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Dressed in the same clothes she’d been wearing for the past three days, Ronja sniffed her armpits and adjusted her sunglasses as she followed Bridget outside to a parking lot. They stopped at a pea-green muscle car. Bridget unlocked the passenger door and helped her inside. “Here,” she motioned for the tote in Ronja’s grasp, “I’ll take that.” Ronja snapped it into her chest like protecting a child.
Bridget looked taken aback but laughed. “I’m only trying to help. You barely touched your breakfast, you wilting flower.”
Ronja slid onto the tan plastic seats and hugged the tote. Her eyes cruised over the flat mahogany dashboard on the driver’s side. On her own side, emblazoned on the glove box in silver lettering, were three letters: GTO. Bridget crossed to the other side of the vehicle and climbed in. She pushed in the clutch and turned over the engine. “It’s Leo’s. Nice, isn’t it?” She placed her hand on the black ball of the stick shift, cranked it, and backed out.
“You know how to drive?” she asked Ronja.
In the department stores with Bridget, Ronja gravitated toward flowy dresses and garments that left room to gain weight. The word pregnant kept rolling through her brain. Inside her newly purchased faux leather purse was a zippered compartment where she’d transferred the Dalahäst, and where she would place the map she’d purchased at Woolworth’s while Bridget swiped on lipstick samples. “What’s the map for?” Bridget asked, smacking her lips.
Ronja had the map outstretched in her arms, searching the legend of cities. She shrugged.
“You sure don’t talk much. You do know English, right?” She capped the lipstick.
Ronja found it: Mora, Minnesota. Mora! A petal of her wounded heart opened, welcoming hope back inside. Over the map, she spied Bridget. Could it be that easy to leave? To say she was going for a walk, stuffed with her new essentials, but not overly so. She’d go to the bus stop. Poof—gone. She wondered if Peter was secretly paying Bridget to watch her. She folded the map.
Their next stop was hot dogs at a vendor outside the Nicollet shopping mall, and Ronja ate only the bread. She’d managed not to vomit today but was still wary of eating much. They sat at an outdoor table. Ronja snagged a napkin about to fly away.
“Are you and Peter together?” Bridget asked, fingering the corners of her mouth from ketchup. “Is he available?”
Available? “Peter and I . . . we were business partners.”
“What kind of business?”
“Sales,” clipped Ronja, watching a bus pull alongside the curb. “I need a job,” she said to Bridget. “Can you help me?”
Bridget lowered her sunglasses. Her eyes clearly delighted at the prospect. “Me too! You could work at the restaurant Leo opened. It’s a chain of his family’s. Maybe waitress? Leo lets me do a little hosting because I’m terrible at waitressing. But I need something else. I wanna move out.” She proceeded to tell Ronja about her abusive ex. “Leo took me in after I ran away. Met him at a bar of all places. One owned by his massive Italian family—I swear he has family everywhere—we went on two dates, but he’s terrible in bed. Don’t tell him that. But last year he said he was moving to Minneapolis to open a new bar and asked if I wanted to come. Can’t believe he lets me live here without sleeping with him. I still give him head once in a while.” She said all this half-heartedly and then, with renewed vigor, flattened her palms on the table. “I’m bored outta my mind, know what I’m saying?”
Ronja nodded, bonding to Bridget’s story, eager to declare, I want to be independent. And not rely on Peter—on anyone. She smoothed her stomach in small circles.
On their way home, Ronja watched the neighborhood float by, past a movie theater that said RITZ in lights and posters that read: Project X, Tarzan and The Jungle Boy, and The Odd Couple.
A building came into view when Bridget downshifted around a corner.
It was a shining beacon, with its forest green garage doors, bright red roof, and white lettering: 5th Street Auto Repair Shop.
That next day, Ronja strolled through the neighborhood to 5th Street Auto Repair Shop.
Thomas, an older white gentleman with grease imprinted into his wrinkles, walked out from working on a bright blue Cadillac and asked if she was lost.
Ronja said, “No, I like cars.”
“Where’s the accent from?”
“Sweden.”
“S-veden.” He snuffed a laugh and said he didn’t mind a pretty woman watching him work all day, but he wasn’t going to let her near a car.
“I can do some things my uncle taught me, but what does he know?” She loitered, asking questions she already knew the answers to, masked her grimace and shrank her voice when she said, “Do you really want to pull that bolt out?”
Every morning, after Peter and Leo left, and while Bridget circled job ads, Ronja frequented 5th Street Auto and carried on with the same clueless act for weeks, boosting Thomas’ ego that he was a really good teacher, until he finally allowed her to don a pair of coveralls and get her fingertips black. And day by day, Ronja felt herself come alive again with the oxygen of gas and motor oil fumes. He started cutting her some money. She opened a bank account.
And finally, a safe deposit box for her Dalahäst.
She came home early one July evening from the repair shop, and Peter took notice of her blackened hands. He sniffed her hair. His breath was so close to her skin, sending a frisson throughout her body. He stared at Ronja, as if longing, but quickly smirked. She must’ve left a gray streak when she massaged her forehead because he licked his thumb, silently reached out, and rubbed it clean.
Chapter Eight
September – November 1968
