Steal the North: A Novel (8 page)

“Here, let me.” She took the bottle. I looked over at the few other people in the lobby. They were busy getting their suitcases. “Hold your bangs up.” I was embarrassed, but at least we weren’t at the Spokane airport. She rubbed gently in a circular motion. I loved the feel of her touch as much as I did her smell. The oil cooled my temples, then warmed them. Her massaging me was a little too intimate too soon, but no different from the time Mom and I went to a day spa (courtesy of Spencer’s secretary). Mom had felt uncomfortable at the spa, which made me uncomfortable, having Korean women rub “our big white feet” for minimum wage.

My whole face felt warm now. Flushed. Beth’s face was extremely pale, but probably because she wore absolutely no makeup. “You look like your mom,” she commented.

I wasn’t told that very often. “So do you.” She touched her hair. I told her I had a gift for her also. I pulled from my backpack the origami bird I’d made. It was a little crumpled.

“Oh, Emmy! You
made
it?” I nodded. “I’ve never—from paper?” I nodded again. “I know right where I’ll hang it.” She admired it some more. “Thank you so much.” Mom had no patience when it came to doing origami. She said she found paper folding about as fun as embroidery. “Now let’s get your luggage.”

Mom had to buy me suitcases for this trip. We didn’t own anything larger than a weekender, which Mom said was pathetic, given how much we talked about traveling and how we hung up postcards depicting faraway places. I wondered if Spencer told Mom yet about the tickets to Europe.

“I’ll get the big suitcase.” I hurried over to it, a little ashamed now of its bulk.

“Your throat sounds dry,” she said with worry. “There’s a pop machine out front.”

I told her I was fine. I thought Mom was the only person who called soda pop.

“It’s dry and dusty here,” Beth remarked, as if it were she who’d just stepped off the plane. “Your mom reminded me of that.” She quickened her pace. “She asked me to keep you hydrated.”

Was I five? And it was certainly dry in Sacramento. The whole valley baked in summer and early fall. Our apartment didn’t have air conditioning, so for a third of each year Mom and I went practically naked around the apartment (when Spencer wasn’t there), especially in late afternoon and evening. Had Mom been bossy to her sister on the phone? Maybe older sisters were always bossy, but I felt strangely defensive of my aunt, whom, until a month ago, I hadn’t even known existed. “I thought of you every day,” she said as we wheeled the suitcases outside. It
was
drier here than in Sacramento, but not quite as hot. Had she really thought of me every day? “God finally answered my prayers. He brought you back to me.”

Mom would contend, “More like technology and pilots.”

But the truth was—though I wouldn’t realize this until later—I
had
felt summoned: by my aunt and her prayers; by the lake in which my grandmother had bobbed in pain; by my dad’s conscience, or lack thereof, and his hills; by the wind; by a neighbor boy who would tell me only the second time I ever talked to him that the color of my eyes (a drab gray, I’d always thought) reminded him of the sky up north on the reservation, right before nightfall, when Sasquatch warned hunters to get out of the woods and coyotes roamed along the roads and fences white men built over ancient paths.

The ride from the airport to my aunt’s house took about twenty minutes, but she drove more slowly than the senior citizen drivers who irritated Mom as she sped between junior college campuses, drinking gas station coffee and trying to make it to her staggered classes and faculty meetings on time. At first I could only see the lake (Moses Lake, which was also the name of the town) down a desert cliff, but then suddenly we were beside it. It was better from a distance, though I admired the two weeping willows I saw by the shore. Mom said eastern Washington was treeless, and she was right as far as oak, sycamore, and palm trees go, but there were rows of poplars everywhere and occasional strands of dusty, sage-colored trees called Russian olives (I asked later), which I found pretty, despite their muted hue. We didn’t drive through town. My aunt said we’d go tomorrow or the next day. For a while the landscape was nothing but field after field of sagebrush, then canals, irrigation sprinklers, row crops, horses, and stacks of hay bales as large as the singlewide trailers we’d pass here and there. We turned off the paved road and onto a gravel one at the sign
QUAIL RUN MOBILE HOME PARK
.

Before touring the rest of the trailer, I was shown the room where I’d be staying. “The bed was your mom’s,” Beth said. “And the crib was yours.” She touched her belly. She didn’t look pregnant. Was I supposed to tell her congratulations? Should I call her Aunt
right away? I had a card for her and gifts from Mom in my luggage. I’d never seen Mom spend more time picking out items in stores, and she refused to buy her sister anything on sale or clearance. I put my small suitcase and backpack on the floor by the bed. We left the big suitcase in the trunk for Matt to bring in when he got home from work, though I said I could easily get it. Besides the crib and bed, there was a dresser in the room. All our furniture in Sacramento was also secondhand, but Mom liked to repaint. My dresser in Sac was a cheery French blue. On top of this unassuming dresser sat a vase of freshly cut lavender (how nice) and a pair of glowing ceramic hands held together in prayer (strange). There was also a desk that looked brand new. Beth noticed me eyeing it. “Matt just built that for you.” She said Mom told her I’d need a place to study for my college entrance exams. “You’re really smart, I hear. That doesn’t surprise me.”

Jeez, Mom. “I do tons of homework, is all.” I’d brought my SAT study guides and flash card packs, but I didn’t need a desk. At home Mom and I used the dining table as our communal desk, despite the desks sitting unused in our separate bedrooms.

“The dresser is empty, and half the closet—for your clothes.” I apologized for having so many. “No, I’m glad you do. Your mom has taken good care of you.” Her eyes got watery. “Thanks for coming, Emmy. I know you probably didn’t want to.”

“I wanted to meet you.”

“I bet Kate has told you all kinds of stories about her and me growing up.”

Mom hadn’t wanted to tell Beth on the phone that I never knew of her existence. She said it would crush her little sister. And no doubt. It nearly crushed me. “I’d love to hear more,” I said, trying to sound genuine. At eight, eleven, or even fifteen, Beth’s stories would’ve been a Disney Channel dream come true, and I still planned to find out whatever I could about Mom’s leaving Moses Lake with an infant and a single suitcase—but at that moment, I just wasn’t interested in anything that involved my mom.

“Your uncle is so excited to see you. I’m glad we had time first.”

On the wall above the crib hung faded pink wooden letters that spelled my name. I noticed them when I first walked into the bedroom but tried not to look at them. The fact that my aunt had kept them up all these years tugged at my heart and made me feel guilty for lying about my virginity. On the phone, Connor would say it was eerie, like in a horror movie, the way Beth had kept the letters on the wall. I disagreed. The glowing hands night-light, kept on day and night, creeped me out a bit at first, but I’d come to love its warm glow.

“Do you remember those?” she asked now, pointing to the letters. I didn’t have to lie and say I did because she took my hand. “Matt told me not to overwhelm you right away with all your old baby stuff.” She smiled. “Come on then. I’ll show you the rest of the house.”

Mom had cautioned that Beth’s trailer might seem suffocating to me, even with the air conditioning, which she said would run 24/7 (it did, but on low) because of cheap electricity from Grand Coulee Dam. Mom couldn’t believe, after all these years, that Beth and Matt still lived in the same singlewide trailer. Didn’t we live in the same apartment? She said the trailer wasn’t cluttered when she’d lived there with them because they barely had furniture or money to buy stuff, but by now, she warned, it might be. Most mobile homes were cluttered with junk, she said, as if she knew, which she didn’t because her sister’s trailer wasn’t cluttered—at least not with junk. The kitchen was crowded with oil-making tools and bundles of drying herbs, which excited me. The master bedroom held Beth’s sewing machine and fabric supplies, as well as Matt’s fly-tying station, both of which were probably moved in there from the extra bedroom to make room for me. Beth’s living room was actually a little bare for my taste: no stacks of books, no paisley throws, no wooden crate of old
National Geographic
magazines bought at the library for a dime each, no basket full of rolled and folded maps.

Matt was great. I liked him instantly, and I’d been worried, having never before lived in a house with a man. My lunch buddy Hedda hated her dad and was glad he worked in the Bay Area during the week, and Harpreet seemed afraid of her father. Mom hadn’t given me any precautions concerning Matt, which I didn’t realize was a positive thing. “You’ve grown,” he teased upon first seeing me. “A few feet at least.” He lightened the mood, which was what Spencer tried to do with Mom. But Mom’s comebacks, which were usually funnier than his, could also be harsh. For the most part, I don’t think Spencer minded being trumped by Mom. Matt, pretending to be out of breath as he carried in my big suitcase, asked me, “You smuggle a few movie stars in here? Brad Pitt?”

“Oh, Matt. Emmy probably brought as much of her home as possible.”

I’d panicked the last few days before leaving Sacramento and packed random things into my suitcase: my yearbooks, packages of origami paper, a set of Tibetan prayer flags, my collection of tiny Asian bowls, which I wrapped in scarves. I shoved in two decks of tarot cards last minute, despite how Mom said Christians thought evil spirits resided in tarot and they’d frighten my aunt. I think they frightened Mom also. But she would never admit to being afraid of anything other than ignorance, which, she’d warned, was in no short supply in eastern Washington.

My first few days in Washington were easier than the nights. I was used to long summer afternoons without television or other kids. But Beth and Matt both went to bed early, as Mom said they would. Having a bedroom and my own bathroom at the opposite end of the trailer from their bedroom helped with awkwardness but also left me feeling more lonely at night. And a little cold with the air conditioning always on. I hadn’t had a bedtime in the summer since I was ten, when I started staying home by myself during the day instead of going to child care centers or day camps on various college campuses. Mom let me stay up as late as I wanted to in the summer—she was great about that—reading, sketching, doing origami, painting, watching movies, and baking (as long as there was a delta breeze). She taught as many classes as she could over the summer for the money, and she stayed up late most nights grading papers and preparing lessons. For a while we called ourselves the Owl Society. I made us feathered hats out of paper grocery bags that I painted, and I secretly logged our literary activities by flashlight (thanks to an obsession with
Dead Poets Society
).

The night noises were different at my aunt’s house, and muted because the windows stayed shut. No roaring highways, sirens, car alarms, or rumbling light rail. No scuffling street people. Every once in a while I heard a car horn or the far, far-off sound of a train. I heard wind. I heard coyotes. More wind. More coyotes. Matt said in the summer that juvenile coyotes were trying out their voices. I heard the crunch of gravel when someone returned home late to the trailer park, like the neighbor boy who looked my age and drove an old pickup truck. Where did he go so late? Had he noticed me? When the wind rattled the thin-paned windows, I buried my head under the covers. There were also lapses without any sound, and I’d have to put on my headphones and listen to music to stay asleep.

“One of the guys at work has an old TV,” Uncle Matt said to me the third evening at the dinner table. So far I loved Aunt Beth’s cooking. “What do you think? We could put it in the bedroom, and get you cable.” I looked at Aunt Beth. She didn’t say anything, but she put down her fork. “It’ll give you something to do at night,” he reasoned, “and while we’re at church.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But I’m okay.” Beth looked relieved. “We don’t have cable at home.”

“I’m going to teach Emmy to sew,” she said. “And to garden and make oils.”

I was thrilled to learn oils, and I’d always wanted to know how to sew—not to make curtains and aprons (well, maybe) but to alter my clothes like the most artistic girls at school did. Mom laughed the time I asked her if I could take sewing lessons. She said at strict Christian schools, the girls took sewing instead of science and they didn’t learn math beyond fractions for doubling recipes. She’d have laughed on the phone now if I’d told her I’d just enjoyed meat loaf with a helping of green bean casserole. Mom hated plain food, and she loathed ground beef, which she had been forced to eat almost daily as a child. She bragged she hadn’t eaten a canned veggie since crossing the California state line. We ate a lot of salads, rice, chicken stir-fry, couscous, eggplant, fruit, homemade hummus. Shrimp when we had the money. Steak or carne asada when we ate at Spencer’s house. Mom and I also ate a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches on sourdough, though every now and then, when she was in a funk, she’d buy cheap white bread and American cheese slices. Once a year Mom tried to make thick, chewy noodles from scratch, but she was never satisfied with how they turned out or with the kitchen and her face covered in flour.

“Let me know if you change your mind about the TV,” Matt said.

A few days later, on Saturday, while Aunt Beth napped, Matt and I went into town for briquettes for the barbecue. He offered to let me drive, but I declined. On the way, he said his brother had an extra car that he’d gladly loan me over the summer. It was kind of ugly, but it ran well. I was taken aback, then embarrassed to admit, “I don’t have my license.” I explained how Mom didn’t think high school kids should drive in a big city.