Punished

25. Anne-Risten

ANNE-RISTEN

1985

Her childhood home had its own special smell. Most people probably felt that way, but Anne-Risten was sure she had a stronger reaction to it than others. The house was next to the big county highway, not far from the road that led to the village school and the church. It could use a fresh coat of paint; its current brown was peeling around the windows and by the steps. Each time she came to the village and opened the door, she walked into an aroma that never changed. She wondered if her brothers noticed it too. The two older ones who had moved away and seldom visited home, maybe they got the same sensation she did. But probably not her three brothers who lived in the village. The smell wasn’t the sort of thing she could ask them about; they would shake their heads, declare that she was talking nonsense as usual. How many times had she wished for a sister, someone to confide in? Her brothers weren’t interested in her, and they didn’t like Roger at all, said he was an idiot. But just think—a sister she could call anytime she was worried, a sister who would have listened to her forbidden thoughts about ending a pregnancy, way back when.

She had just returned from picking cloudberries. Enná took the pails from her in a firm grasp without a word of thanks, but her smile made up for it and more. Although just a moment later, Enná reminded herself of an unpleasant thought: “Too bad the children didn’t come with you.”

“They’re so busy with their own stuff. They’re big now.”

The air around them became charged with what no one would talk about. Whose fault was it that the grandchildren’s visits were so rare? Where would such a conversation even begin? Enná smoothed things over as usual, it was easier that way, better to bring up a cheerful memory.

“Do you remember when they picked cloudberries with me that summer? They were such good workers, they filled so many pails.”

Anne-Risten nodded and smiled. Cecilia had eaten more than ended up in her pail and got a stomachache. They had been allowed to come along berry-picking just once, and once was enough, according to Roger. He was the one with a driver’s license, so he got to decide. Sure, she could have brought the children on the bus and gone berry-picking more often; why hadn’t she? She looked at Enná and suddenly felt guilty. The explanation was simple: everything always happened on Roger’s terms, and he preferred to visit his parents in his home village. But that one summer she had stood firm, saying that her mother and father wanted to celebrate his milestone thirtieth birthday with coffee and treats. She lost herself in the memory, recalling how Roger’s complaining had started before they even entered the house.

“Y OU KNOW I DON ’ T like it when they talk Lappish. I don’t understand a word. Neither do the children.”

“Please, let’s go inside. They’ll speak Swedish with you.”

Anne-Risten had bought a black dress that was roomy enough to hide her small bump. Roger’s eyes softened as he rested a hand on her belly.

“Don’t!” She backed off and glanced anxiously through the living room window.

“You still haven’t told them? My parents know.”

“You told your parents? But we were going to do it together! After a little more time had passed.”

“Ma found out at my party.”

Oh, of course. He’d had one beer too many along with his sandwich cake, and he often let secrets slip when that happened.

“We’re not telling my parents today.” Her voice grew hoarse, her vocal cords tightening. If Roger’s parents knew, she couldn’t have an abortion. He had forced her into a corner. Had he sensed her hesitation, had he noticed she wasn’t happy?

“Fine, then,” said Roger, heading for the porch. She followed him.

And there was the smell as they stepped in. There was no describing it, but it sometimes settled into her skin when she and the children stayed for a weekend. She almost didn’t want to wash their clothes or the children’s hair once they got home.

The children had dashed in ahead of them and Anne-Risten heard them laughing with their áddjá. Isá was a lot of fun and had always been good with children. He was sitting on the kitchen floor with Niklas hanging from his back and Cecilia bouncing around them, letting out small happy cries.

“We caught áddjá, Mama!” she called, and her fine brown hair fluttered as she leaped.

Enná stood by the kitchen table, which was beautifully set. Intricately looped cinnamon buns with bright white flecks of pearl sugar on top, a glazed pound cake, and even anise bread that she’d fried in coconut oil that morning. They would be dipped in sugar. That anise bread was Roger’s favorite, and Anne-Risten hoped he would thaw out now, notice that his mother-in-law had made an effort.

“Happy birthday, Roger! To think you’re thirty already!”

“Thank you, thank you. I’ll be catching up with you soon!”

Isá snorted between the children as they tugged and yanked on him. “Yes, happy birthday!”

“Thank you! Listen, though, kids, let Morfar get up now so we can have some treats,” said Roger.

Morfar. The Swedish sounded so out of place, and Anne-Risten didn’t want to look at Isá, afraid of the sadness she might see in his eyes. He wasn’t Morfar, he was áddjá.

“Come on, áddjá! Sit next to me,” Niklas said, taking a firm grasp on Isá’s big mitt.

“Mon haliidan ? ohkkát du ja Cecilia luhtte.” Isá always insisted on speaking Sámi.

“Yes, sit between us!” Niklas said, hopping onto the kitchen bench.

Anne-Risten glanced at her son. Had he understood? How was that possible? He didn’t hear Sámi at home; Roger had insisted she speak only Swedish with the children. She didn’t speak Sámi even when she was alone with them. He had explained that there was a very good chance they wouldn’t do well in school if they didn’t speak Swedish well, and they might even turn out semilingual, never proficient in either language. “And then what would happen to them, Anne? Did you ever think about that?”

It hadn’t been a battle, he hadn’t needed to convince her. She never intended to subject her children to the risks that came with their heritage, neither in school nor around town. My God, she herself still sometimes hid behind a shelf at Konsum when she saw someone from the village, because they would surely speak Sámi to her, and people might hear. She hadn’t given the children family names that had been passed down through the generations, and she hadn’t let them wear their nuvttahat boots in Kiruna, even though Enná spent weeks stitching them. But in the winter, when they visited the village, she put those lovely reindeer-hide boots on them and Enná’s eyes lit up when she saw them. Today Anne-Risten had put Cecilia’s summer cap on her, with the red flowers and lacy edge; Enná had made that, too. Cecilia loved it and always wanted to wear it in town, but Anne-Risten was hesitant to allow it.

Roger had never cared about the children’s clothes, but he seemed to think the hat was awfully cute on their daughter. So that one was fine, but nuvttahat were out of the question. Same for the lovely diehppegahpir hat Niklas was so proud of. He liked to stand in front of the mirror and shake his head so the big red tassel bobbed atop it. “It’s exactly the same as áddjá’s!”

She put it on him when she and the kids took the bus to her parents’ house. Enná would run her fingers along the fabric by his cheeks where the hat sat snugly, protecting his ears. She wanted to make sure it wasn’t too small, because if it was she would make a new one.

“Makkár bullá doai háliideahppi?” Isá picked up the platter of buns.

“I want a cinnamon bun and some pound cake,” Niklas said, helping himself before anyone could protest.

“Buorre.”

“Buorre,” Niklas repeated with a smile.

Anne-Risten didn’t dare look at Roger. She heard him taking loud sips of his coffee. Enná, who had made such an effort to chat with him about the weather, seemed to think she’d done her part and turned to Anne-Risten. She flung out her lasso full of their heart-language, trying to draw her in: “I’m coming to Giron next week, to the podiatrist. I thought I might drop by to see you and the children.”

Anne-Risten nodded.

“Maybe we can swing by Tempo, too, it’s been ages.”

“Sure.”

“How’s your gákti belt looking ahead of the funeral next weekend? Should I polish the buttons?”

“You don’t need to do that.” Anne-Risten responded in Swedish and Enná stopped, watching her. The lasso had missed again. She was hurt, but she didn’t let it show, just launched into a monologue about her eanu who had died suddenly of a heart attack. She had been close to that uncle. So had Anne-Risten. How could she answer in Swedish, how could she talk about his death in anything but her own language? Enná wanted to show her the shawl she just had tasseled, the one she would wear to the funeral. They went to the bedroom, and the red shawl was there, rolled up in a box. Enná took it out and swept it over her shoulders, pinching its ends together in front, where the risku would go.

“Nu fiinna rámssut,” Anne-Risten said, her fingers playing over the tassels as she admired them. Each one was light as a feather on its own, but all together they became heavy.

No lasso was needed now. She spoke. They spoke. As they did on the phone, mostly when Roger wasn’t home, and as they did when she brought the children to the village by herself. Then it hit her. This was how Niklas had learned.

Enná talked about the funeral, and her face didn’t betray any emotion. She would not cry. That would have to wait for church.

Enná’s skin had remained smooth for a long time, until she turned fifty, but now there was a faint network of wrinkles around her eyes, and her eyelids had begun to sag over her lashes. Anne-Risten had to stop her hand, which was heading toward her belly out of habit. She couldn’t have a good cry here with Enná. She couldn’t share her doubts and her grim wish to get rid of the baby. They never talked about the hard stuff. Or, well, they could talk about other people’s troubles, the relatives’ problems, could have long and thorough conversations about that, but they kept their own troubles well hidden. As though they didn’t exist. She didn’t want to burden Enná, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to handle the silence that ensued if she did. Enná couldn’t respond, much less help or heal. Anne-Risten would only make her mother feel that she wasn’t enough. She couldn’t do it.

“Are you coming down with a cold?” Enná asked.

She must have noticed that something wasn’t quite right, but she wasn’t about to ask Anne-Risten how she really felt. There was always the suggestion of a neutral reason behind a pale face or a cracking voice. Sometimes Enná called and caught her right after a crying fit, but she never asked if she was sad. No. Instead she offered advice about which folk remedies worked best for various aches and pains.

“Yes, maybe I’m getting a cold,” Anne-Risten replied. “Niklas has had a runny nose lately.”

“Yes, you look a bit out of sorts, but I’m sure it will pass quickly.”

T HE KETTLE WHISTLED ON the stove and Anne-Risten was back in the aroma, back in the kitchen where time stood still. Where everything was the same: the humming chest freezer, the loud tick of the clock, the tin sugar bowl tempting children to sneak a cube. Eleven years had passed since she wished a baby away, and no one who had been there that time suspected how much she was suffering. The familiarity of the kitchen felt safe and secure, but it also unearthed too many memories. She heaved an audible sigh and watched Enná spread old issues of Norrl?ndska Socialdemokraten over the kitchen table and dump out a pail of cloudberries. She wanted to clean them right away.

“I need to pee first, then I’ll help you.”

“Again? You just went.” Enná didn’t look up—was there a hint of irritation in her voice? Anne-Risten should make a joke about a small bladder and too much coffee. Really, there was so much else she ought to say, circumstances she wanted to ask about. Things that always came up when she started thinking about her own children, comparing their upbringing to her own. What had it been like for Enná to raise such an anxious child? Had she felt guilty or simply powerless? And what did she think of her daughter now? Anne-Risten was really no better than her enná. She used her vapid prattling to avoid serious conversations.

As a child, she had often been told she was a hypochondriac, her imagination the source of all her aches and pains. Often there was no illness, even though she felt it so clearly. Enná, and everyone else, too, stopped paying attention to her anxious questions and simply said that whatever it was would pass. But no one understood that it never went away, new problems appeared all the time.

She had spent a lot of time examining her body in the bathroom at the nomad school, poking at whatever hurt, standing on the toilet to get a better view in the mirror, twisting around to see why her back felt itchy or opening her mouth wide to look down her throat. Once she had peered into her nose and seen the red swelling deep inside, realizing that there was only a millimeter-wide opening to breathe through. Suddenly she felt like she was suffocating and had breathed through her mouth until she got dizzy. And all the times it had burned when she peed, even though hardly a drop came out. “You go to the bathroom too often,” said the maids. “Stop it.” But the bathroom was the only place she could inspect her body in peace. And didn’t they understand that she always felt the urge to pee?

Not much had changed since then, not Anne-Risten herself and not Enná. Ráhkis, ráhkis Enná, she thought fondly, and she felt surprisingly moved, looking at her again as she sat there with the cloudberries before her, each movement full of concentration, her glasses on her nose, her soft murmuring. She often talked to herself, and as a child Anne-Risten had thought of it as a little performance, watching Enná go about her business and narrate it at the same time. That constant chatter had been hard to live without during nights in the dormitory. Enná, puttering through the last of the day’s chores in the kitchen, or in the goahti during summertime, correcting herself and reminding herself of what must be done. It was impossible to fall sleep without her voice nearby.

Anne-Risten turned around and went to the bathroom, locked the door, wiped the seat, and sat down tentatively. But there was no barbed wire as the urine hissed into the bowl, not even as the last drops came. But then what could it be, aching in her belly? It felt heavy and tight, like the third baby had.

She washed her hands, scrubbing with soap for a long time, rinsing for even longer in hot water, lowering the pressure from the faucet so they wouldn’t hear how long she was washing for. Could it be a tumor? She grabbed the sink with her wet hands and held her breath. Then she had to wash her hands again because the sink looked grungy. She didn’t use the towel, unspooling a few rounds of toilet paper instead.

She wanted to ask Enná, “What do you think? My belly feels heavy and tight. Could it be something dangerous?” But she didn’t. She’d stopped voicing questions about her alarming body before she was a teenager, because it was so hard to face the accusing looks. So she was on her own. Really, she had been on her own since she turned seven.