Punished

35. Marge

MARGE

1985

She drove slowly across the bridge near Vazá?. Below, the ice was trying to take hold, and the snow on the landscape was only a few pitiful centimeters deep. She glanced at Estela in the rearview mirror; the little girl was gazing out at the wide Torne River while humming a song she’d learned at school. Songs had been her way of conquering Swedish; she spoke near perfectly now. To think how quickly it had happened—it hadn’t even been six months. Marge tried to remember how long it had taken her to learn Swedish at the nomad school. Longer than that. A sudden ache in her chest. Her past crowded into her thoughts more and more often these days, and all because of Estela. She hadn’t wanted to admit it at first, but her daughter caused painful memories to resurface. What had she been thinking, taking a child from her home environment and forcing her to become Swedish? How could she have subjected Estela to the same things that had happened to her? Suddenly the car lurched sideways, and she steered it out of the skid with a gasp. Estela didn’t even seem to notice that they nearly ended up in the ditch.

“Do you know what October is called in Sámi?” Marge asked in the cheerful voice she’d developed over the past six months.

Her daughter met her eyes in the rearview mirror and shook her head, two skinny braids whipping around her soft face. She’d filled out a bit, had learned to like the food. The nurse at the clinic had nodded in approval when they went for a weight-and-height checkup. Marge had nearly started crying with relief.

“Golggotmánnu.” Marge smiled. “That means ‘the month when the male reindeer is exhausted from rutting.’?”

Estela wrinkled her nose, a clear sign that she didn’t understand.

“Because it’s time for the reindeer to mate.” Marge felt her hands grow sweaty on the wheel. “You know, so they’ll have calves later. But first they mate, that’s what it’s called.”

Estela looked increasingly bewildered, and Marge rubbed the back of her neck. How could she be so terrible at explaining?

“When the female reindeer—” She paused. Dear God. “You know what male and female are, right?”

“Yes! Johanna has a cat who’s a female and it’s going to have kittens soon.” Estela lit up. “Can I have one?”

“What? A cat? Well, I don’t know.”

“I want one.”

Marge gave up. “We’ll see. I can talk to Johanna’s mama.”

Estela squealed happily and hugged her Barbie with the golden curls. She went back to humming her song, stopping occasionally to whisper in Barbie’s ear. A week ago, when she’d experienced her first snow, she declared it was Barbie’s first time too. The snowflakes made Estela laugh.

“Stick out your tongue,” Marge had cried, exhilarated by her daughter’s enthusiasm.

They stood with their tongues out, giggling at the snow as it melted in their mouths.

“I love it, Mama!”

The snow hadn’t melted, and maybe it was there to stay. Marge glanced in the rearview mirror again.

“Can you try saying ‘golggotmánnu’?”

“Golggotmánnu,” Estela repeated perfectly.

“You know áhkku and áddjá prefer to speak Sámi.”

“I know. You say that every time we come here.”

“Do you want to know how too?”

“Yes!” Estela flung her arms to the roof and Barbie bonked her head.

“We’ll just wait a little bit, until your Swedish is really good. You’ll have to learn one language at a time.”

“I want to now.”

“Soon, angel, soon.”

“I’m not an angel.”

Marge laughed, but Estela looked offended. They were closer now, but not close enough. Sometimes her little girl looked at her with a glare so grim she couldn’t bring herself to hold eye contact.

“You’re not my mother,” she would say in a clear, angry voice. It cut more sharply than anything Marge had ever felt.

“I am your mother.”

But Estela clenched up, turning into a ball of hostility, and sometimes even kicked at Marge if she tried to approach her. “I want to go home.”

In previous months she had babbled furiously in Spanish, but now the words came out in Swedish and Marge wished, sometimes, that she hadn’t learned the new language so quickly.

“Do you remember your old home?” she’d asked once, and the girl had run into the bathroom and locked the door. A deep sense of regret washed over Marge, and she cursed herself.

These days, she would promise her daughter just about anything to see a smile and avoid conflict. She had not, of course, mentioned this to the nurse.

“Look! Reindeer!”

She slowed down and Estela thrust her body between the front seats to see. The reindeer stood still on the road, staring at them with warm black eyes.

“I want to pet them.”

“No, you can’t. They would get scared.” She hit the gas tentatively but the reindeer didn’t move, and she had to stop again. Their eyes were full of accusations, they knew Marge had left the land she came from. She shook her shoulders—sometimes these ridiculous thoughts of hers were frightening.

“Why won’t they move?” Estela wondered.

“I don’t know.”

A car came from the other direction; it honked, and the reindeer startled and launched into the ditch.

“Mean car! He scared them!” Estela pressed her palm to the window and watched the animals disappear into the trees. The other car sped by and honked again. “What if he had run them over?”

Marge sighed. There were some things in life she hoped her daughter would never find out. “Yes, that was mean. But the reindeer will be safe in the woods now. They shouldn’t be on the road.”

She thought of her most recent conversation with Isá, about the reindeer he’d found run over, three of them. The ears of each had been cut off. The hit-and-run driver had gone to the trouble of exiting their car to remove the ears, making it impossible to say which herd the reindeer were from. They weren’t about to let the Lapps get their compensation payment. She’d heard talk like that so many times.

Isá had sounded more resigned than angry. One of the reindeer had still been alive when he found it, but gravely injured. Isá’d had to take care of that as well.

“Would you like to listen to some music?” Marge turned up the volume on the radio.

She recognized the song—she and her colleague had danced to it at the pre-party before they were supposed to go out back in August.

Jon-Ante.

Her cheeks grew warm as she thought of how she’d made a fool of herself in front of him. Drunk and ornery. The humiliation of waking up in his bed the next morning. Fully dressed and panicking because she had to get to her brother’s house to pick up Estela.

Marge looked at her daughter in the rearview mirror again and made a face, which prompted Estela to giggle and try to counter with an even sillier one.

Half an hour later, they pulled up to Marge’s childhood home, where the house glowed red against the thin blanket of fallen snow. Isá had repainted over the summer. The yard looked nice, everything in its place. The shed, too, had a fresh coat of red paint; only the smoke goahti was worn and gray. He said he didn’t want to repaint it, that it was meant to evoke memories of the past. Enná was less than thrilled; she felt it ruined the overall impression. In the summer she tried to get flowers to grow on the south side of the house, and there was a rosebush that would bloom valiantly for a few weeks, but she had the best luck with her poppies, which flourished. She’d also gotten the crazy idea to grow strawberries, and that small patch received help from an infrared light. Isá laid extension cords and carried the heater out to shine on the fragile green leaves and the forming buds. One year, the hare got there first and they had no strawberries at all. Now Enná always draped plastic sheets over the patch at night. Last summer, Estela had been allowed to eat four of the eight strawberries that grew. Eight measly strawberries in one summer. But Enná was pleased.

Three hides from the autumn slaughter were hung on the shed wall to dry. Estela had tolerated everything well, had watched as the hides were gathered after the slaughter, standing right beside áhkku as she stirred the blood in a big tub and peering at the intestines that would be used for blood sausage. Her daughter hadn’t even thought it was remarkable when áhkku prepared the eyes and tongues.

Now her parents were waving from the front steps. Estela was soon out of the car and letting áhkku hug her, but she kept a bit more distance from áddjá. He was hurt, Marge could tell. She wanted to say it had nothing to do with him, that it was probably because of events in Estela’s past. But she couldn’t get the words out without feeling like the one at fault.

Her parents liked Estela, of course they did. Maybe not as much as they liked their other grandchildren, Marge sometimes thought; there was something a little stiffer about their manner with her. But, she reminded herself, it hadn’t been very long yet either. They needed to get used to each other.

There was the language factor, too, that they couldn’t understand each other. The first time she visited their house, Estela had stared at the kitchen table for an hour, nibbling on áhkku’s cookies without looking up. That time, Marge made the snap decision to drive home instead of sleeping over. She was on the verge of tears all the way back to Giron, because once again she’d done the wrong thing, taken Estela to a new environment she wasn’t ready for. Two months passed before they attempted another visit, just as Enná and Isá were preparing to leave for the calf marking. Marge ached inside; she wanted to go along, but it would have meant yet another new situation for Estela, and far too many new people. Their large extended family would have been too pushy, and Marge was afraid Estela would only disappoint them and be so clearly out of place. She would stand there sullenly and watch. But what about the calves, could they get her to warm up? No, it was too risky. So she waved goodbye to her parents and headed back to town. Never had her steps up the concrete stairs at Kyrkogatan felt so heavy. And there they sat, in their apartment, in the middle of summer, staring out at the neighboring building. Her daughter had grown uneasy, picking up on Marge’s melancholic mood and becoming even more difficult to deal with.

Could you change your mind about an adoption? The thought had occurred to her as the rain poured for the third day in a row and they couldn’t even go outside to hunt for new swings and slides.

“Man fiinna bárgge?at dus leat,” Enná said, holding on to one of Estela’s braids.

“She says your braids look pretty,” Marge said.

“I know. I know ‘bárgge?at.’ She says it all the time,” Estela said.

They knew Swedish, of course, but sometimes they were stubborn about not using it. They complained to Marge, saying they wanted to teach Stella Sámi.

“Estela,” Marge would say wearily. “You know her name.”

It was easier to fight that fight, the one over her name. It didn’t hurt as much.

“Stella, boa ? e sisa. Fika!” Enná said.

“Estela, Enná. You know it’s Estela.”

Her daughter, who was already kicking off her shoes in the front hall, turned to her. “Everyone calls me Stella, even at school. I’m Stella.”

Marge felt a stab of pain. She unwound her scarf and hung up her parka. Did she want to be Stella, or did she feel she had no choice? Her daughter’s face revealed nothing.

Marge nudged Enná’s arm and said in a low voice that they could at least try to speak more Swedish to Estela if they wanted to get to know her better.

“Son ipmirda. You understand. Right, Stella?” áhkku winked.

The kid nodded cheerfully. But no, she didn’t understand, thought Marge. She just wanted to be agreeable, wanted people to like her. It was impossible for Marge not to compare, not to be reminded of how she had been invaded by a foreign language herself as a child. Her body’s reluctance, and above all, the fear. She was determined to make sure Estela would never feel that way; she didn’t want her to think she had to be someone else just to exist in the world. It was her responsibility to make her daughter feel safe, but how was she supposed to succeed when everyone was pulling the child in different directions? Giving her a new name, and forcing yet another language onto her?

Marge rubbed a knotted muscle in her right shoulder. She wondered, as she had many times before, if Estela had an áhkku and an áddjá in Bogotá. Were there grandparents crying for her even now? Maybe they had gone to look for her at the orphanage. Unaware that their grandchild was thousands of miles away, with a new set of grandparents she called áhkku and áddjá.

Estela had started asking about different words—is that Swedish or Sámi? Marge sometimes felt intense anxiety about ignoring the advice of the adoption bureau to give her daughter one language at a time.

She watched as Enná deftly scooped coffee grounds into the pot on the stove, exact measurements that were part of her muscle memory and didn’t take any thought.

Marge took the tea bags from the pantry next to the fridge and started the kettle. “I’ve overdone it on the coffee recently. My stomach can’t take it.” She gazed out the window, across the village and the nearest houses. “Is Jon-Ante ever at home?”

“Not very often. But have you seen that car of his? A raggare car. Ye gods and little fishhooks!”

Marge had to smile—of all the things Enná could choose to say in Swedish. Ye gods and little fishhooks. “He’s not like the raggare you’re thinking of, and that car is actually really nice.”

“He surely is a raggare, have you seen his hair? Goodness, I remember when he was a cute little baikabahta and now—now he looks like that.”

She said “baikabahta” with love, as a term of endearment; everyone did. Enná had always been fond of Jon-Ante, and when his parents finally took him out of the nomad school she’d sighed in relief. She returned to the story often.

“Hoja, what a time. His parents had enough, he was always black and blue and they decided his little brothers wouldn’t be going there, and then all the boys were allowed to start going to school in the village.”

Marge remembered that. How jealous she was when Jon-Ante didn’t have to ride the school bus with them. And sometimes a streak of concern appeared in Enná’s eyes, even though it didn’t stop her from recounting the whole tale. “You girls did better at the nomad school, you did,” she said, as though to convince herself and leave no room for Marge to object.

“What does ‘baikabahta’ mean?” Estela asked, looking at them. Marge laughed.

“It means poopy-butt. Have you heard the kind of words áhkku uses?”

Her daughter giggled and repeated it, pronouncing it correctly.

Marge glanced over at Jon-Ante’s childhood home once more. He’d been so kind to her on that unfortunate night. The next day, she’d actually hoped he would call; she looked him up in the phone book and memorized his number. No job title was listed. Some people liked to brag and put titles like teacher and engineer, but Jon-Ante wasn’t advertising the fact that he was a mine worker.

He didn’t call; the thought probably hadn’t even occurred to him.

Estela was sitting across from Isá, her glass brimming with juice as she cautiously brought it to her mouth.

“If she were a little lighter she would look like you, like your own baby,” he said in Sámi.

Marge spun about. “Oh my God, what on earth? What did you just say?”

He looked surprised. “What? Isn’t that a good thing, that she looks like you?”

“Just stop.”

“It’s just, there’s something about her eyes. Maybe she looks a little bit like an Indian.”

“That’s enough! Judging my child like a racist. You of all people should know better.”

That hit home. A familiar shadow fell across Isá’s eyes. Marge’s hands shook as she tore open the Lipton sachet. She couldn’t stop herself from walking away, going to the living room, finding safe things to focus on. The silence in the kitchen must be frightening Estela, and she felt she’d better go back. What she’d said was a cruel reminder and an unfair comparison. For Christ’s sake, he had a scar on his head! The measuring instrument had scraped his scalp when he struggled; blood had poured out and colored his hair red.

She’d found that scar as a child, just by happenstance as they were goofing around on the floor. He let her feel it, sitting perfectly still as her tiny finger slipped across his scalp, even though it must have been hard for him to tolerate. He lied and told her he’d been snagged by a fishing lure. Much later, she learned what had really hurt him. The instrument that had measured his skull.

Now she gritted her teeth, wishing she could take back what she’d said, but at the same time—why would he say such a stupid thing?

Back in the kitchen, Estela looked back and forth between them, and of course Enná was the one to break the silence.

“Oh, I forgot. I have ice cream, too.”

Swedish now, and Estela smiled. She hopped down from her chair to help dig through the freezer.

Marge couldn’t look at Isá, and he turned on the radio. Trackslistan was still counting down the top twenty. He didn’t like that program and turned the dial until he found P4.

“Du belá?agat bohtet hede,” Enná said to Estela.

“The cousins will be here soon,” Marge said.

“I knooooow,” Estela said.

“They’re already here.” Isá had twitched the curtain aside to spot them sprinting down the village road.

These were Marge’s sister’s children, eight-year-old Ol-ánte, who insisted on being called Olle, and seven-year-old áili. Marge watched them walk inside with a confidence she hoped Estela might have someday as well. They crowded onto the kitchen bench and snatched treats from the cookie tray without asking, chatting loudly, and áili grabbed Estela’s braids to measure them against her own. Crumbs flew out of Olle’s mouth as he told them about getting out the snowmobile with Isá and how they just had to wait for a little more snow. áddjá’s eyes were on the boy, and Estela watched them with curiosity as they spoke. áili whispered into her ear and they giggled. Estela let her hand rest in áili’s, and Marge waited for her own childish envy to ebb away.

The children left crumbs and drips of juice on the kitchen table and soon had their coats on again, setting off for an adventure outside, in the village that was Marge’s, was Isá’s and Enná’s, áhkku’s and áddjá’s, the village they knew in and out. Now it was the children’s turn to conquer every corner, and she saw them dash out of the yard and across the main road. The river on the other side of the school hill often proved too big a temptation. Olle and áili knew they weren’t allowed to go near it, and she could only trust that Estela had listened to her mother’s warnings too.

Marge wiped the table and Isá turned off the radio, stood up, and took Norrl?ndska Socialdemokraten under his arm, then disappeared into the living room. Enná was restless, pulling the kitchen chair closer, the shoe band she was nearly done weaving hung from its spindles. Her deft fingers worked quickly, and the yellow-and-red band grew millimeter by millimeter.

“It’s for Stella,” she said. “I’m going to sew a gákti for her too.”

“Are you?”

“I’ve made them for all my grandchildren, haven’t I?”

Marge rinsed her hands and tore off a paper towel, feeling on guard. What would the relatives say when Estela turned up in a gákti? Would they think she had a right to it? At the same time, she felt a tingle of happiness in her belly to think that Enná took it for granted that Estela should have a gákti. It made her speak recklessly.

“Do you think she’s doing well?”

Enná looked up, her glasses perched on the tip of her nose. “What do you mean?”

The newspaper rustled in the living room, and Marge knew he was listening. He must feel uncomfortable, but relieved to be out of sight. Enná kept working on the band, moving faster now.

“I don’t know. Sometimes I’m afraid that I shouldn’t have…”

The silence in the kitchen was deafening now that the radio was off. Marge glanced out to see the children but only their footprints were left in the yard.

“What was it like for you and Isá when I went to the nomad school?” She said it to the windowpane, so close that a brief fog appeared.

Dry fingertips rasped against the yarn. Enná tossed her head lightly and kept weaving. Her soft upper arms trembled under her heather-green T-shirt as her hands moved more firmly.

Marge sat down on the storage chair next to the kitchen doorway, wishing she hadn’t tried to start a conversation that would never come to pass. The chair creaked under her; it was meant for visitors who needed a moment of comfort. She was treated just like them—her parents could offer their presence, soothe some loneliness, but the words wouldn’t come. And what was there to say, really?

She tugged the arms of her cardigan down over her hands; a cold draft was coming from the hall. The children must have forgotten to close the door all the way.

A sharp patter on the front steps made her look that way, and as the door flew open the chill poured in. Marge knew something had happened before Olle took a breath to say:

“Stella is dead!”