Punished

43. Anne-Risten

ANNE-RISTEN

1986

A Treo hissed and fizzed in the glass on the coffee table. Anne-Risten was stretched out on the sofa with one pillow under her head and another under her knees, her legs happy for the relief. If she didn’t take it easy and elevate them every night, she risked developing varicose veins like Enná. Tonight she could drink her Treo in peace; Cecilia and Niklas weren’t home. They were out celebrating Walpurgis, in two different places, but neither of them wanted to say where.

“Are you going to ?n? To watch the archers light the bonfires?” she’d asked, but they hadn’t answered.

She would have liked to go to ?n, but how would that look? Showing up by herself and standing there looking silly, getting her clothes all smoky and walking home alone? The bonfire really wasn’t far from Bromsgatan, and the whole family had always gone, but those days were over. So many things had been taken from her. She never went to watch the unveiling of the Christmas shop windows anymore either, although it would have been easier not to be seen in the dark of winter. And the crowning of St. Lucia—that was the thing she missed most of all. She’d asked Cecilia if she could submit her for consideration to be the city’s Lucia, but her daughter had looked at her in horror.

“You know whoever has the most relatives around always wins, or, like, that girl who won the year her mom collected all the voting slips at Obs Interior. It’s embarrassing to be chosen!”

“But presumably you would have the most relatives out of all the candidates, so you would be Lucia,” Anne-Risten said. But that joke did not land.

No, she wouldn’t be celebrating Walpurgis this year either. Cecilia had left first, with a lingering “goodbye” that echoed even after the door closed.

Niklas was a little slower to go. He wasn’t the type to tattle, but in his usual understated way he let slip that someone had spotted Cecilia in a raggare car the weekend before. Anne-Risten practically had a stroke and began to bombard him with questions, but he buttoned his lip and shrugged. Raggare cars out before Walpurgis—could it really be true? Surely they weren’t driving with their tops down already, there was still snow on the ground. Niklas stared at her, baffled.

“It wasn’t one of those. Not a convertible.” He spoke to her as though she were awfully slow, but he wasn’t mean about it like Cecilia would be. He mostly seemed to pity her, and Anne-Risten didn’t know which was worse.

She shifted on the sofa; life had been pretty good lately, even so. This was largely thanks to Vivianne, one of the old folks she visited, to whom she’d grown extra close. The former nurse always lit up the moment Anne-Risten walked in. She looked at her attentively and asked how she was doing. After a few months of these visits, they’d grown into something Anne-Risten might venture to call friendship. She cleaned, helped with medications, and filled the pantry while Vivianne listened and patted her on the cheek when everything got to be too much.

At last Anne-Risten could air the worries that ate at her without receiving suspicion and sighs of annoyance in return. Vivianne was always ready to reassure her, examine a rash or squeeze a muscle, all with the same patient attitude. She was around eighty and had spent thirty years working in health care, and there was no symptom she couldn’t recognize and explain. Anne-Risten sometimes closed her eyes as Vivianne touched her with those warm hands, especially when she rubbed the tense muscles of her jaw—it was as though the very touch loosened them. Vivianne never told Anne-Risten her symptoms were all in her head.

“Come sit on the sofa with me for a little bit,” she would urge instead.

They’d sit together and Vivianne would hold her hand as though she were a child and say, “It’s going to be okay. There’s no need to worry, you’ll see. After all, I was right last time, wasn’t I?”

By the time Anne-Risten left, her worry had always vanished, and they waved at each other through the kitchen window. Perhaps it was unprofessional to allow Vivianne to fuss over her, but it was an exchange that made them both happy and didn’t seem to hurt anyone.

“It’s so nice to be needed again,” Vivianne sometimes said. Her children had left Kiruna years ago and she only saw her grandchildren during school vacation; these days they brought the great-grandchildren, who spoke an incomprehensible Sm?land dialect. “But they’re always in such a hurry, no one wants to sit down and spend time like you do, Anne-Risten.”

Yes, she had told Vivianne that her name wasn’t really Anne, and had mentioned her village. Vivianne had been there many times, having worked in the eastern villages for a while.

“I visited the nomad school in Lannavaara once,” she said, her eyes steady on Anne-Risten.

But Anne-Risten clammed right up. Maybe she would share all of that with Vivianne someday.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a worrier. It just means you’re sensitive, and that can be a good thing,” Vivianne had said today. “The best doctors I ever worked with cried when they had to give a cancer diagnosis.”

She had married one of those sensitive doctors and they were blissfully happy for almost fifty years.

“He never called me Vivi, like other people did sometimes. Manfred made a point of calling me Vivianne.”

One morning, Manfred had lain down on the sofa to read the morning paper and never got up again. And Vivianne had never quite gotten used to drinking her morning coffee alone.

She was like Band-Aids, cotton balls, and Treo personified, and eventually Anne-Risten asked if Vivianne would like to spend time together even when Anne-Risten wasn’t on the clock. Over a cup of coffee some morning; perhaps they could finish the conversations they had thus far had to cut short when Anne-Risten hurried off to see other clients.

Vivianne’s smile was so big her eyes became narrow lines. “Oh, sweetheart, I would love that so much.”

T HE INTRO MUSIC OF Rapport chimed in the living room and Anne-Risten wished she had the energy to get up and change the channel; she didn’t want to hear more about the recent accident at Chernobyl. The winds had blown in over Sweden and the rain was making it worse. The news anchor was talking about an expected increase in cancer rates in Kyiv, and the cesium fallout in Sweden would remain radioactive for a long time. Like the devil’s blanket , she thought, and the lump in her throat returned.

“The recommendation is based on a wide safety margin,” said the man from the Institute for Radiation Safety, sounding grave. “The fact is that levels could rise a hundredfold before causing truly serious harm. But even so, we feel that it’s prudent to advise against drinking from any source of still, standing water.”

Anne-Risten bolted upright and stared at the TV. Oh God! What if Cecilia was down at Luossa Lake and they decided to drink from it? Sips of cancer-causing cesium would fill her body and kill her at a young age. Anne-Risten’s hand found its way under her sleeve and she scratched up to her elbow, back and forth. She tried to think more clearly. Why would they drink from the lake? Well, if it was true that Cecilia was riding around in raggare cars, they certainly might decide to cruise down to Luossa.

She stood up, first pacing in the living room and then moving to the kitchen and out to the balcony. The smell of smoke from the bonfire had reached Bromsgatan. Was Cecilia in ?n? Would she have time to warn her?

She rushed to the front hall and pulled on her white winter coat and shoved her feet into her snow boots. Cecilia hated them, said no one wore puffy boots like those anymore, but Anne-Risten took good care of her whole wardrobe so her belongings lasted. Sometimes she wanted to screech that she would have loved to buy nice leather boots if Cecilia didn’t constantly need new Levi’s.

She unlocked the door but hesitated—should she call Linda’s parents? They had a car and could drive around to look for the girls. Or was it better to call Roger? But he wouldn’t have the time, he and the new woman would surely be at some bonfire in Lompis. She kicked off her boots and went to the telephone table. She dialed Linda’s parents and had no time to change her mind because Linda’s mother picked up after just one ring.

“Um, hello, this is Anne Nilsson.” Roger had taken many things from her, but she still had his last name.

“Oh, hi there, Anne, what’s going on?”

“Well, I’m wondering if the girls already left.”

“Long since. Was there something in particular you wanted?”

“I just need to talk to Cecilia.” She bit her lip. Cecilia would never forgive her if she started talking about Chernobyl with Linda’s mother. In fact, she would probably move to Roger’s place for good if Anne-Risten proved herself crazy. Her daughter already wasn’t shy about hinting that there was something wrong with her.

“You always think you’re sick, Mom, but really you’re just psycho,” she once said when an argument grew especially heated. Anne-Risten had backed down like a wounded animal while Cecilia burst into enraged tears.

“You’re so fucking scared of everything all the time!” she screamed, then slammed her bedroom door and tied up the phone line for the rest of the evening. Yes, she had her own phone. Anne-Risten sometimes thought about Hulda breathing on the line as she connected calls in the villages, listening to the private conversations between families and relatives. She wished she could eavesdrop like Hulda.

“Is something wrong?” Linda’s mother’s tone changed.

What if Cecilia had complained to Linda about her neurotic mother and word had spread? “Neurotic” was a word Anne-Risten had learned from Cecilia, and indeed, she had heard all about how the word suited her so perfectly. She should check herself in to the psych ward and prove her daughter right. Maybe that would shut her up for a while.

“No, it’s nothing. I’ll talk to her later, then.”

“It’s so nice of you to let Linda stay over tonight.”

“What? Oh. Right.” Linda wasn’t sleeping over. Hadn’t Cecilia said she was going to their place after the celebrations? She knew she should speak up, but it felt all wrong and she let the girls’ lie become truth. “Did you see the news, about Chernobyl?” she blurted instead.

“Yes, it’s awful. We’re going to see so many cancer deaths.”

“And the part about not drinking standing water.” Anne-Risten squeezed the receiver tight and wound the cord around her wrist until it cut off her circulation. “I guess we’ll have to talk to the kids about that.”

“Yes, and I wonder what we’ll do about the well at the cottage this summer? But I thought they said that advice mostly went for people farther south.” Her voice was suddenly fuzzy, as though she were covering the mouthpiece and talking to someone else. “I have to go now, the neighbors are waiting for us. We’re going to have a little toast. But thanks again for taking care of Linda.”

“Of course.”

They hung up, and she stood in the hall with her heart pounding. Where had the girls planned to spend the night if they weren’t coming home? She pulled on her boots and let the door slam shut behind her.

She walked through the courtyards even though she didn’t like being so visible. With her eyes on the ground, she pretended not to notice all the windows from which people were likely staring down at her. After the courtyard at number 2, the farthest of the four, she took a shortcut through the ditch, across the road, and under the viaduct, then soon found herself on the gravel roads of ?n. The last of the snow, dirty and black, hadn’t yet melted in the shady wooded areas, and the puddles on the road were covered in a thin frozen crust. She stepped on them, letting the ice crunch beneath her boots. A young couple walked by holding hands. When was the last time she’d held another adult’s hand? Roger hadn’t been the hand-holding type, not even when they were newly in love. He preferred to throw a possessive arm around her shoulders and let his fingers brush her breast. Did she miss him? She missed being a pair. Roger would have handled this, could have hopped in the car to go look for their daughter. Of course, she couldn’t have told him she was worried about radioactive water, but she could have said she was afraid Cecilia had gotten involved with the wrong group. Why hadn’t she thought of that? She could have called Roger and told him about the raggare cars, and he probably would have ditched that new woman and gone out to look for their daughter. Wouldn’t he?

Now she could see the bonfire, its tall flames licking at the sky. There was a big crowd, and she recognized lots of people. The air was frigid and her fingers were freezing despite Enná’s knitted mittens. She rubbed her hands together as she walked around the fire, trying to look like a normal person rather than someone searching with fear in her eyes. The wind changed and the heat of the fire blazed against her cheek; she leaped back.

She closed her eyes—suddenly she was in the goahti with áhkku, the fire in the center warming cheeks that had spent too long in the cold outside. But most of her warmth came from snuggling up close to áhkku. Her reassuring heartbeat and her hands pottering in front of them, opening the coffee pouch, taking out a needle house, rolling up shoe bands, always moving. A whole little life was always happening in áhkku’s hands, and Anne-Risten felt secure. This was before school, before she became a different person. Before her fear. Before her physical weakness became a threat. She returned home after one term sure áhkku wouldn’t recognize her. Gone was the little body that leaned against her with such trust when they were in the goahti. She must have been able to feel the tension that wouldn’t allow Anne-Risten’s back to curve and relax into her warmth. Had she grieved for it? Had she tried to help her become the same old Anne-Risten again? After all, she showed up at home having been taught that her name was Ann-Kristen. Not that she said so to áhkku or her parents. They must have known, but no one told her that was wrong. Instead, her arms began to itch. And then came other new and mysterious symptoms. During the worst of them, when the family was at their house in the village, áhkku took a thermometer and broke the glass. She had her own ways of healing and fixing. Out came a lively drop of mercury. She caught it on a spoon and told Anne-Risten to swallow it, and so she did.

But it didn’t make her better. She grew older and áhkku’s embrace grew full of her younger brothers and little cousins. Those who came after her—some of them were spared the nomad school, didn’t turn out like Anne-Risten. No one wanted to name the school as the cause, but at the same time, if there was no reason for her worry then it was simply an indelible part of Anne-Risten. The truth was, no one else turned out like her. They looked away when she tore at her arms.

Years later, she learned about the dangers of mercury, and how it accumulates somewhere in the body when ingested, like a poisonous ticking bomb. And she had drunk it. She nearly walked into the river with her pockets full of rocks that day. But then she met Roger and learned to curve her back against a fellow human again.

Anne-Risten opened her eyes. Sometimes she had wondered if the mercury was what had killed the fetus in her belly. Had the tiny drop been waiting in her womb? Maybe it also caused the recurring cysts she now experienced, and their severe pain that made her have to spread her legs at the gynecologist.

She sighed as she gazed around at the crowd, too short to see well. No Cecilia. She resumed her lap around the bonfire and spotted Niklas, laughing with his friends. She stopped. This felt like spying, seeing him in a context she shouldn’t be privy to. But he, too, might end up at Luossa Lake and drink the water there. She took a few tentative steps toward the gang of boys; they all looked the same, several of them with hockey mullets.

He caught sight of her and his smile was extinguished. That was normal, she told herself, they’re supposed to become independent and want nothing to do with their parents.

She waved, beckoning him over, and he said something to his nearest friend with a laugh—she thought that was Tony, hadn’t seen him in a long time. Niklas was probably telling him he was going to take a leak in the woods, didn’t want to say his ridiculous mother was standing by the fire in her ugly boots with that permanent look of concern on her face.

He headed her way and nodded past her with a stern look, as if to shoo her farther off, and she trudged after him. When they were at a safe distance, he turned around with question marks in his eyes.

“Have you seen Cecilia in any raggare cars tonight?” she said immediately.

“Is that what you came here to ask me?”

“Yes, I just got so worried when you said—”

He cut her off. “You have to stop worrying about everything.”

And that made it harder to bring up cesium and radioactive fallout. Anne-Risten could feel that the flames of the bonfire had found their way under her coat- and shirtsleeves. She clenched her hands inside her mittens.

“But you don’t want her to ride around with any raggare either, do you?”

“Just drop it.”

“She’s sixteen.”

“Look, I don’t have time to stand around talking about her. We’re heading somewhere else now.”

Anne-Risten tilted her head back to look up into his face. He was tall, like Roger. She didn’t like it when he wore that same annoyed expression his father often did—his mouth a narrow line.

“There’s something else too. Don’t get upset with me now.” She licked her dry lips. “But I saw on the news… you know Chernobyl.”

His eyes widened and he looked around. Was he afraid that other people might overhear? She rushed on, aware that he might just flee.

“Anyway, they’re saying you shouldn’t drink standing water out in the wilderness now. It could be radioactive. And I thought, if you happened to end up down by Luossa Lake…” She nodded toward the foot of the mining mountain. “Don’t drink the water. Don’t drink any water that doesn’t come from the tap. That was all I wanted to say.”

He backed away and she saw the embarrassment in his eyes, recognized it from when he was small and frightened. She had ruined his Walpurgis. Now she would feel guilty all night long.

“Mom, just go home,” he said, his tone tense but his expression sad. “I won’t drink any water. I promise.”

The shoulders that usually kept his posture strong and tall were slumping now, and she felt ashamed, but also calm—it didn’t last long, of course, but at least she knew he wouldn’t die of cesium. Instead she had made him sad. There was always some new burden to bear.

“I’ll go now.” She turned around but glanced over her shoulder. “You’re a good boy, Niklas.”

She wouldn’t subject him to her tears. And anyway, when she looked back again after a few more steps he was gone. The mine loomed gray and ominous over the city, a constant reminder of who was in charge. It had been ages since Roger worked there and Niklas was a newborn. She’d been so happy then. Hadn’t she?

She reached the other end of the viaduct and looked down the road, which ran alongside the train tracks toward downtown. Cecilia was probably in town, she decided. As she walked briskly she glanced up at Hjalmar Lundbohmsg?rden, the brown timber house that bore the name of the first director of the mine, who had resided there. The place was haunted, and she’d warned the children never to go there when it was dark. She passed Bolags Hotel, a stately yellow wooden building, and saw the fancy cars outside; the city must have some VIP visitors.

Breathlessly she went up the hill between City Hall and J?rnv?gs Park. There had been a bonfire by City Hall as well, and clusters of teenagers hung around outside the bus station. And there came the raggare cars, parading slowly along Hjalmar Lundbohmsv?gen. It might have been really striking if it weren’t for the loud music and the way some of them hung out the windows while waving beer bottles or sitting on the trunks. There must be at least twenty cars with gleaming paint, in green, red, and black. There was even one pale blue one. She tried to peer into the ones with hard roofs but it was impossible to see in unless the windows were down. They rolled slowly past City Hall and took a left at Gula Raden, the stretch of old wooden houses she’d always wanted to live in.

Down past Centralg?rden, which had once been a hospital and was also rumored to be haunted, she spotted a raggare car she recognized from the village over the summer—Jon-Ante’s. So strange to see him driving around in it. She hurried across the street and ran the last bit, afraid he might take off. Maybe he knew which car her daughter was in.

He was bent over behind the car, and as she approached she recognized Cecilia’s black coat. She was on her knees, puking in the grass. Linda was holding her hair back and Jon-Ante—well, what was he up to?! She shouted, it just came out. In Sámi. “What is going on here?”

He whirled around and, oddly enough, looked relieved, as though she were a guardian angel showing up just in the nick of time. But no. She snapped at him.

“Is it you? Are you the one driving my child around in a raggare car? She is sixteen! Jesus Christ, Jon-Ante, you are an old man! What are you doing hanging out with sixteen-year-old girls?”

“Why, Anne-Risten, calm down—”

“Calm down? Are you aware that Roger will kill you when he finds out?”

“It’s not what you think, I—”

“Mom! Mom, just shut up!” Cecilia had finished vomiting and was staring at her with bloodshot yet panicked eyes. Linda looked at the three of them, full of the giggles, drunk or possibly pretending to be drunk. There was a gleam in her eye that Anne-Risten only barely had time to register.

“Cissi! Are you Sámi? Your mom speaks Lappish?” Now Cecilia was crying, and Linda threw her arms around her. “Don’t cry. Cissi, sweetie, don’t cry.”

Jon-Ante ran his hand through his rounded swoop of dark hair. He looks like Elvis , Anne-Risten thought before her rage took over again. She switched to Swedish.

“I ought to call the police. What did you do to them? Did you give them liquor?”

His eyes flashed. “Be quiet and listen to me. Your daughter and her friend were in a car I thought they had no business being in, so I told them to get out. I was going to drive them home, but they were too drunk and scared to go home so we ended up staying here. Do you honestly think I would have anything to do with little girls?”

“How should I know? I see what I see.”

“Then you’ll just have to trust me. I would never, ever—” He cut himself off and threw his hands in the air.

“I have to get them home,” she said.

“Not in my car.”

“No, obviously not. Do you think I want to be seen in a raggare car?”

Cecilia had stopped crying and was staring into the distance. Her bangs, which she’d sprayed and styled so carefully before leaving home, now lay flat on her forehead, and the curls Anne-Risten had set with a home perm were straggly. Linda couldn’t help herself.

“So you really are Sámi?”

Anne-Risten didn’t like that look on her face, and there was a hint of distaste in her voice as well. One that was far too familiar. But the worst part was how her daughter seemed to be completely lost, as though she were naked and exposed.

“Yes, we’re Sámi! Do you have a problem with that or something?” said Anne-Risten. “I’m sure you’ve heard people speaking Sámi before, so it can’t be that goddamn surprising, can it?!” To Anne-Risten it seemed that her voice echoed across the vast bus lot, but she didn’t care. She had half a mind to shove that ridiculous little Linda up against the car. And she wasn’t giggling anymore, no siree. But there was an annoying superiority to her attitude, something she must have picked up at home. She fell silent, but one eyebrow was twitching under her bangs.

“How did you two end up in Jon-Ante’s car?” Anne-Risten wasn’t about to let this go. Jon-Ante’s arms were crossed and she saw his little finger sticking out. She’d almost forgotten about that, and for an instant she was somewhere else. She looked him in the eye, and there he was—her cousin, the one who’d been the worst off of all.

“Jon-Ante? You said your name was Jonne.” Linda had recovered her attitude.

Anne-Risten put her hands on her hips. “Shape up this minute and answer my question.”

“He made us get out of Perre’s car and said we couldn’t ride in it.”

“But you were going to ride with him instead, was that his idea?”

Jon-Ante stared at her, his anger depleted; now he seemed resigned. Cecilia had collapsed on the cold ground with her legs crossed. She would probably end up with a UTI, but what was worse was seeing her vacant gaze.

“He wanted to drive us home. Right, Cissi?” Linda was too drunk, or perhaps too young, to even understand what had just happened. The gap Cecilia had tried to hold closed for all these years had opened wide. Anne-Risten wanted to whisper into her daughter’s ear, say it wasn’t so bad, that it would all work out. Linda would stick around. If she was a real friend, they could close that gap.

“I have to get them home, I guess a walk will do us good,” she said, facing Jon-Ante.

He nodded but didn’t move, as though he were waiting for something more.

“Come on,” Linda said, tugging at Cecilia’s arm, but it fell back down.

“I can go call a cab,” Jon-Ante said, nodding toward the bus station.

“No, we don’t live very far. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

There was no way she could get in a cab when it might be Roger’s friend driving tonight. This news would spread through town in no time, and not just to Roger. Everyone would know that Anne Nilsson had ridden home with two drunk teenagers.

She grabbed Cecilia by one arm and Linda, giggling, took the other. They pulled, but arms like cooked spaghetti weren’t easy to work with. Jon-Ante stepped forward and grasped Cecilia by the waist, gently bringing her to her feet. Anne-Risten wanted to cry. That was the way you’d hold a child.

Her daughter wasn’t unsteady, but she and Linda each took a hand. Anne-Risten squeezed the bare hand, which felt like ice through her mitten. She desperately wanted to put her mittens on Cecilia, but she didn’t dare; instead she rubbed the skinny fingers, felt the silver rings catch on the yarn.

They took a few tentative steps—they could do this. Anne-Risten glanced back at Jon-Ante.

“ándagassii,” she mouthed.

He just nodded.

“Giitu,” she went on.

He sighed. But there was no more she could say besides sorry and thanks. Not right now.