6. Anne-Risten
ANNE-RISTEN
1985
It was a fantastic year for cloudberries, everyone in the village agreed. The Norwegians shuttled back and forth by way of Finland, crossing the bridge at Karesuando into Sweden to pick their own “multe” or look for homemade signs at the roadside offering the berries at a good price. Anne-Risten knew the campground in Vuolle Sohppar would purchase cloudberries for resale, maybe she would swing by later and sell them a few liters. Isá had given her a ride into the forest, asking first if she was sure she wanted to go alone. Oh yes, she would see to it that they got cloudberries this year. Enná’s knees were giving her trouble and her neck was no better, and when she called Anne-Risten to say the forest was gleaming gold without asking for help picking, all she could do was get on the bus and head home.
It would be sweaty work, the sun on her back as Anne-Risten tramped through the undergrowth in Enná’s tall boots. She whistled to keep bears away. At a fork in the path, she wasn’t sure which way to take and muttered grumpily. But the open bog appeared at last and while it didn’t look promising at first, when she crouched down to pick the first berry, she saw the rest. A sea of orange. They grew one per plant, ripe and perfect. There were unripe red berries here and there too, but she let them be. The Norwegians picked them all, which upset the villagers. You had to be patient, come back another day.
Anne-Risten systematically zigzagged through and filled her pail quickly. It was already getting heavy. Good thing she’d brought two, and the other one was even bigger.
She took off her anorak and the mosquitoes swarmed, attracted by her sweaty back. She tried to apply some repellant to her sweater—they wouldn’t bite through it, would they? Instead they went hard at her hands, and she cursed as she picked, blowing them away when they landed on her fingers.
She stood up straight and her lower back felt tight, her legs numb. She trudged to the tall pine where she’d left her backpack and unfolded the camp stool. Her thermos was full and melted butter dripped from Enná’s gáhkku, running down her fingers. She lifted the net of her mosquito hat, poured a cup of coffee, and put a handful of cloudberries on the flatbread. She rolled it up and took a big bite.
Her old neighbor Gun-Britt popped into her mind—she always bragged about a secret cloudberry bog near her home village. Anne-Risten hadn’t mentioned her own cloudberry bogs, because then she would have had to tell more of her life story than she was ready to share. But Gun-Britt rambled on and liked to serve cloudberries when people visited. Homemade jam or fresh whole berries to garnish a sponge cake.
Anne-Risten took out her pack of Blend yellow label, lit one, and hoped it might bring momentary relief from the mosquitoes. How they had smoked at Gun-Britt’s that autumn; how long ago was that now? Eleven years? Yes, it had been 1974. It wasn’t so hard to recall, but sometimes she pretended her memory wasn’t clear. Yet it was the same old story around this time every year; the memories returned.
A NNE -R ISTEN HAD MET G UN -B RITT in the yard of number 8. Niklas and Cecilia had been bored with the playground by their building, so she took the kids to a different courtyard at their apartment complex on Bromsgatan. Gun-Britt mentioned she and a couple other housewives met each morning at her home and invited Anne-Risten to join. She was nervous the first time, but eventually it became a habit she clung to, for many reasons.
Around this time, she became pregnant with her third child. When Roger was at work she would stand on the balcony to smoke, staring at the mining mountain, but the smoke clung to her anyway and she blamed the other housewives when he asked. He wanted her to stop smoking for the baby’s sake, and she had promised she would but was still annoyed. After having smoked since she was seventeen—for more than a decade—it wasn’t easy to just stop cold turkey. Besides, the first two kids were fine, so why shouldn’t the third one be?
Niklas had been six then, and every morning she walked him to nursery school. He liked it, but the teacher said he struggled to sit still. Cecilia was almost five, and Anne-Risten had hoped she would remain the baby of the family. But Roger couldn’t help himself, even when she said they shouldn’t. After all, she could feel all through her body that it was receptive. But he turned her over in bed and pressed his face next to hers, breathed on her throat, whined a little. She gave in.
The next day, she sat in the pilled green easy chair in their big living room, hollow-eyed and crying, lighting cigarette after cigarette.
Back then, Roger drove the iron ore train all the way to Narvik and Lule?. It was shift work and sometimes the days felt intolerably long without him. The worst was when his alarm clock woke her before dawn, because she knew she wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep and the day would be even longer.
“It’s a good thing you have the children to keep you company,” he often said, bending down to kiss her on the head before he clomped off to the bathroom. It never crossed his mind to walk softly out of consideration for the neighbors.
Anne-Risten took a drag, waving away the mosquitoes; she didn’t want to remember those days, but the memories kept nagging her. The relief she had felt each time she dropped Niklas off at nursery school. Someone else would keep an eye on him, giving him what he needed and not watching him with constant worry. They wouldn’t be afraid he might trip and crack his head open, wouldn’t take his temperature the moment he looked warm, would let him play outside with the other kids.
The busy Hjalmar Lundbohmsv?gen ran right by the nursery school playground and the brown fence was low but the teachers never let the kids out of their sight. That first week she snuck around across the street, by the Odd Fellows’ fancy lodge, watching to make sure none of the children climbed the fence, that Niklas didn’t.
She was too nervous to let him play alone in their courtyard at number 6. Well, one time she had let him go out after Gun-Britt said you couldn’t watch your kids every minute, especially not sons, because then “they’ll never move out and will become oddball bachelors instead.” But Anne-Risten had stood frozen by the kitchen window, staring at Niklas all afternoon. Roger came home and was peeved to find dinner was late. When he worked the early shift, dinner had to be adjusted to his schedule.
Anne-Risten poured more coffee, drinking it despite the protest from her stomach. The cloudberries were sweet and bright in her mouth, and she took a few more. Cecilia had loved cloudberries even as a little girl, and Gun-Britt always let her take some from the kitchen table when they had coffee. Anne-Risten just waited for her daughter to get them stuck in her throat and choke to death.
Cecilia had been a sickly baby who had trouble breathing each time she caught a cold. Roger often took her out on the balcony to let the fresh air open her tiny airways. Anne-Risten didn’t dare to go out there with the newborn in her arms. What if she threw her over the railing?
Roger—he was a reasonable guy—had stopped smoking to inspire her. But they’d kept the ashtray all these years because his siblings and one of her brothers smoked. His younger brother blew rings to entertain his niece and nephew. They tried to catch them with their hands, like soap bubbles.
Anne-Risten rounded her lips now and blew smoke rings at the mosquitoes. She stiffened as she heard a car on the gravel road. Was she about to have competition for the best cloudberry patch? No, it kept driving.
That was how it had been, she thought, the housewives of Bromsgatan always gathered at Gun-Britt’s home on the second floor of building 8A. As soon as the kids were dropped off at school, and the little ones were busy playing on the floor, they sat around the kitchen table and drank coffee.
Anne-Risten hadn’t wanted them to know she was pregnant with her third, afraid they would judge her for smoking.
That morning, she’d worn a cornflower-blue A-line dress to hide the bump of her belly, having realized it was starting to show. She felt anxious about going to Gun-Britt’s, but the anxiety of staying home with her child was worse. Cecilia was being stubborn and Anne-Risten had yanked her by the arm, even pushed her forward, saying they had to go. She yelled; it was painful to remember now. Her eyes full of sadness, Cecilia went to the front hall and put her sandals on the wrong feet, chubby little toes poking over the edges. But Anne-Risten couldn’t be alone with Cecilia when panic always lurked just out of sight. The nausea, dizziness, and numb hands.
It would pass if she went to Gun-Britt’s, where she could sit smoking with her and Gunilla and Eva-Lena. Her dress’s long sleeves with a sturdy button at the wrist made it impossible to scratch at her arms inside them.
Sure, she could be mixing up the conversations and visits, but that day had been different. That time the conversation had clawed at her.
Back then, Gun-Britt’s kitchen looked like her own: pale green cupboards, rounded handles, and a shelf of flour, sugar, and oats above a stainless steel counter. The only difference was that there was no empty space beneath the pull-out cutting board. Instead, a dishwasher rumbled there. Roger refused to buy one, calling it expensive and unnecessary.
The neighbor ladies flashed big smiles when Anne-Risten entered. She wished they weren’t all there already. Had they been talking about her, did they suspect she was pregnant?
“Hi, Anne!” Gun-Britt had set out a delicate coffee cup with red roses and a gilded edge; it was filled halfway to leave room for a splash of milk.
Anne-Risten took a seat and brought the cup to her lips, but her hand was shaking and she quickly lowered her arm. “It’s hot.”
But no one was listening; she hadn’t needed to explain herself. They were talking about the new residents at number 2.
“Goran was over there to sell raffle tickets, they’re collecting money for a class trip to Lule and he said the woman came to the door in her nightgown. At two o’clock in the afternoon.”
Eva-Lena was getting some mileage out of her story, and Anne-Risten watched her friends, their mouths open almost like wolves ready to pounce.
How could she call them friends? They wouldn’t say the same about her. They must have other lives outside of this late-morning coffee group. With real friends.
“She was drunk,” Eva-Lena said, and the women gasped. “And that’s not all. Goran could see her husband in the living room, and apparently he was in his underwear.”
“And they’ve got children,” said Gun-Britt, shaking her head.
“Yes, their son is in ?sa’s class,” said Eva-Lena. “A real troublemaker. She’s afraid of him.”
“Well, no wonder. What kinds of things does that boy pick up at home?” Gun-Britt said.
Anne-Risten lifted her cup again while no one was looking. The porcelain clinked against her teeth and she took a sip. She took out her pack of Blends, but her index and middle fingers weren’t getting along so she left the cigarette on the table.
“That boy chases other children around the courtyards, I’ve seen it,” she said, eager to be part of the conversation. The others were used to her being chatty, and she couldn’t act any different now. “He showed up on a bike one day, clearly looking for something, and then he jumped off and started chasing two smaller boys. But they ran around the building before I had time to shout at him.”
She would never have dared correct someone else’s child, but the other wives nodded, their stern faces showing that they would have acted just as decisively. Shouted, if they’d had the chance.
There were always plenty of topics to discuss around Bromsgatan, and handily enough they all lived in different parts of the complex, so they could supply one another with fresh gossip from their own buildings.
The buildings were arranged in rectangles, like forts surrounding the four courtyards. There were always watchful eyes on the children as they played on the swings and jungle gyms or in the sandboxes. Always some mother glancing out the window or standing on the balcony to call for her child.
“If he goes after my Goran, I promise you Kalle will show no mercy,” said Eva-Lena.
She had pink and green rollers in her hair. Before coffee time was over, she would undo the rollers and pat her short curls. Make herself pretty for the day. She wore eyeliner and lipstick and always had something new from the Domus department store, bought with her staff discount. This afternoon she would work for a few hours. It fit well with Kalle’s shift at the mine and the kids being in school.
Anne-Risten had put on mascara and blow-dried her long dark hair smooth and shiny, with a perfectly straight middle part, finishing off with a gentle curl at the ends. People sometimes told her she looked like the singer Anni-Frid Lyngstad, and today she had tried to mimic her look from when she performed in the Melody Festival last year. She knew she could hold her own among these wives, because Roger had said he had the prettiest wife on Bromsgatan, and probably in the whole town.
Gun-Britt was more down-to-earth; she didn’t wear makeup and her brown hair hung long and straight down her back. She had no plans to start working like Eva-Lena. Taking care of the house and her kids took up plenty of time. Gunilla was the same way. She pushed her glasses back up her nose and lit a cigarette.
“I heard they’re Lapps,” she said in a languid voice.
Eva-Lena nodded and spoke with her cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth: “Yes, Kalle said the same thing. I guess he had reindeer before, the husband, but then he took a job in the mine. Guess we’ll see how it goes, whether he’s a drunk, I mean.”
“Well, I suppose he doesn’t necessarily drink just because the wife does. Maybe he had just gotten up after the night shift,” said Gun-Britt.
“Ha! You think so? What man would let his drunk wife open the door? Nah, I’m sure they drink. Like they do.”
Like they do.
Anne-Risten couldn’t look up. She rolled her cigarette under her palm, on the table. Squashed it flat, but realized it too late. She moved her hand toward her body until the cigarette fell into her lap. Damn, she really could have used a smoke.
She let her hair fall over her cheeks, had to catch her breath before she could look the others in the eye again and smile. Her name was Nilsson now. She was like the others. Roger Nilsson’s wife, Anne Nilsson, that was her.
A DOG BARKED, AND Anne-Risten stood up, listening for voices. She stubbed out her cigarette, packed away her thermos, and took the second bucket out into the bog. If it was villagers they would know to move on, you didn’t butt into other people’s cloudberry patches. But if it was Norwegians, they would pretend everything was hunky-dory and come stomping in, thinking they shared something to exclaim over. She bent down and pinched a cloudberry too hard; it burst between her fingers.