“WSU,” I say. “If I can get in.”
Emmy chokes on her bite. “That’s my dad’s school.”
I didn’t even know she had a dad. Neither of us has a pappy. I mean, obviously, I knew there was a man at conception. But she’s never said a word to me about him. Her aunt and uncle look just as surprised as I do at the casual mention of her dad. Nobody says anything.
Emmy looks nervous but determined. “Mom said he went there.” She takes a drink. “But Mom told me a lot of lies. Did he go there, Uncle Matt?”
“Sure, honey,” Matt says. “I believe he got his degree in ag science.”
Beth takes Emmy’s hand across the table. “If he had known you, he would’ve loved you,” she says.
“He knew Mom and didn’t love her.”
“He loved her,” Beth says. “But not enough.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Real love involves risks or loss. Look at how God gave up his only son.”
“Mom wasn’t good enough for him.”
“Maybe she was too good.”
The two of them. I didn’t know Emmy had become so close to her aunt.
“Whatever,” Emmy says. “Mom didn’t need him. She did fine without him. Screw him.”
I’m surprised she said that in front of her aunt. I hope Beth doesn’t correct her.
“Kate has done a great job with you. I am so proud of her.” Emmy is taking a deep breath so she won’t cry. “Do you miss your mom?”
“No.” She gets control. “I mean, a little.” She looks at me, then Matt, then back at her aunt. “But I like it here better.” She looks at me. “Way better.”
She has us all three a bit teary eyed. But I think the “way better” part worries her aunt, who catches my eye briefly.
Matt changes the subject again and gets us laughing. It’s time to go. I want Emmy to drive back with me. But when we stand up, she goes to her aunt. They hug.
“You kids, take a drive or something,” Matt says, shaking my hand in the parking lot. “We’ll see you after a while.”
“You could’ve ridden with her,” I say to Emmy after we get into my truck. “You really love her, don’t you?”
“Does it seem strange to love someone so quickly?”
“No, Emmy.” No way, Emmy. I start my truck. Does she love me? She told me her mom warned her not to say it to a guy first, but that’s not necessarily a confession of love, and she was high. I drive through town, past irrigation supply yards, the bowling alley, the Salvation Army, the feed store, taverns, churches, a tackle shop, fast food.
“Aunt Beth doesn’t really know me, though,” Emmy says. “She thinks I’m pure.”
“You are.”
“I wish I was.” She sighs. “For her, and for the baby, and maybe even for God. If he exists.” I feel her eyes on me. “Do you think he exists?”
Does she mean just the Christian God? Shit. Or all higher powers? “I’m no atheist.”
“I’d planned to become a Christian today at church.” She laughs. “Isn’t that crazy?”
“No.”
“I don’t mean it’s crazy to be a Christian.” She pauses. “But maybe it’s more innate—not really a choice. Like being left-handed or even gay. What do you think, Reuben?”
“I couldn’t say.” I keep my eyes on the road.
“But—” She’s struggling. “Aren’t notions of purity in all faiths? In yours?”
I’m a sweat lodge junkie, as was my dad. She’s obviously confused. Why else would she have dressed up like a Baptist and then like a hooker in the same day, same hour. Who wouldn’t be confused, I guess, in her position? I can’t give her spiritual answers, but I can give her some space. “Listen, Emmy. We don’t have to touch.” I hate the sound of that, as if it were a dirty thing.
“Can I still hold your hand?”
“You don’t have to ask.”
When she takes my hand, there’s a tiny paper frog in hers. I put it on the dashboard, and she names it Darwin.
We go a week this way, barely touching. We don’t kiss or even hug. We hold hands or she leans her head on my shoulder. That’s it. On the Fourth of July, she goes fishing with her aunt and uncle in the morning, but in the evening they let me take her to the lake to watch the city fireworks. Even then we don’t kiss. She keeps squeezing my hand as we sit close together on a blanket. She’s hot and rolls up her shorts. Her bare thighs and her painted toenails drive me nuts. Not to mention the way she relishes the Rainier cherries I brought her and even feeds me a few. We study together for our SATs, now that she’s persuaded me to retake them in the fall. She has flash cards, for Christ sake, and Christ, she’s really smart. Probably the most academically smart person I’ve ever known. I’d like to see her bra again—the whole thing, like before, not just peeks when we play doctor with the kids. She paints with my nieces and nephews, colors, and does origami. It’s Japanese, I learn, and way complex. She praises everything they do but dislikes her own stuff. Grace hesitates to share her native crafts, beads, and feathers with Emmy, but Emmy doesn’t get offended. I do. Also, when Emmy braids Audrey’s hair like a white girl’s, Grace tries to undo it after Emmy leaves, which makes Audrey cry. Emmy helps me make Hamburger Helper, claiming she’s never had it but digs it. She likes the smoked salmon some Klickitat dude who fishes way down by The Dalles—and who isn’t Grace’s dad—leaves on the porch for Teresa. She tries to like the venison her aunt makes but cares only for the summer sausage and pepper sticks. Health care workers on the rez push native kids to eat deer and elk burgers rather than fast-food burgers, gas station nachos, and casino burritos. Emmy does a tarot card reading on my nieces and nephews from a deck called Healing with the Fairies. Grace and Audrey are equally ecstatic. Emmy attempts to do a reading on me, but I can’t stop grinning about getting advice from the fairy kingdom. Plus she smells so damn sweet. She switches to a deck called Zen. I’m advised that unless I drop my personality, I won’t be able to find my individuality.
“Indians don’t believe in individuality,” I say with true Hollywood-style Indian stoicism. “Only tribal personality.” She quickly apologizes. “I’m joking. Relax.”
We take Grace and Kevin to the park to shoot hoops. Grace is good, really good actually, great ball control, but Emmy in her BERKELEY T-shirt sucks. She decides just to watch and to cheer the loudest for Grace. Emmy and I take drives almost daily, short ones because she feels guilty—about what?—and I’m running out of gas money. We drive past endless potato fields. The plants are flowering, and she likes the purple and yellow flowers: same colors, ironically, as the camas my people used to dig here. We drive along canals and spillways until finally I can’t stand it any longer and drive her to the Columbia by Vantage and Wanapum. There’s no real shore for us to stand on, thanks to the fucking dams that have widened and deepened the river, making it less accessible. It leaves her speechless nonetheless. The wind this near the river whips her hair. She lets me take her into my arms to block some of the force. When I warn her to watch out for rattlers in the sage, she cuddles closer. On the drive home, I tell her the story of how Rattlesnake killed Salmon, who used to live in the cliffs, because he envied Salmon’s beautiful wife. She was made a slave. When Salmon was brought back to life by Mouse, he slew Rattlesnake and freed his wife. He then took his wife to a new home under the great falls where they’d both be safe from the Land People.
I go to church with Emmy the next Sunday. On Tuesday, when her aunt leaves to clean the church, Emmy comes over to watch TV with me and the kids. I expect her to sit next to me on the couch, but not too close, and to take my hand. Instead she sits on my lap. She doesn’t straddle me. She sits on my lap as a kid might, sidesaddle. She leans her head on my chest and drapes one arm around my neck. Something is wrong. She seems languid: her mood and her body. She’s usually a bit tense. The letting go is incredibl
y sexy. We watch TV, or I do, with the kids, though fuck if I know which program: Barney? Murder, She Wrote? Can You Believe This Price on HSN? Emmy begins kissing my neck, so softly at first that I’m not sure. Then I’m absolutely certain. “I can’t be good,” she whispers in my ear. I don’t even respond. I hate that Christian bullshit. She sleeps or I think she does because she feels so slack. I could sit here all day this way. “Touch me,” she whispers next. I am touching her. I have an arm around her waist and a hand rubbing her bare knee. “Touch me, Reuben.” I tell her I am. “In places you haven’t before. I can’t stop thinking about you touching me.”
“Outside, kids.” I gently push Emmy off me to get the kids out the door. “Don’t argue. Two bucks each, and five for you, Grace.” Then I’m broke. “Give me an hour. Drink from the hose. You won’t die. Two bucks each on candy at the store in one hour.”
I return to Emmy, stretched on the couch. I don’t even know where to begin. With a kiss, always, and then another. I’m on top of her, she’s on top of me. I can’t get enough of her mouth on mine, her breath, her smell, her taste. “Emmy.” I reach up her shirt and unhook her bra. Her back arches and I slide my hand lower to her ass. Finally I touch her between her legs. I’ve touched other girls there before, but never one that I love. The intensity is not comparable to anything. When her body trembles, so does my being. “Emmy.” She touches me too, but even it’s not the same. We don’t have sex. We don’t need to, yet. I want to tell her I love her. But I don’t want her to think it’s just because she’s let me touch her in places I haven’t before. In places I could spend the rest of my life trying to get back to.
* * *
Her aunt is taking her on the first of three short trips. They’re leaving on Monday for a few days. “Beth’s so excited,” Emmy tells me. Her aunt and uncle are gone, and it’s just us. We sit on the garden bench for old times’ sake. She’s even wearing her floppy hat. She says her aunt never goes on trips, but she’s been feeling so well since the healing and has all this energy. “We’ve been studying the map with Uncle Matt. My eyes keep going up north to your reservation.”
“Don’t go there.” It’s not a tourist attraction. “I mean without me. I’ll take you.”
“I don’t want to leave you. Will you wait for me?”
“Do you really have to ask that? Hold on, what do you even mean?”
“I mean,” she says, taking off her hat, “will you see other girls while I’m gone?”
“Fuck, Emmy. Really?” I stand up. After the way we touched the other day on the couch? Did she not feel anything? “You don’t trust me very much.”
“I wish you were taking me instead of—”
I don’t let her finish. I bend down and kiss her to silence her. She may regret what she was about to say. Her aunt doesn’t look well. Having never been around her before, Emmy wouldn’t know this. I know the look because I see it on the rez with Indians who refuse to go to the doctor, like Emmy’s aunt, or who refuse meds for their diabetes, or who can’t get to the doctor or pay the co-pays when Indian Health can’t fix them. “Please go with your aunt,” I say. “Have fun.” I sit back down on the bench. I tell her I plan on going to Omak and the rez for a few days or a week to chop some more wood and to check on my mom. I also plan to hunt as often as I can, but I don’t tell her that. Buck season on the rez has already begun. I assure her I’ll be back and I’ll be faithful. “I’ve been wanting to tell you something,” I say. “I’ve never said this to a girl before.” I’m nervous as hell. “After I say it, you have to trust me.”
Because it is just for her to hear, I whisper it into her ear.
“I love you more,” she says, but out loud, into the wind. I shake my head.
She stands up, dropping her hat, and starts pacing.
“Hey,” I say. “What’s the matter?”
“What if my aunt and uncle had never found Mom’s number? What if I’d spent this summer alone in mine and Mom’s apartment? Or in Connor’s bedroom, where he likes me to do weird things to him and he makes fun of me for not wearing thongs?”
I stand up at that one. What weird things? But I can’t get mad. I’ve had sex with other girls—not kinky sex, but sex. And why would he give a fuck what type of underwear she wears? I loved Emmy’s underwear the other day. In fact, I haven’t stopped thinking about them.
“What if I’d never met Aunt Beth, like I’ve never met my dad?” Snot starts to pour from her nose. She wipes it. “What if you hadn’t come over to say hi to me? I would’ve never been brave enough to go over and talk to you. Do you know that?” She’s freaking out. “Do you ever think about that? What if you would’ve stayed in Omak this summer? It’s practically in Canada. Do you think about that? Do you, Reuben?”
I grab her. “I would’ve found you.”
“You would have? How? How do you know? You don’t know.”
“I would have found you.”
* * *
Was I lost before Emmy? I don’t think so. I avoid drugs and alcohol and stay on the path. What path? The peace path? The war path? The in-between path, like Chief Moses? He wore out many ponies traveling between cavalry camps and tribal councils. The I’m-forced-to-give-all-my-land-away-despite-riding-the-iron-horse-all-the-way-to-D.C.-twice-to-beg-for-my-people path? The any-path-but-my-dad’s path? The I-want-to-leave-the-reservation-and-go-to-college path? The I-learn-just-enough-from-the-elders path? The I-play-football-like-a-white-boy path? The-I-won’t-put-on-a-feathered-headpiece-and-dance- in-the-cafeteria-one-period-a-day path? The paved path? The fucking BIA’s bullshit fill-out-another-form-and-then-wait-in-another-line path? The path between the white man’s ways and the native way. The Okanogan River divides the Indian side of Omak from the nonrez side. On one side of this river, white boys wrestle bulls. On the other, Indian boys ride horses down a cliff. I safely watch from my stadium seat. As kids Ray and I used to run down Suicide Hill barefoot, but that doesn’t count. On the phone this morning Mom said we need to talk. She wants me to come back for the rest of the summer. I didn’t tell Emmy. It can mean only one thing: she’s drinking heavily because her latest man is threatening to dump her. The some-fucking-loser-fucks-over-my-mom-again-and-I-have-to-fucking-clean-up-the-mess- because-my-dad-is-a-sorry-example-of-Coyote path?
I didn’t just find Emmy. She also found me. I’d been hunting for days in the woods, feeling strong and agile, despite the jumble of paths, and trying to ignore the way my legs and shoulders had begun to ache a little in the cold and my belly had begun to feel empty. I was trying to fill the freezers of the old people, not realizing my own hunger until Emmy stepped into the clearing.
10
Bethany
I defer to Matt’s judgment about Emmy and the neighbor boy. I trust Matt completely. I trust Emmy also. I feel such a calm when I am with her, and I marvel at her every move as if she were still an infant. But I worry because she is so young, and both Kate and I fell hard for our first boyfriends. Before Emmy arrived, I feared she’d be all grown up, but she’s not, and she’s not hardened or edgy like a city kid. Kate has kept her close under her wing, as I made my sister promise to do when she left here. A few nights before the healing, Emmy asked me to sing to her when I tucked her into bed. She seemed sad. I usually go to sleep hours before she does, but I like to get her settled first with a book and a cup of chamomile tea. Singing to Emmy erased years of sorrow from my heart.
I trust Reuben also, or I am trying to. Matt swears he’s a good kid. And he’s right that we’ve seen the boy grow up over the last five years or so that Teresa has lived next door. It used to endear me to Reuben—not that he and I ever talked—to think how he was the same age as Emmy. And it shouldn’t matter at all that he’s Indian. Matt’s adamant about that. As far as Reuben’s not being a Christian, Matt says he himself didn’t convert until he was the boy’s age. Matt reminds me that I’ve never been on the Colville Reservation. He claims the
poverty is indescribable, and half the tribe walks around in an alcoholic stupor. But that has to be an exaggeration.
I remember a few summers back Reuben appeared at his sister’s place with his arm in a cast, eye black and blue, and lip cracked and swollen. I took over herbs for his cuts and bruises. Unlike the ladies at church, Teresa took them without smirking. She wasn’t as willing the year before when I brought her a Bible and tracts. Matt said then that Reuben probably just fell or maybe he got into a fight with another boy. Matt and his brother and cousins used to brawl and get busted up on dirt bikes. He said it was good if the boy had a little fight in him. Regardless, I added Reuben’s name to the church prayer chain that week and the following.
Watching Emmy run to Reuben the other day in the rain was tender but left me restless that night. Should I call Kate? Matt told me to wait, to let Emmy have a summertime friend. He said it might be just a crush and no point in provoking Kate. It was the first time I’d seen Emmy and Reuben together. Matt didn’t seem surprised. Nor should I have been. I’ve seen their waves and smiles go from awkward to familiar to playful. When Reuben and Emmy hugged, I knew it was already far more than a crush. In fact, I got the strange feeling Emmy had just run into the arms of her future husband. I’ve felt more intuitive than ever since the healing. Emmy must also because my garden has thrived lately in her hands. Only how can it ever work for Emmy and the boy? Kate and Jamie lived only two hours away from each other, not two states away, and the distance tore them apart and eventually left my sister selling her body to truckers. All these years I’ve labored to keep Kate’s secret from Matt. I’ve longed, desperately at times, to deliver myself of the burdensome memories from Kate’s last months here: her bruises, ripped blouses, bladder infections, the sound of her throwing up or sobbing in the shower.
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