Steal the North: A Novel

by Heather B Bergstrom

  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.

  Part Two

  11

  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 s
ound.

  “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.

  “Why did you go over there without me?” I ask later when we lie together in Teresa’s bed. “And why didn’t you tell me you speak French?”

  “I don’t.”

  “What language was that then?”

  “I mean, yes, I’ve had three years of French. But I suck. The concierge snickered.”

  “The what?”

  “I went to Beth’s to get my money and calling cards. Spencer gave me lots of money before I left Sacramento. We don’t have to worry.”

  “We don’t need his money.”

  “You sound like my mom.”

  “What do you mean?” How could I possibly sound like a professor?

  “Mom has problems with her wisdom teeth. The pain keeps her awake at night. Spencer loves her and wants to pay for a dentist, but she won’t let him. I don’t understand.”

  “Be glad you don’t.” I respect Emmy’s mom for not taking the dude’s money.

  “We’re using Spencer’s money for gas tomorrow,” Emmy says. “And for food.”

  “No, we’re fucking not.” I pull away from her.

  “Yes, we fucking are. You don’t have much money. I looked in your wallet.”

  “Shit.” I sit up. “Not very cool.”

  “You don’t have a dad to give you money.”

  What’s her fucking point? “Neither do you, remember?”

  “I know.” She sits up. “But I have Spencer.”

  “Do you have a thing for him?”

  “What?” She
looks confused.

  “Do you and Spencer have a thing? Don’t be shy. You know what I mean.”

  She’s shocked. I am too. She jumps out of bed. “So, you do think I’m a slut?”

  God, I’m an asshole. What a thing for me to imply, especially when she blames her “impurity” for the healing ceremony’s not working, and with our just having had sex together twice in the last twenty-four hours.

  “I don’t fuck my mom’s boyfriend,” she says. “That’s disgusting, Reuben. How could you think that? He’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a dad. He loves me.”

  She has this way of sounding so young.

  “He even told me so at the airport.”

  She heads for the door, but I stop her. “I’m sorry. I was being a prick. I’m sorry.”

  “If I had anywhere to go,” she says, “know that I’d be gone.”

  I actually kneel. “Forgive me, Emmy.”

  “We’re using Spencer’s money.” I shake my head. “You’re so stubborn. You drive me crazy.” She punches the tops of my shoulders, but lightly. Then she reaches under my arms and tries to pull me up. As if. I fall back on the floor, laughing. “Screw you,” she says. “I need a cigarette.”

  “Come on then.” I stand up. “Have you ever smoked before?” She says no. We go out the back door. Her aunt’s trailer is dark. We stare at it a long time before I light her a cigarette. She’s a natural, doesn’t choke, inhales just right and exhales with ease. It’s damn sexy. She’s making it more so on purpose by being breathy, as she gets sometimes when we kiss.