7. Jon-Ante
JON-ANTE
1954
The boys gathered behind the dormitory each recess. The school was made up of three pale yellow buildings: the school itself, which was closest to the church; the dormitory with the forest behind it; and, directly across the schoolyard, a small apartment building for the three teachers. Housemother lived in an apartment within the dormitory, one floor up, next to the girls’ rooms. The ground floor held the kitchen, dining hall, common room with its fireplace, and the boys’ dormitories. Down in the cellar were the showers, the sauna, and another common room.
Behind the dormitory building was where the boys were best shielded from Housemother’s eyes, but it still wasn’t perfectly safe. They liked to chase one another or do handstands against the wall, and today they were throwing pebbles at the trees to see who could get a hit. Most important, they were speaking Sámi in low voices. If they saw an adult, they would move farther down the slope to the forest.
When they could speak Sámi, laughter returned. Jon-Ante sometimes felt invincible. Teacher and Housemother might believe they were in charge, but they were wrong. The boys broke the rules, and it gave him a fizzy feeling in his chest. Jon-Ante always kept some distance from the big boys, who decided what they’d all do; he laughed with them, but never said much.
“We’re going to go into the witch’s apartment and put thumbtacks in her bed,” said Nilsa, peeling bits of bark from a birch tree.
“Everyone’s coming,” said Guttorm.
Jon-Ante froze, watching the others as they talked over one another. Things got more heated as they discussed how they actually wanted to kill Housemother, saying she should be dragged into the forest and tied to a tree to be eaten up by mosquitoes. But of course that was impossible, so they would find other ways to torture her.
Jon-Ante didn’t understand how this plan was supposed to work. More than once, Housemother had punished several boys even though only one of them had misbehaved. This wouldn’t end well; she would beat them all black and blue.
“Who’s with us?” Nilsa asked.
Only Jon-Ante gazed in a different direction, hoping no one would notice, but even his silence made him stick out. Someone shoved him lightly in the back.
“What about you?”
“Sure.”
“So you’re with us?”
“Well…” Now all eyes were on Jon-Ante. All those brave eyes. “What if we get caught?”
He could see the wry faces, how they puffed themselves up, rolling their eyes. They were imitating one another, becoming the same.
“Chicken!” they said.
“I am not!” To think that he dared to contradict them. He wished he hadn’t.
“Yeah, you are. Go ahead, just stay with the girls, that’s where you belong.”
That was Nilsa. He was tossing a rock from hand to hand, legs planted wide, but his eyes were on Jon-Ante. “Only chickens and girls aren’t brave enough.”
Jon-Ante shook his head, but it was already hanging. He wanted to point out that not all the boys were even here.
Nilsa nudged his shoulder and Jon-Ante stepped backwards to keep from losing his balance. Just moments ago they’d been having so much fun. He had hit the farthest tree. They’d laughed together, and all the awful stuff had lifted away for a little bit.
“Go be with the girls!” Nilsa pointed at Marge and Anne-Risten, who were taking towels off the clothesline. They were on tiptoe, rosy-cheeked as they removed clothespins; Anne-Risten’s long brown hair was crimped after being let out of its braids.
Jon-Ante had never liked Nilsa. They were neighbors in the village, just three houses between them. Nilsa was big and mean, his ears always pricked like a listening predator, his teeth full of gaps and his hair thick and coarse. He had an air rifle he liked to shoot songbirds and rats with. He was four years older than Jon-Ante and his shoulders were already growing broad.
“You’re the same age as my brother, and he’s not afraid.” Nilsa grabbed Aslak, a skinny boy with dark, kind eyes. Jon-Ante didn’t think they looked like brothers. He liked Aslak’s laugh. They had giggled together outside the classroom yesterday, and Aslak had pretend-chased Jon-Ante. Now they avoided looking at each other.
Someone shoved Jon-Ante again, harder this time. He stumbled backwards and landed in the grass.
A window opened on the ground floor, and it was Lisbet, the cook with her fat upper arms and broad nose that was flat like a boxer’s.
“You know, boys, I can hear you all the way in here and soon the fun will be over if someone else does too!”
Jon-Ante got to his feet and the others moved quickly down the slope. He didn’t know if he should follow. The boys laughed as though they didn’t care about the warning. Lisbet was still leaning out the window.
“You know better. Don’t go along with their nonsense,” she said softly in Finnish to Jon-Ante.
She knew he didn’t understand Swedish very well yet. And while she didn’t know Sámi, most people more or less knew Finnish, at least enough to understand the gist of what someone said.
Lisbet would never hit anyone. She liked to pat the children’s heads or squeeze a little hand comfortingly. She lived here in Láttevárri and was happy to have this job as cook. She and Housemother didn’t get along, Jon-Ante had noticed. Housemother probably thought she was more important than someone whose job was to stir big pots. Rita Olsson didn’t actually belong in the village, really, she was better than that; people said she came from a place with sidewalks. She had moved here only because her husband, Ture, got a job. He didn’t live at the school, though, and he traveled a lot for work. Jon-Ante had heard all of this from the older children. Together they had bemoaned the fact that the witch had ended up at their school.
Jon-Ante gazed at Lisbet so long that her eyes softened. She must have realized that he had no choice, that he had to be like the other boys. She shook her head sadly as he walked after them.