Free Steal the North: A Novel by Heather B Bergstrom Page A

be back to normal. But what about Connor? She couldn’t control him. On the phone with her sister, Mom laid down some conditions. She tried to assure me that she wasn’t just throwing me to the wolves (Christians). First and foremost, other than for the healing ceremony, I wasn’t allowed to attend Bethany’s fundamentalist church, where I’d be judged as harshly for wearing mascara as for tattooing “the mark of the beast” (I didn’t even ask) on my forehead. If curiosity got the best of me, I was to look up a nondenominational-type church in the phone book and go to services there. But she hoped I wouldn’t. I could take as many world religion classes as I wanted to in college—“at Berkeley.” I laughed at
that
. She didn’t ask what I found so amusing, and I’m not sure I knew myself. I knew she’d always been down on spirituality and tried to make me that way. It wasn’t fair. I was “allowed” religion only in an academic setting? Something changed between us in that moment: in my laugh and her silence.
    I refused to think about that change in this nowhere airport, where I felt sleepy and alone. Mom said when I was very young, she’d wake to find me wandering around the apartment, looking for someone, a woman whose name I didn’t know but whose absence I felt so heavily I couldn’t go back to sleep or fully wake up. Was that true? I wish I could say that I recognized my aunt right away as the woman I used to look for, but I didn’t.
    Mom promised I’d have no problem finding Bethany at the airport in Moses Lake because she’d probably be the only person in the tiny lobby. She claimed the airport was used more as a parking lot for crop dusters than a real port of transportation. But just in case, I should expect long, straight hair pulled back tightly in a ponytail or bun, no earrings, a simple homemade dress, hemmed far below the knees, with a stretched-out, dull-colored cardigan overtop. Mom and I bought most of our clothes used at consignment stores or occasionally new at Target or on clearance at the malls. We were fashion conscious, not obsessed.
    But I recognized my aunt immediately because she looked like Mom, so much so, in fact, that at first I couldn’t register what was happening, and when she took me into her arms, I began to cry. Which wasn’t at all how I’d pictured the scene.
    “Oh, Emmy. Don’t cry.” But she too was crying. “Let’s sit a minute.” She said she wanted to get a better look at me (to make sure I was a virgin?) before we drove home. There were only a dozen seats in the entire lobby. All empty. We sat down, and I tried to stop crying, but her smell was familiar. “I never meant for you to journey alone,” she said. “I’ve been praying all day for you.” She hadn’t let go of my hand. “You must be so scared.”
    I wondered where my luggage was—it was all I had of home.
    Gaining composure, I said, “I’m okay.”
    “Your mom kept saying on the phone how brave you were.”
    Mom wished I were brave. There’s a difference. “I’m not.”
    “You
are
—and so pretty.” She squeezed my hand before letting go. “I’ve never flown.” She whispered as if the lobby were full of people who would be surprised by her confession. “Can you believe it?”
    “It doesn’t matter.” Nothing mattered in survival mode.
Right, Mom?
A man in coveralls started carrying in the luggage for the handful of passengers. He placed it in the corner.
    “You must miss your mom and the fellowship of your friends.”
    “I’m fine.”
Fellowship
? Her dress was baggy and looked homemade, but the dainty flowered print was pretty. Her hair, blond and straight like mine, was pulled back firmly in a ponytail, but I could tell she’d curled the ends. Mom had wavy auburn hair that she didn’t have to curl. I’d always been jealous.
    Beth reached into her purse and pulled out a small amber-colored bottle with a handmade label, “peppermint.” “I made this for you.