Punished

3. Jon-Ante

JON-ANTE

1954

He was mute. Not by birth, but by force.

It had been this way for a few days now. His tongue pressed to his palate, his lips tight together.

Jon-Ante obediently followed the stream of children from room to room in the school and dormitory, without uttering a word. His muteness actually wasn’t that remarkable. It happened in an instant, when he was assigned his bed in the dormitory four days ago and dropped his bag on the floor. He was no longer allowed to speak Sámi, and there was no other language in his body.

His enná had packed his belongings, and at first he couldn’t bring himself to open the canvas bag because he knew that the aroma of reindeer jerky would trigger homesick tears. And crying was not allowed either.

Eventually he opened the bag, squeezing his eyes shut and holding his breath as he dug out pajamas and toothbrush like the other boys had done. He zipped the bag up again and shoved it under the bed.

It was hard to be mute, and sometimes he was left panic-stricken, as though unable to breathe. And he had no control over his tears.

But soon he realized that the other children cried at night. That was when they could let out everything that had piled up inside them during the day. When the lights were out and the room filled with gentle snores, you could press your face to the pillow and hope no one heard the convulsions of your throat. Your nostrils filled with snot. Maybe that was why so many of them snored. Once they managed to fall asleep, it was with their mouths open because their noses were too stuffy.

This morning, when he stood in the front hall with the other children, his eyes were puffy, so he kept them trained on the floor, especially around Housemother. She seemed to be keeping a careful watch on him, but he wasn’t the one singled out today. That was Aslak, who came from the same village and had also just started at the school. Small and easy to lift up. She barked into his ear and squeezed his upper arms. Shook him so violently it looked like his head might fly off. Jon-Ante’s legs trembled and he felt sick; he wanted to close his eyes but couldn’t. Aslak tried to wriggle loose, but the movement only brought him closer to the wall, and she cracked the back of his head into the paneling. Everything stopped; everything went silent. She slammed Aslak’s head once more and his body went limp. Jon-Ante wanted to scream, his eyes darting around, looking for help among the big boys. The ones whose voices had already dropped or who were almost as tall as Housemother. Nilsa, Aslak’s older brother, was red in the face. He clenched his fists and was having trouble standing still, but neither he nor anyone else did more than that.

Housemother was breathing hard and let go of Aslak, who slumped to the floor with his eyes closed. Was he dead? Jon-Ante grabbed the doorframe to keep from collapsing as well. He heard the blood rushing in his ears, and black spots danced in his vision. He must not cry.

“What are you waiting for? Lessons are starting! Go!”

Her voice was strained, breathless; she brought her hand up to capture a strand of dark brown hair that had come loose from her bun. Her black glasses had slipped down her nose, and she pushed them back up, recovering her hawklike gaze and squeezing her fists as she left the hall.

Fear nailed Jon-Ante to the floor, and he hadn’t understood what she’d said anyway. Nilsa fell to his knees beside Aslak, who didn’t open his eyes. Another older boy, Johánas, nudged Jon-Ante in the back, but he resisted.

“We have to go. You don’t want to end up on the floor too,” he whispered in Sámi. To think that he dared.

“Muhto…” Jon-Ante began. His muteness gave way to his own, gentle language.

“Shh!” Johánas tugged at his arm and Jon-Ante let himself be led off. Down the steps, out into the autumn air, across rustling maple leaves, and into the school building. Aslak’s head was hanging, almost touching the top of his desk, but he was alive. Nilsa had carried him to the school building, where Aslak staggered to his desk. But once they all reached the classroom, Jon-Ante couldn’t help himself. He bawled like a baby. Teacher, up at his desk, was taken aback.

“What’s that mewling?”

He squinted, and Jon-Ante slipped off his chair and hid behind Anne-Risten, his cousin, who was in the next seat. He crouched there, trying to swallow his sobs.

“Did he fall down?”

Teacher had gotten to his feet, and his voice was stern. Anne-Risten reached back and grabbed Jon-Ante’s fingers, trying to pull him out. She had already been at school for a year and knew all the rules, and she turned to him and put a warning finger to her lips. Jon-Ante snuffled.

“Is that one of the little ones? Back in your chair, boy.”

Jon-Ante wiped his tears with a sweaty palm.

“Say you’re sorry,” Anne-Risten whispered between pursed lips.

“ándagassii,” he muttered in a thick voice.

She gasped and dug her nails into his palm. He had spoken Sámi!

“Forl?t,” he quickly corrected himself, letting his tongue roll hard over the Swedish r sound. He bowed too, just to be safe.

Teacher slapped a ruler lightly against his palm, and Jon-Ante hurried to climb back into his chair.

“Well, it seems you’ve stopped crying. Fair enough.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Teacher walking between the rows, brushing backs and making the children sit up properly. Jon-Ante straightened his back to keep from drawing more ire. But Teacher didn’t even come to his desk, just went back to the blackboard, where he put up the ruler to draw a line and continued his lesson.

Jon-Ante couldn’t believe it. He’d broken the rule yet hadn’t been beaten. He turned to Anne-Risten, who smiled at him. Her two braids coiled down her back. Just like Enná’s braids when she got ready for bed each night. Suddenly there was a worrying ache in his throat again, and he swallowed, looked at the other students, and tried to think of something else.

One of the boys from Láttevárri turned to Jon-Ante and brought his knuckles to his eyes, twisting them, silently mocking his tears. The friend next to him burst out laughing.

Teacher merely lifted a warning hand and clucked his tongue.

Jon-Ante stared down at his hands resting in his lap. His ears burned. He must never cry again; he wouldn’t be as lucky next time.

Anne-Risten clawed at her forearm. She stopped when she realized her cousin was looking, but soon her nails scratched at her skin again. She was biting her upper lip, where the skin was just as red.

Teacher turned around, pointed at the blackboard, and asked them to repeat the words after him. Jon-Ante listened intently but his mouth didn’t want to make those shapes. Anne-Risten simply kept chewing on her lip.

Jon-Ante leaned his head back against his seat and looked at the posters on the wall, drawings of flowers and trees he’d never seen in real life. At the back of the classroom was a row of shelving units with glass doors, and inside were so many books. The room had recently been scrubbed, and the smell of bleach stung his nostrils. He was familiar with that odor from the dormitory bathrooms. Everything smelled different here—not even his clothes smelled like home anymore. He had a new scent, one that wasn’t his own.

The boy from Láttevárri was called up front to recite the day’s date, the day of the week, the month, and the year. He pointed at words and numbers in the almanac that hung next to the blackboard and spoke confidently, having already been drilled in the thorny Swedish language.

“Nineteen hundred and fifty-four,” he said.

Jon-Ante didn’t understand how he would ever be able to stand in front of everyone and do the same thing. Or how gaskavahkku, Wednesday, would be called “onsdag” from now on. And borgemánnu was “augusti.” And all those words for the year—no, it was impossible to say.

Outside, the birch branches swayed in the breeze, whipping around like arms with claws. He imagined that Enná would be in bed with a headache right now. She was sensitive to rain and especially thunder, knew it was coming long before anyone else.

Oskar, his best friend, was the same. In the middle of a game he would stop short, the color draining from his cheeks, and say he had to go home. He would cross the meadow by the river with slow steps and a head hung low.

Oskar went to the village school in their hometown, Badje Sohppar. He was allowed to return home after the school day. Never would he have to board a bus to Láttevárri and to live in a dormitory.

“Why?” Jon-Ante had whined at the kitchen table a few days before he left. “I want to go to school here too! Why is he allowed, but not me?”

Enná put some more logs on the fire, pretending not to hear, and when he got louder his isá came in. Glared at his son.

“What’s all this shouting about? You’re going to the same school as your cousins.”

But Isá’s brother’s children weren’t at the nomad school any longer, they were grown and back at home, allowed to be out with the reindeer. And Jon-Ante knew that the bus would leave the village on Monday morning, not to return until Christmas. He’d seen his cousins disappear over the years. He, who had never slept without his little brothers right beside him, would now have to sleep alone. And his cousins used to scare him, showing him their bruises from school.

“Why can’t I sleep at home?”

At last they had a home, had been allowed to purchase the house. Someone had come up with the idea of calling their part of the village road the “Sámi loop.” Sámi folks had not been allowed to own homes before, but now their houses were all in a row. Each was the same: two bedrooms, a large kitchen, and a bathroom with a deep bathtub and a window to let the autumn sun blaze in. Their house was Jon-Ante’s safe place; that was where he should be.

“Why?” he asked again.

“That’s just what they’ve decided, so that’s the way it is. You’re going to Láttevárri,” said Enná, without turning around.

He’d heard many times about these people who made decisions, but Enná never said who they were. Not even if he asked.

“It’s going to be fine,” she said, looking at him at last. He wanted to crawl into her arms.

“We could hardly recognize your cousins when they came home after their first term,” Isá said with a laugh.

There was no joy in that laugh. Although Jon-Ante was only seven, he wouldn’t let himself be so easily fooled.

“What if you don’t recognize me after, either?”

Enná joined in the cackling. “You’ll always be my big reaηga. I’d recognize you anywhere.”

O SKAR HAD PURSED HIS lips when Jon-Ante said he would be going to Láttevárri. Became sullen and angry, as though it were Jon-Ante’s fault. Then he said a bad word in Swedish. Oskar could speak three languages; Finnish was the one he liked best, but with Jon-Ante he switched to Sámi, which he’d learned from his mother. He was pretty good at Swedish too, but he preferred not to speak it—except when swearing.

In any case, they’d finally worked out that it was the children of reindeer-herding families who would be taking the bus on Monday. The others got to stay. Sleep next to their siblings. Smell their enná’s scent.

And still, Oskar had been mad at him. It wasn’t fair.

Jon-Ante cleared his throat there at his school desk and whispered “Oskar” softly to himself to see if his voice still worked. Teacher had scared his muteness away. But what was the use? Only the wrong language would come out.