Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name (5 page)

Kari sat down on the bed with me in his lap. He cupped a hand over my breast and blew into my ear. He removed his hand from my breast and stuck two fingers into my mouth.
Bite
, I thought. I fought the instinct and sucked on his wide fingers. They tasted like coins.

He pushed me onto the bed, his belt buckle digging into my belly. I peeled off his sweater and shirt. He tugged my blouse over my head, scratching my nose with the second button.

He flipped me over onto my stomach and traced my spine; I knew he would. It surprises everyone, the dark hair that lines the center of my back. I’ve had it since I was fourteen and underweight.
Lunago
, the doctors called it—the same fur that lines a fetus’s body in the womb.

Everything I knew about my body I had learned from the four men I’d been with. I knew that my nipples were large for such small breasts. That my flat stomach was my best feature. That my arms were shapeless. If someone told me they liked my arms, I knew they were lying.

Kari was no longer touching me. I assumed he was mas-turbating.

I rolled over on my back and looked at him. His face was pale. He put his head on my breast, suckled at a spot a few inches away from my nipple, and then bounded off the bed and into the bathroom. He didn’t bother closing the door.

He threw up twice—once near the toilet, once inside. A part of me was relieved that what had started had ended. I tried

not to act too cheerful as I filled a glass with water from the sink. I held it out to him, and he knocked it away.

He passed out on his stomach, one hand on the base of the toilet. I removed a sheet from the bed and draped it over him.

I was tempted to call the front desk. “He’s one of yours,” I’d say.

I could leave, but where would I go?

I considered calling Virginia. I hadn’t told her I was going to Lapland, that I was going anywhere at all. Virginia and I had become friends in high school, drawn together by our unconventional home lives. I had a mother who had vanished; Virginia’s mom lived with two men and was romantically involved with both. When we were fifteen, I gave Virginia a key to my house, which she wore around her neck the way coaches wear whistles. She lost her virginity on our front lawn, as I stood guard from my bedroom window.

But at some point, Virginia and I had switched places; she had become the responsible one. She now worked as a counselor at a clinic for abused women. Her husband was a doctor who operated on children with cleft palates. Together they traveled to Africa every year, as part of a project called Operation Smile.

I knew she would tell Pankaj where I was, so I had told her nothing. People assume those in mourning aren’t thinking clearly. Ha! My brain was a razor. A flesh-eating predator.

I pulled the hotel desk chair close to the television and turned it on, the volume off. I held the remote in my hand but leaned forward to change the channels on the TV itself—Bill

Cosby talking about nutrition, an interview with an amputee— and eventually found what I knew was an Italian movie with Finnish subtitles. I’d worked on the English subtitles for this film. Usually, I can’t bear to look at a project I’ve worked on after it’s done, but this morning was different. I knew the lines the actress was saying, and, in my head, I recited the English translation of her accusations. She was angry for five minutes, ten minutes. She was angry for most of the film. Though the volume was still turned off, when she screamed, I, too, opened my mouth. We screamed silently together.

Because I Was Late
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The last time I saw my mother was on December 16, 1990. I was fourteen.

Behind the doors of my advent calendar: a harp. I was on winter break from school—Jeremy, too. My mother was taking us upstate, to Albany, to see a friend from California named Fern. After a twenty-year silence, Fern had written my mother a Christmas card, and a plan for us to visit had been hatched.

That morning, Dad went out to the car to warm it up— something he did for my mother in winter. His primary concern was her comfort. In the summer, he’d go out to the car to start the air-conditioning.

I lured Jeremy to the Subaru with a laundry basket filled with clean balled-up socks—he liked to unball them. Dad saluted Jeremy (Jeremy didn’t like physical affection), and kissed me good-bye on my forehead. Then he kissed my mother on the forehead, too. I hated that he did that; I wanted my mother to be special. I vowed that the next time he tried to kiss my forehead, I’d duck.

In preceding weeks, my mother had been unusually affection-ate toward me. I wasn’t sure how long it would last, her warmth, so I followed it like a sunbather at dusk, chasing the sun.

Five minutes into the drive, my mother slid a book on tape into the stereo. It was a four-cassette biography of Margaret Mead. I listened, I waited. When the first tape ended, I ejected it and placed it back in the box. I had been preparing a subject my mother might be interested in. “What was Fern like?” I asked. “When you were growing up?”

“Oh,” she said. “She was never ambitious. I think her parents’ divorce screwed her up. I remember how much earwax she had in her ears. Yellow, though, not red. Or black. Or whatever. Earwax gets out of control when a kid’s parents go through a divorce. You know, a sign of neglect.”

And with that, she inserted the second Margaret Mead tape.

We pulled into Fern’s driveway. My mother used the rearview mirror to apply lipstick. “How do I look?” she asked, and turned toward me.

“Beautiful.” It was true, but I regretted saying it. I was love-sick.

I immediately disliked Fern. The makeup on her face was several tones too dark for her skin. It emphasized the deep

lines that extended above and below the edges of her lips. My mother complimented Fern on her blue sweater.

“I got my colors done last month,” Fern said. “Well, they did a good job.”

“Your mother,” Fern said, still looking at her. “Always the smart one.”

Fern couldn’t have been less interested in Jeremy or me. She sat us down in front of the television, while she and my mother sat on bar stools at the counter, drinking eggnog. I was used to this, to people wanting my mother to themselves. If, at a party, my mother left the room for a moment, everyone grew quiet. No one wanted to tell a story if she wasn’t there to hear it.

“Do you ever miss Finland?” I heard Fern ask.� I strained my ears.�

“I miss the solitude,” my mother said.� “But you’ve always been so social.”�

“You have to be social when there are people around.”�

I made an effort to stare at the TV. I was afraid if I looked � in my mother’s direction, I might catch her gesturing toward Jeremy and me.

After an hour, I took Jeremy to the bathroom in case he needed to go. While sitting him down, I noticed all the wax that had accumulated in his left ear. I searched through Fern’s medicine cabinet and Q-tipped out the buildup with such determina-tion that Jeremy started to scream.

The outburst cut our visit short. My mother interpreted it as a sign Jeremy didn’t like Fern’s house, and I didn’t disabuse her of this idea.

“I really like Fern,” my mother said, once we were in the car. “I think she and I are going to be good friends again.”

I knew better than to believe her fondness for Fern would last. The year before, she had said the same thing about Clara, and Irene, and Sandy, Christina, Sandy (a different one), Judy, and Patty. For at least a month, each of these women had my mother’s full devotion. They were sent cards if they’d had a hard day, were given flowers if something had gone right at work. But she would then switch affections. She would simply stop taking their calls, and I’d be left answering the phone. My mother would stand in the hallway or beside me, instructing me to say she wasn’t home. She signaled this with a sharp movement of her hand across her neck.

Dad apologized to people on her behalf when she’d said something uncouth; he collected her friends when she tossed them off. Maybe he knew it wouldn’t be long before she shunned him as well. But Dad was a handsome man, and his friendships with the discarded women didn’t sit well with their husbands. One of the women—Christina—gave me a note to pass along to him. I read it first. She had written, “If only you hadn’t complimented my blouse in his presence . . .”

When we returned home from Fern’s that afternoon, the neighbor’s cat, Taft, was sitting on our porch. He was making his rounds earlier than usual. My mother searched in vain for milk. “Damn,” she said.

In recent months, my mother had started talking to Taft. Every night after dinner, the cat would come to our porch and meow for my mother’s attention and milk.

Dad was allergic to cats, to dogs, and my mother didn’t hesi-tate to show her annoyance at his condition. I thought her visits with the cat would stop as the weather changed, but no. When fall approached, she would pull a blanket over her shoulders before heading out to the porch; come winter, she put on a parka.

She would sit outside for hours, talking to Taft. As it grew later, she’d stick her head inside the house and call up to me: “Did you finish your homework?” or “Did you brush your teeth?” I often lied in hopes she would come upstairs and rep-rimand me.

The second-floor bathroom was above the porch, and I would lean my head out, trying to hear what she was saying. I would catch a word or two, but usually she was whispering.

I complained to Dad one night. “She’s talking to the damned cat again,” I said. I was swearing to show I was mad; I was sure he would scold me.

“What do you say we kill it?” he said.

In the second before he started laughing, I saw that he was dead serious, his eyes dark as a gun.

At five p.m. on December 16, my mother called me into her study. I waited until she said my name twice, so I didn’t appear too eager.

She was sitting at her desk, a set of salt and pepper shakers before her. She had evidently poured out the contents of both onto her desk and was drawing patterns in the seasoning with her forefinger. I took a step back, wishing that this time I hadn’t responded when summoned.

“Do you know why I named you Clarissa?” she asked, glancing in my direction. When she wanted it to appear she was looking me in the eye, she stared at my nose.

I nodded. “From the book.”

I had been told that Dad had read
Mrs. Dalloway
to my mother when she was on bed rest.

“I named you after a book, yes,” she said. “But not after
Mrs. Dalloway.
I named you after
Clarissa
by Samuel Rich-ardson.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I didn’t want to tell you until you were old enough because I was afraid you wouldn’t understand. It’s more complex than that. I named you after this Clarissa with the hope that you’d rewrite history.”

“Wow,” I said. I leaned against the wall for support.

“I’ve been meaning to have this talk with you. I’m glad we’re having it now.” She smiled at her desk.

I stared at her.

“If a man tries something on you, force yourself to pee. Use your legs—that’s where your weight is. Gouge his eyes with your fingers. Punch his ears with your fists. Ruin his ability to see and hear. And then run.”

When I opened my mouth, I made a point of speaking slowly, rationally, the way I addressed Jeremy when he was having a tantrum. “I’ll remember that,” I said.

Silence.

I looked over her shoulder at what she’d traced in the salt and pepper. I thought it would be a clue, a postscript to what she’d told me. In large capital letters, she had scrawled: BUY MILK.

When Dad came home that evening, he looked after Jeremy while my mother and I went to the Poughkeepsie mall to do our Christmas shopping. After picking out a sweat suit for Dad and a telescope for Jeremy, we separated so we could buy each other gifts. We would meet up at the bakery at seven.

I went to the Body Shop to buy my mother bath oil. I inhaled the various scents. I asked the man behind the counter if I could get a sixteen-ounce bottle of vanilla bath oil. Gita always smelled of vanilla.

“Is it for you?” he asked.

“No, it’s for my mom,” I said. The pride in my voice surprised me.

“Well, this is a nice gift,” he said. “You’ll never see your mom after giving her this. She’ll be spending all her time in the bath—reading, eating, sleeping even. You can get yourself into all sorts of trouble while she’s not around.” He winked.

I looked at my watch. It was a few minutes after seven. “Can you make it shower gel instead?” I asked.

“Sure, honey,” he said. He took his time formulating the concoction, and then wrapped the bottle in pink cellophane and tied it with lavender ribbons. I knew I’d have to rewrap it when I got home; my mother thought Christmas presents should look like they were specifically for Christmas.

I got to the bakery late, at a quarter after.

The woman behind the counter noticed me. “Are you looking for a lady you were supposed to meet here?” she asked. She was wearing a red T-shirt silk-screened with two fried eggs, one over each breast.

I nodded.

“She said to tell you she got tired of waiting.”

I called Dad, and he and Jeremy came to pick me up. Dad said my mother wasn’t at home when he left, and she hadn’t called. “I’m sure she’ll be there when we get back,” he added.

At home, there was no sign of my mother’s car. Nor was she in the house. Dad sat on the couch, holding a pillow over his face. The pillow was orange, with long, thin tassels, one of

which was in his mouth. He put the pillow down in his lap. “Can you pass me the phone?” he said, though it wasn’t far from him.

I brought it to him, and he dialed and then covered the mouthpiece. “It’s the good Chinese restaurant. What do you want?”

The next morning, when she hadn’t returned, Dad called her California sisters. They hadn’t heard from her. He called Fern, who hadn’t, either. Then he called the police. “How long do you have to wait before reporting someone missing?” he asked.