Punished

17. Jon-Ante

JON-ANTE

1954

Jon-Ante had removed his wet pants and soaked jacket and hung them from the nail by the door. His sweater was damp too, but he couldn’t sit there in just his underwear. He found some burlap under the workbench and wound it around his legs up to his waist, then curled up in a corner and tried to calm his breathing. Cold air blew in through the broken window; he’d swept the shards of glass against the wall with his shoe. He couldn’t think about the boys who had left him here. He couldn’t think about Enná, Isá, and his vielja?agat. He simply couldn’t let himself think about anything. But the joik was there in his chest, wanting out. And out it came, in the end. Softly.

What comfort it was. It was like having áddjá right beside him. áddjá had taught him how, and they liked to joik together when no one else was around to hear. Jon-Ante took a deep breath and started over, feeling áddjá beside him and joiking along, quiet but enough.

No-see-ums and mosquitoes would likely come in at some point during the night, the last stragglers of autumn. He should cover the window, but couldn’t figure out how, and tears sprung to his eyes. He would have to protect all the parts of his body as best he could, tuck his face against his knees with his arms wrapped around them.

Rustling and rattling came from outside, as though someone were approaching among the graves. He was all alone in a cemetery in the middle of the night. He felt himself panic; his throat constricting, a sob gathering in his chest. He had to joik louder. He had to joik áddjá, so together they could keep the ghosts away. But he was out of breath, could hardly get any air. The wind had returned and was whistling around the shed. With its help, he could probably chase off the spirits that were looking for him.

H E MUST HAVE JOIKED until he fell asleep—he didn’t remember—and when he woke to a voice outside it was light inside the shed. He still didn’t move. A face popped up in the broken window. Pekka, the cemetery caretaker. He ran a hand over his bald head and swore in Finnish. Jon-Ante knew the word “perkele.” He whispered it softly to himself. His hands itched and he saw red spots on his pale skin. The mosquitoes had feasted on him, all over his wrists and palms. There and on the soles of your feet were the worst places to get bites.

A key in the padlock, and the shed door opened. Pekka was bowlegged and shorter than most men. He had dug áhkku’s grave almost a year ago, had patted Jon-Ante on the head when he was crying something awful on his way into the cemetery that chilly autumn day. When the first frost had nipped at the grass and the air smelled like snow. Yes, he recognized Jon-Ante now, it was clear to see.

“Piera-Heaika-Jon-Ante,” he said.

Yes, that was his name all right. Not just Jon-Ante. Hearing his true name, hearing himself listed out after áddjá and Isá, gave him renewed strength and he sat up with a nod.

“What are you doing here?” Pekka spoke Finnish, and Jon-Ante wanted to respond but couldn’t find the words. He needed Sámi to say everything that was scratching inside his chest. At last he let it out. In a single long breath he told Pekka how Nilsa had tricked him and abandoned him and how he wasn’t the one who had broken the window. Pekka squinted, listening, likely not understanding it all. “Nilsa? Jovna-Nilsa?”

Jon-Ante held his breath. He had been told not to tattle, after all. He shook his head. “Ii! Ei!” He repeated it in Finnish to be safe. “Ei!”

It didn’t look as though Pekka believed him. He took an unsteady, stiff Jon-Ante by the elbow. The burlap fell to the floor, and he was ashamed of his bare legs. Pekka looked around and spotted Jon-Ante’s pants, tossed them his way. They were nearly dry, and he quickly put them on.

Pekka eyed the window and grabbed a broom. He dumped the shards of glass into a garbage bag and inspected the window again. “I suppose I’ll have to drive you to the nomad school, then?”

“It wasn’t me,” Jon-Ante mumbled in shaky Finnish.

“I know.”

Jon-Ante put on his jacket and stepped onto the gravel path outside. When the cemetery was bathed in light and the birches rustled to drop their last leaves, it was a whole different place. Peaceful. He glanced in áhkku’s direction and Pekka noticed, gave a nod. Jon-Ante had learned never to walk on the grass atop the graves, so he stayed on the gravel, took a left, walked about ten meters, then took another left. áhkku was in a sunny spot. Her name was written in gold on the small headstone. Jon-Ante had never been here without his parents, and he didn’t know what you were supposed to do at a graveside.

“Help me,” he whispered.

Pekka waved with his whole arm, calling him back although he’d only just gotten there.

“Veahket mu,” he whispered again, placing a hand on the black stone.

“Come on. I’ve got a lot to do today,” Pekka called.

Jon-Ante thought it was strange that he was shouting so loudly across the graves. You were hardly allowed to talk at a cemetery, weren’t you? He walked back along the same path.

Pekka drove an old flatbed truck. The gearshift jammed, and he yanked and tugged at it. He wore a brown cap on his bald head now. His hands were rough, and a black mat of hair curled from his forearms to his knuckles.

He drove slowly along the same road they had run down last night, chased by the storm. Jon-Ante had believed he was going home, had planned to go to his great-siessá’s house since his family was away. But now he was approaching the school instead. The straightaway into Láttevárri made him bow his head and Pekka was quick to pat him.

“It will all work out,” he said.

He didn’t know Housemother. He didn’t know about the switch. No one outside the school seemed to know what went on there. Because if they did, they wouldn’t let the children stay there. Right?

“Have to pee,” Jon-Ante whispered. He wiggled his bottom anxiously against the seat. Pekka stopped the truck. Jon-Ante opened the door and jumped out. There was no shelter on the straightaway and he glanced shyly behind him, but Pekka seemed very busy inspecting his own hands and wiping the windshield with his sleeve.

Jon-Ante took a few steps into the ditch and glanced over at the river, the water that came in a never-ending stream from his home, his village, and from even farther north. He peed, and it had a strong smell, it ran into the grass, and he shuddered after the last drop. With his head low, he returned to the truck.

No grown-up had ever hit him. Today he would find out what it felt like. He scratched his mosquito bites until the skin was flaming red.

Pekka pulled up outside the school. He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I would have rather taken you to Heaika, if I could.” When he said Isá’s name, Jon-Ante’s throat grew thick. “I know what it’s like here, for you kids.”

Pekka was the older brother of Lisbet in the kitchen, Jon-Ante knew. They seemed to be the same kind of person, the type who patted children gently on the head.

“I’m scared,” said Jon-Ante.

Pekka placed his calloused hand on Jon-Ante’s bony shoulder. “I’ll come inside with you and explain what I saw.”

Pekka walked behind him, and Jon-Ante wanted to fall back, be captured in his arms.

They had hardly closed the door behind them before Housemother appeared. She pushed her glasses back into place time and again, as though they refused to sit on her nose; she put her hands on her hips. Jon-Ante listened as Pekka spoke Finnish, pretending not to notice her exasperated expression.

“He couldn’t have done it himself. He’s too small. The window is this high.” Pekka’s hand hovered twenty centimeters above Jon-Ante’s head.

But Housemother wouldn’t listen. She made fists so tight her knuckles went white and seemed eager for Pekka to leave. She took a few steps toward the door, reaching for the handle. “You worry about your own business, I’ll take care of this.”

Pekka gazed at Jon-Ante with unhappy eyes. The sound of footsteps and murmuring came from upstairs, children who both wanted to see and didn’t. Had they woken up to find his bed empty this morning? Had they called for Anna? Where had they looked for him?

Pekka reached out a hand as if to say goodbye in the grown-up way, but Housemother got between them, herded him out, and closed the door.

She grew like a black beast of prey before Jon-Ante, her clawlike fingers grabbing his upper arms.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, but the beast growled from the depths of her belly and didn’t hear a word. She bared her teeth as though she were about to snap her jaws around his neck. Her voice was distorted as she shouted at him, her face so close to his, frightening with her crazy black eyes. He closed his own.

But suddenly there it was, áddjá’s joik, inside his head. Drowning out the beast. It helped him endure when the blow hit the back of his head, and when she twisted his ear. The louder she barked, the louder the joik became. The last blow knocked him off his feet and he landed on his back, helpless as a beetle. She staggered as though off-balance. She wasn’t going to kick him, was she? No, but here came the heel of a shoe, smashing his hand. The pain made everything else disappear, yet his eyes flew open wide and the screech that emerged was too loud; it drowned out the joik. He was alone. But someone else was screeching too. Marge. On the stairs. She was holding her ears. Was it because of his scream, or because she was screaming so terribly?