Punished

28. Anne-Risten

ANNE-RISTEN

1954

Anne-Risten had locked the door and was sitting on the toilet seat. She had just thoroughly examined her flat chest, trying to convince herself there was truly nothing for Nilsa to grab.

She would ask Anna for permission to lock the door to their dormitory tonight. She’d asked before, but Anna had replied that Housemother didn’t allow locked doors from either side. Anne-Risten heard the big girls say that it seemed as though the witch wanted bad things to happen to them. It was probably true. Housemother was also in the habit of pretending not to notice when Nilsa hit Jon-Ante and other boys. Teacher or the maids were always the ones who intervened. And sometimes even they did nothing.

Three girls would remain at the school for one more night, and the other two were sisters who were always holding hands. Anne-Risten felt like she was on her own.

She stuck out her tongue and looked at her tonsils, trying to remember how big they were last time she checked. It was strange, how her body had changed so much since she came here. Suddenly she had cramps, rashes, and pains that she’d never had back home. Sometimes she thought there was something about the building, maybe lice in the beds, that made her sick.

There was a knock at the door.

“Anne-Risten, are you in there?”

She unlocked the door as soon as she heard Anna’s voice. There the maid stood, smoothing her apron, looking concerned.

“The sisters are going home after all, they were just picked up,” she said.

All at once, Anne-Risten’s legs went weak. She would be the only girl left, with Nilsa one floor down, for a whole night. “No, I can’t stay here by myself!”

“Shh, take it easy now. I’ve been thinking,” Anna said, looking all around although there was no need. Housemother’s husband had picked her up as soon as the school bus drove off. “I was thinking that you could come home with me. Iris agreed to stay here with the boys and said I could take you.”

“Yes,” Anne-Risten said, exhaling. “I want to go.”

“My house isn’t very big, so you’ll have to sleep on a mattress on the floor.”

“I can do that.”

“I live with my siessá,” Anna continued. “But you know it’s important Housemother doesn’t find out you stayed with me.”

Anne-Risten nodded gravely. To think that she would get to go to Anna’s house—not even Else-Maj had been there. And Anna really liked Else-Maj. None of the maids were so attentive to Anne-Risten; they mostly thought she was difficult, with all her aches and pains. Although they sometimes said she was pretty, and that made her happy.

“We’ll leave soon,” said Anna. “The boys were allowed to go take a sauna. I told them that you ended up going home as well.”

Anne-Risten dashed to the dormitory and grabbed some underwear, her nightgown, and her hairbrush. She also got her toothbrush from the bathroom. Hers was the only one left, all the other glasses on the shelf next to the sink were empty.

I T WAS EXCITING TO sneak out of the dormitory hand in hand with Anna. It had been so long since a grown-up had held her hand, and she squeezed extra hard so Anna wouldn’t let go. Anna smiled, revealing the dimples in her cheeks.

They walked down the hill and turned right onto the road toward the store, and Anne-Risten waited outside the white building while Anna went inside. The wind picked up, and snow drifted down from the birch tree, landing on her hat and shoulders. It was already getting dark. What if the other girls had known she would get to leave the school to go to Anna’s house? They would have been green with envy. She licked up the snot that ran from her nose. Anna came out carrying a paper bag, and now she couldn’t hold Anne-Risten’s hand. The new snow sparkled under the streetlights and the houses along the road gave off a cozy glow.

“That’s where I live, in the red wooden house, right at the bend,” Anna said, nodding toward it. “It’s my aunt Inger’s house, Inger-siessá, and I have my own room there.”

“How old are you, Anna?”

“I’ll be twenty-two soon.”

“Why do you work at the school?”

“Why?” She laughed. “Oh, because I like it, I like working with children. Although I hadn’t actually meant to stay for four whole years, really, but I couldn’t seem to leave.”

“Manin?” She asked why in Sámi, and Anna smiled and they switched languages. Now they were far from the ears of the school.

“Because I like you all so much.”

“Mostly Else-Maj.”

“I care about all of you,” Anna hurried to say. “But I was brand new when Else-Maj started school, and she was so little, and I felt that she needed extra comfort.”

“She’s big now,” said Anne-Risten. “She’s the bravest of all the girls at school, even though she’s not the oldest.”

Anna smiled and handed the bag over to Anne-Risten as she removed the broom that was wedged under the door handle and opened the door. “Yes, she’s not the littlest anymore. Now there are new little ones I have to show some extra care.”

“Like me.” Anne-Risten was embarrassed at her own words and fell to her knees in the front hall to untie her shoelaces. She really wasn’t one of the smallest children. She was already in her second year of school.

“Yes, exactly, like you.”

Anne-Risten wanted to say that it still felt as though Else-Maj were more important than anyone else, but of course that would be rude considering Anna had just rescued her from Nilsa.

Anna invited her into the kitchen, where there was a woodstove and a blue rag rug. The smell of freshly baked bread made her chest ache with longing. She stood still, watching as Anna filled the pantry.

“Why don’t you have your own house, or a husband?”

Anna chuckled and turned around, putting her hands on her hips. “I like being on my own, and once I’ve saved up enough money I’ll move to my own place.”

Anne-Risten imagined that this wasn’t quite true. No one liked being on their own. Maybe it was those front teeth that made it hard for Anna to get a husband. This wasn’t an idea that she’d come up with; she’d heard Enná say it. That it was too bad Anna had ended up with those teeth, because she was cute otherwise. After hearing this, Anne-Risten had carefully inspected her own new teeth that were filling in the gaps left by the baby ones she’d lost.

Anna took her to the room where they would sleep. On the nightstand was a photograph of a young Anna, maybe as little as Anne-Risten, standing beside three older brothers and her parents. Her enná also had crooked teeth and an overbite, but she was smiling even so. They were all wearing gákti and looked stiff. Little Anna wasn’t smiling.

“There were important gentlemen visiting, and they took that picture of us,” said Anna, who had noticed what Anne-Risten was looking at.

“You look angry.”

“Do I?” Anna picked up the photograph. “Yes, maybe I do.”

Anne-Risten could see that Anna was lost in thought, the kind that makes your eyes unfocused.

“This picture was taken up in the mountains. I didn’t go to a nomad school in a building, the way you do. We had goahti schools and they came to us, the teachers and also the gentlemen with their cameras, and—” Anna stopped short and quickly set the photograph on the nightstand again. “You all have it much better, these days.”

Anne-Risten wanted to protest and say that their school wasn’t good at all, but Anna’s eyes were so sad that she decided against it. She looked around the room, which was neat and tidy; the white bed was made up with a yellow crocheted bedspread, and there was a desk and a pale blue stool with patches of scuffed paint. The window looked out at the forest, but it was pitch black outside.

They heard the front door open and an older woman called out.

“That’s my siessá,” said Anna, beckoning at Anne-Risten to follow her.

Anna’s aunt wore glasses with pointy frames that made her look like a cat. She was round like Anna, and her bottom swayed as she walked between the stove and the kitchen table.

“Gean nieida don leat?”

Yes, grown-ups always wanted to know that. Whose girl you were. Anne-Risten rattled off her name, the way she was supposed to with all the other names before her own. She felt a tingle in her belly—it had been so long since she got to say her whole name.

Inger lit up, happy to hear which family she was dealing with. “Now I see, you look like your enná and your muo??á.”

Anne-Risten smiled and nodded eagerly. Yes, she’d been told the same thing many times. She was especially glad to take after her aunt, because sometimes she looked like a real movie star.

“There are a lot of pretty girls in that family,” Inger continued. “They marry fast. I imagine the same will go for you.” She whinnied like a horse when she laughed, and it was so funny that Anne-Risten couldn’t help but giggle.

Anna turned her back on them and put clean dishes away in the brown cabinets. “I thought we could warm up some meat stew this evening,” she said.

Anne-Risten sank onto the chair closest to the window and listened to the women chatting, their heavy footsteps on the floor as they went about their usual tasks. Her body relaxed. It was like being home. The down on the back of her neck tickled and goose bumps spread down her arms. She could almost smell the reindeer meat cooking in broth already.

“You’re too skinny. We’ll make a lot of biergomális,” said Inger. “And I baked, too.”

Anna vanished into the bedroom, where they heard her humming, and Inger checked the pile of wood next to the stove before sitting down at the table, picking up her knitting, and counting the stitches. Anne-Risten noticed that silence didn’t make her uncomfortable; in fact, the opposite was true. Here, there was no need to babble. She let her ears rest, and the many sounds of the school became distant. She leaned back, let her muscles relax, and grew sleepy.

“Heavens, girl, you’re about to fall asleep sitting up. You need to rest before we eat,” Inger declared, and was back on her feet.

She took out a mattress, which they placed on the floor next to Anna’s bed and made up with a sheet and a blanket that was heavy like the one she had at home.

Anne-Risten let them fuss over her, tuck her in; she closed her eyes as Anna’s warm hand stroked her forehead and cheeks gently.

“I’ll wake you up for supper,” she said, turning out the lights as she left the room.

She had never been scared of the dark and definitely wasn’t now, with clattering sounds from the kitchen and Anna’s low laugh.

Her throat didn’t hurt anymore, she realized. Her fingertips slipped across the nodes on her throat, and it was smooth. No part of her body felt itchy. Not even her arms.