“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.”
“What does smart have to do with it?”
“Everything. I want more for you, for myself, for my kids. You saw the towns on the rez. Do you know how many Indian girls drop out of high school pregnant?”
“But you’d never leave me like the men left your sister. Or like Jamie left my mom.”
“You’re right. I wouldn’t.”
“Then?”
“Where would we live?” he asked. “Shit, Emmy. Grow up.” I looked at my hands. That hurt. He didn’t backtrack.
“Mom will make me leave.” I started to cry. “Wait and see. You’ll be sorry.”
“I won’t be sorry. I’d rather break every promise than ruin your life.”
“Ruin my life?” My voice pitched. “My life is over when I leave here!”
He grabbed my arms. “Don’t say that.”
“Don’t you see? My mother is going to rip me away from you!” And I knew, though I didn’t say, that losing Aunt Beth and Reuben might destroy me.
“She can’t.” He tightened his grip. “You’re part of me.” He said something in his native language. “You’re part of this land.”
“You don’t know her, Reuben. She’s a force. Look what she did to her sister.”
“I’m going to talk to her. I’m not scared.”
But he held me the rest of the night as if he were terrified.
15
Spencer
I wish to God I’d been walking by the Sacramento Greyhound station the day Kate stepped off the bus with Emmy on her hip. I like to think I could’ve saved them both a lot of heartache. I know I would’ve fallen as hard for Kate then, at only twenty years old, as I did the day we bumped into each other at a gas station by the coffee counter. Actually I bumped into her and her paper cup tipped. I apologized. A splash of coffee burned her hand. “Sorry,” I said again when I realized. She barely glanced at me. Most women give me one good look, if not two.
“N
o biggie,” she said, cleaning up the mess on the counter.
“Can I see your hand?” I set down my stainless steel travel mug.
“Oh, I’m fine. I used to waitress. I’ve been burned worse than this before.”
“Let me make it up to you.” I’d already noticed her sexy legs.
She finally looked at me. Christ, her eyes. “What, over coffee?”
I laughed. “How about dinner?”
We moved to the cash register. She wasn’t a lingerer. “It would have to be lunch. I have a kid.” I tried to pay. It was the least I could do. She refused, stubbornly putting her quarters on the counter.
“Dinner,” I said, “and bring your kid.” We were outside. She said she was running late for work. Her brown hair blazed in the sunlight. Normally I didn’t find redheads attractive, but her red looked as if it would be warm to the touch. “But first I need your number.”
“First, I need your name.”
“Spencer Hensley.”
“Nice to meet you, Spencer Hensley.” Why did she say it like that? She offered me her hand and a slight smile. “I’m Kate.” She was kind of a smart-ass. “You have a pen?” she asked.
“I’ll remember your number, Kate.”
She gave it to me rather quickly
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t catch your last name.”
“If you actually call my number, I’ll give you my last name.”
Fair enough.
She got into a junky Honda, probably still from her waitressing days, and drove away.
I called the number on four different occasions before someone finally picked up: a girl, real quiet, who said her mom was in the shower. I asked her to write down my number and have her mom call me back. Kate never did. I returned to the same gas station on the same day of the week and at the same time. She didn’t appear. Then I remembered she’d said she was late. I showed up extra early the following week. I did paperwork in my truck. She pulled up and went inside. I gave her a minute, then followed. She was getting coffee. “Kate,” I said.
She jumped, but luckily no spills. “Damn,” she said. “You scared me, Mr. Hensley. I didn’t think anyone around here knew my name.”
“I called your number.”
“Can we talk outside?” Again she refused to let me pay for her coffee, and somehow she managed to pay for mine.
“The teacher lady already took care of it,” the Punjabi cashier said with a smirk.
“I’m a thirty-year-old single mom who works a lot,” Kate said.
“What’s your point? I’m thirty-one and I work a lot.”
“I just thought we should cut through the bullshit.”
“Are you free right now, Miss—? I’m sorry, I still didn’t catch your last name.”
“Ms. Nolan.” She presented me her hand again and the same slight smile. “I teach class until twelve. Sorry, Mr. Hensley.”
“Spencer.”
“And then I have another class at three.”
I gave her my business card. The fact that I own a custom home-building company impresses most women. She stuck the card in her pocket as if I’d given her my number scribbled on a matchbook. I named a Mexican restaurant by the college where she taught and asked her to meet me there at twelve-thirty. I’m pretty sure she nodded. But she sure as hell didn’t show.
I found her junky Honda—with the faded CLINTON 92 bumper sticker—in the staff parking lot the next week at noon and waited with two coffees. “You stood me up,” I said. “I guess there’s more bullshit to cut through.”
“Isn’t there always?” Her arms were too full of books to take the coffee. “I didn’t exactly agree to meet you.”
“Do you agree to lunch right now?”
We wound up at my place in bed. I’m not exactly sure how that happened. Who cares? And I missed an appointment with a county inspector. Same thing the next week and twice the next. The sex was fantastic, but I felt bad that I still hadn’t bought her lunch. Single at thirty-one, I’d had a lot of women. Kate hadn’t had a lot of men, or at least not a lot who knew how to touch her. She didn’t have to tell me this. Her body was supersensitive, which was a major turn-on and contrasted nicely with her stubbornness. I couldn’t keep my hands out of her hair. I found her vulnerability in bed incredibly sexy, but it left me unguarded. It wasn’t the vulnerability of a young girl. No, thanks. But of someone who desperately wanted to open herself up. She had this way of putting her arms above her head—not just when we fucked in my bed but in my kitchen or elsewhere—as if totally surrendering. It drove me nuts. I’d think about her body all day at work. But as soon as she got her clothes back on, she was all about her job and picking up her daughter from school and telling me “no, no, no” about hooking up over the weekend, maybe taking in a movie with her kid.
Months later, when I finally met her twelve-year-old kid, I fell just as hard, but obviously in a completely different way. I had the same strong urge to take care of Emmy as Kate. We had dinner in a restaurant in Old Sacramento with a view of the river. Kate and Emmy sat on one side of the table, and I sat across from them. Emmy looked like her mom, but not as much as I’d anticipated. She had lighter hair and a better smile than Kate. But Kate’s eyes were larger and more intense. Emmy kept whispering things to her mom. Kate would mouth to me, “I’m sorry,” but it didn’t bother me. Emmy wasn’t being rude or snotty. Painfully shy, she blushed easily. A curious girl, though. When she thought I wouldn’t notice, she’d glance at me. She watched all the families around us with interest. She watched the river. So did Kate. I watched the two of them watching the river.
I tried to act relaxed so Emmy would relax. It was easy, actually. I asked her a few questions about school. She answered politely. When Kate went to use the restroom, I could tell Emmy wanted desperately to follow her. But she didn’t. She shrank down in her seat, as if hoping I wouldn’t notice she was still there. It was cute. I asked about her best friend.
She twisted her cloth napkin. “I don’t really have one, yet.”
“Your mom maybe?” I suggested.
She smiled. “Yeah.”
“I was close to my dad at your age,” I told her. Silence. One more question, and then I’d leave her alone. Poor girl was beet red. “If you had a puppy, what would you name it?” I realize now this was more a question for a four-year-old than a twelve-year-old. “I know you can’t have pets at your apartment. But if you could?”
She didn’t even have to think. “Tangles.”
I wanted to take them walking down on the docks. When I mentioned it, Emmy seemed excited, but Kate insisted they had to get home. They both had homework.
“Bye, girls,” I said at their apartment, more to tease Kate than anything. She objected to grown women being referred to as girls. Kate had yet to invite me inside to her apartment. I wanted in.
Four years and two marriage proposals later, the lady is finally wearing my ring.
“Shit, Spencer, you finally got the balls to propose to her again,” my little brother said when he took me for a beer to celebrate. “Did she let you show her the ring this time?”
“Not exactly.” I shifted on the barstool. “I left it on her coffee table.”
“Never mind, then, bro, about your balls.”
Our parents built the company from scratch. Dad taught my brother and me how to take pride in the trade and, maybe more important, how not to be afraid of hard work. He also warned us never to marry a woman who was afraid of hard work or she could negate everything. What Dad didn’t make clear is how difficult it can be to love a hardworking woman. In the beginning Kate Nolan’s lack of interest in my money was refreshing. And I greatly admired her self-reliance. In the beginning. But Jesus Christ, that woman. The first time I saw her cry was because her teeth, her wisdom teeth, were hurting. She had nice teeth in front. But her wisdom teeth were i
mpacted. In fact, it was the first time I spent the night at her apartment. She called me late at night. I hurried over there. She quietly escorted me into her bedroom so as not to wake Emmy. There were books everywhere in her apartment. The place was a bit of a dive—it was clean but run down.
“Will you rub my back?” she asked.
“Of course, baby.” She was in serious pain. “Let me take you to the emergency room.” She told me she didn’t have medical or dental insurance as a part-time teacher. She worked part time at three different colleges, rather than full time at just one. According to my calculations, that meant she worked time and a half. “I’ll pay,” I offered, and I meant it. She refused. “I can’t handle seeing you in this much pain.” She told me I could leave. I stayed.
The next time her wisdom teeth hurt, I asked her how long they’d been trying to emerge. She said on and off since she was pregnant. So for thirteen fucking years? Mine were extracted in eighth grade. I insisted she take one of the painkillers I got for her from my doctor. When the throbbing subsided and she relaxed a bit, I asked, “What happened to Emmy’s dad?”
“You can’t ask me about him.” She moved away from me in her bed.
“Where’s your family?” I inched closer. She and Emmy were all alone. Too alone. It was beginning to worry me.
“Please don’t, Spencer.” She put her hand out, as if to block me. “I like you.”
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