Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name Read Online Free PDF

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 � ‌

1.
    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.

2.
    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.

3.
    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