—the umbrella, for protection from desire. I told him it was to protect him from suffering. He gave me two gifts. The first was a bottle of Vicodin. He said I’d need the pills up north living with Jesus freaks.

The second gift was a necklace with a diamond heart-shaped pendant (pretty suburban) that I put on immediately. I already knew what I would say to Mom when she asked who had given it to me. I would hesitate for effect and then stutter while telling her that Hedda, my only other lunchtime friend, bought it for me. I wanted Mom to wonder if a boy at school had really given the necklace to me and what I’d done with the boy (
everything, Mom
) to deserve diamonds. I promised Connor I’d wear the necklace the entire summer—not that he asked me to—but instead I wound up hocking it at the same dusty pawnshop surrounded by sagebrush where my mom had hocked her mother’s ring years ago. And so I entered their story.

Bethany

I used to park my car at the Greyhound station and wait for the buses. More people got on, I finally realized, than off. My sister wasn’t coming back, despite my prayers. Before Kate left, she’d let a truck driver at the highway café where she was working cut off her long hair, which I used to braid. She said he’d offered her “extra” for the souvenir. I understood what she meant, but after all these years I still can’t bear to think of it. In the direct sun, Kate’s brown hair glowed red underneath. My blond hair also catches the sun, Matt says. But he must see it doesn’t hold the rays as Kate’s did. Matt claims I’ve never gotten over the loss of my sister. He says it might’ve been easier on me if Kate had died like our mother because then I wouldn’t feel more betrayed every year that passes without her making contact. But Kate didn’t betray me. There’s more to her leaving than Matt knows. My husband always has an excuse for my behavior: to his parents, coworkers, the other deacons at church whose wives, especially recently, have complained that I take up too much of the new preacher’s time. Probably even in supplication does my husband offer up excuses for me.

I imagine Kate’s hair is what first attracted Jamie Kagen to her that summer at camp. There’s not a lot of sunshine west of the Cascades, but there’s a certain light, the kind right before a storm or right after, that also set Kate’s hair ablaze. Matt thinks Kate lost her faith after camp when Jamie shunned her, but faith was never easy for my sister. It kept her awake at night when we were kids. During the day she dragged it around, as she did the awful memories surrounding our mother’s death. Without my faith I couldn’t get out of bed after each miscarriage. I quit teaching Sunday school years ago. Not out of bitterness—I refuse to drink from that cup—but because of the deep longing the small hands of the children brought out in me. Not just longing for a child of my own but for my niece, Emmy, whom Matt and I cared for every day for seven months before Kate left town with her.

Kate
had
to leave Washington. In truth, I knew that before she did. But sisters can share a baby in such a way. It’s not that Emmy loved me more than her mom, but almost as much. After all, it was my voice that lulled her to sleep most nights and Matt or I who brought her warm bottles of milk. Poor Kate would see Jamie in Emmy. I tried to convince her that Emmy got her fair-colored hair from me. We’d nap sometimes, the three of us girls, all on one bed, the baby between. It hurt Kate’s feelings when Emmy reached for me first after opening her sleepy little eyes.

I suffered my first miscarriage soon after Kate and Emmy left.

Not wanting to replace Emmy so soon, I was almost relieved. She had this way of looking at me, of pausing in the middle of cooing or crying, and staring intently at me. Perhaps she sensed our time together would be cut bluntly short, like her mother’s hair, and she wanted to suspend it. My breath still catches when I remember those moments.

My second miscarriage was probably the hardest. It signaled the first wasn’t a fluke and that God had a different plan for me. I wasn’t to rush to the church nursery after service with the other young moms to collect my bundle and then show it off to the older ladies. I was to serve refreshments, straighten hymnals, rinse drops of grape juice from communion glasses as I rinsed the drops of blood from my sheets and the carpet. For a few years, at the special Mother’s Day service, having neither mother nor child, I handed out the corsages, until Matt put a stop to that, saying it broke his heart. He pleaded with me to see a doctor behind the church’s back. He’d take a day off work and drive me to Wenatchee or Spokane. He’s probably the only deacon who finds some of the church’s rules archaic, even barbaric. But we’re to put our trust in God, not man. Matt wasn’t raised in a Christian home. “God helps those who help themselves,” he persisted.

“I won’t go against the church.”

“You did before, Beth. We did. For Kate. For us. We did the right thing.”

I’ve never regretted what we did for Kate. And certainly I’ve never regretted marrying Matt, even if I was only sixteen and he only a year older. We were both ready. My father didn’t give his blessing, but neither did he try to prevent the marriage. The church chastised me for helping Kate, but my father never did. He continued to shun Kate until she left. He never met his only grandchild. For years he refused to talk about Kate. As time passed, however, he started to inquire, casually, then with concern, then desperation, if I’d heard from my sister and if I knew how the baby was doing. He died of a massive heart attack. One day he was alive—I phoned to tell him I’d finished his mending and that Matt had some venison for him—and the next day he was dead.

After my third miscarriage, Matt and I fought for weeks over his setting up a doctor’s appointment to get a vasectomy. It’s the only time we’ve truly quarreled. He even stayed home from church two Sundays in a row: the first to tie flies at the table, an activity he usually saves for winter evenings, and the second to fish with his new “backslidden flies.” That’s when I took up herbs to help myself. I make natural remedies from plants I grow in my own garden. For the most part, I do so without the church’s knowing the extent. I’ve been likened to a witch with potions. The new preacher, Brother Mathias—he likes us to call him brother, though he’s our shepherd—was so taken with my garden the first time he saw it that he entreated me to plant him a small herb garden between the church and the parsonage. As a single man who cooks his own meals, except when the church widows bring him casseroles, he can use the added flavor. “You’re no more a witch, Sister Bethany,” he declared when I disclosed to him the rumors, “than I am the devil.”

The first time Kate called our father the devil, she and I were alone in the backseat of the car. I was seven and scared. My memories of that evening are like a grainy snapshot. I remember it was Sunday and summertime. I remember foolishly thinking our family was going on a picnic, even though Mother hadn’t left the house for months. Women from church had been coming to feed her broth and to read her passages from the Bible. Suddenly the whole family was getting into the car. Father had to carry Mother because her feet curled inward. She moaned. It was hot, but he covered her with a quilt. Father said we were going to a lake, and he wouldn’t answer Kate when she asked which one.

He drove us north toward Grand Coulee Dam and its reservoirs. The highway followed the base of a giant basalt cliff. Terrified of large bodies of water as a kid, I knew the farther north we traveled, the deeper and colder the lakes got. Even when instructed to stay dry, Kate waded into any lake or stream. I was almost asleep when I felt the car slow and heard the crunch of gravel under the tires. I didn’t immediately recognize the lake. Then I saw the suds along the shoreline and the almost black mud. It was the Indian lake. The church forbade its members to swim in this mineral lake because Indians had supposedly cured their horses and warriors in it years ago. An Indian legend claimed that Coyote, the pagan animal chief and “creator,” had defecated in the lake—where had I heard that?—giving it restorative powers. Now white people came from across the state to soak in the soapy water or to smear the mud on their naked bodies and pray to the devil. I feared the worse.

Shutting off the engine, Father said, “We’ll wait in the car until the beach clears out.” There were about a dozen people around. One fat man in just a pair of shorts had mud smeared all over him. He smiled in our direction. “Unroll the windows back there,” Father instructed. But if I did, evil spirits would surely enter the car.

“I’m afraid,” I said.

“Of what?” Kate asked. She told me to unroll my window before I suffocated.

“The lake is evil.”

“A lake can’t be evil,” she said. “I’m getting out.” She started to open her door.

“Sit back, child,” Father said sternly. Then Mother, who’d been asleep, or just in a stupor, tried to say something but choked. She coughed violently, and Kate slipped out of the car, heading toward the swings and the twisty slide. Mother kept coughing and moaning and, I think, unless I remember wrong, begging for it all to be over. How I wanted to get out of the car and join Kate on the playground, not be so near Mother, whose face drooped and whose breath was stale. But terror pinned me in place. Kate swung high in the air, so high no evil spirit could snatch her. I remember a wooden sign hanging between two posts that read
HEALING WATERS
, swaying as the wind picked up and the ripples on the lake’s surface turned white. The spirits were churning it.

“I want to go home, Daddy,” I pleaded.

He spoke more gently to me when Kate wasn’t around. “Lie down and take a nap.”

Something about the inside of a car made me sleepy. So I did as he said, hoping when I woke back up, we’d be home. The sky was tinged pink when I sat bolt upright. Kate was beside me, but our parents were gone from the front seat. “Where are they?” I asked. Kate pointed to the beach, which was now deserted. The wind pushed the empty swings, and the sign squeaked. “Where’d they go?” I started to panic. I may have even screamed.

Kate explained that Father had taken Mother to soak in the lake, to try to heal her without the church elders. “We’re supposed to be praying,” she said.

“Dear Heavenly Father—”

“You pray. I’m going to go check on Mom.”

She started to get out of the car.

“No, Kate. No, Kate. Don’t leave me, Kate!”

I remember her pausing, as if trying to decide between Mother and me, and I remember feeling the whole of my life depended on her decision, and maybe it did in some ways. She shut the door behind her. I rolled up all the windows and locked the doors.

If only I’d been brave enough to follow her.

Whatever my sister saw, and she never told me, left her shaking with rage and revulsion when she got back into the car, hair dripping wet, mud smeared on her face and arms. “He’s the devil—the devil!”

Mother died a week later with traces of the black mud still under her fingernails.

I keep my fingernails clipped short and soak my hands in herbal tonic water. I tried to wear gloves when I first began gardening, but herbs are delicate, and I like to feel the different textures of the stems and leaves. My touch helps the plants grow. I started with just a few potted herbs I found in Kmart’s gardening section: lavender for calm and balance and rosemary for stimulation. Even the mighty King David pleaded,
“
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean
.”
I soon added chives, sage, mint, basil, oregano, thyme. Driving to out-of-town nurseries made me feel a little like the virtuous woman in Proverbs 31 who “bringeth her food from afar.” Chamomile for heart palpitations. Ginger for tiredness. Black cohosh. I ordered seed catalogs. Hyssop as a blood purifier. Sweet marjoram to ease menstruation. Nettles. Calendula. The list goes on. Afternoon sunlight is best for herbs this far north, but because eastern Washington gets so warm, I rotate my pots daily in the summer. There’s not a lot of space for a garden between lots in Quail Run Mobile Home Park. I have two raised beds and shelves of pots, plastic buckets, coffee cans. Matt built me a pea gravel walkway and bought me a small stone bench. Sometimes I pretend Kate, her hair glowing, sits on the bench and watches me garden. I think she’d be proud of my handiwork. Instead of Kate, the neighbor lady, an Indian from the Colville Reservation, stares at me through her curtainless kitchen window.

As a member of the church I’m not permitted to buy secular books or to check them out from the library, so my knowledge about herbs remains limited. I have to rely on intuition, which may not be a bad thing. Over the years I’ve managed to read a few pamphlet-size books while standing in grocery store checkout lanes:
The Power of Healing Herbs
and
Aromatherapy for Housewives
. I used to simply dry my herbs, hang them in bundles. I made lots of teas. Now I also make essential oils, which take a lot of time but are well worth it. Matt drove me to Spokane to buy a distiller and dozens of miniature glass bottles in amber and cobalt blue. Sunlight dispels the oil if it is stored in clear bottles. Our pantry is halfway full of my oils and apparatuses. Besides medicines, I make bath salts, face creams, hand lotions, massage oils, as well as teas and cooking spice packets. I sometimes give them as gifts to the ladies at church.

I haven’t yet been able to stop my miscarriages. The last time I conceived—it’s been awhile now—I didn’t tell Matt. When I lost the baby, I think he suspected. But he didn’t ask. I’ve never lied outright to my husband.

I hope I’m not being deceitful by meeting in confidence with Brother Mathias today in his office at church. I help at the church half a day on Tuesdays and all day on Fridays: cleaning, typing the weekly bulletins, organizing the missionary supply closet, gardening, running errands, anything that needs to be done. I fellowship plenty with Brother Mathias on these days. He even has me help choose hymns for services. Sometimes he asks me to play the hymns for him on the church piano. I prefer the Sunday school piano in the basement because it used to be my mother’s. After Father died, I loaned it to the church since there’s no room for a piano in our singlewide trailer. Brother Mathias insists I’m a better player than Sister Dorothy, who has slowed with age, and her unmarried daughter, who pounds the keys.