9. Marge
MARGE
1985
It had been four days since Marge became a mother. Her daughter was six years old and now tucked into the newly purchased bed. It had taken a long time for her to fall asleep. Marge had sat on a stool beside the bed, holding the little girl’s hand and singing softly, the same song her enná used to sing to her when she was a child.
Estela. That was her name. Her Colombian name. She had brown eyes, a small, straight nose, and lips like a strawberry. Above her right eyebrow was a scar, barely a centimeter long. She had lost her first tooth recently. Her shiny dark hair was cut bluntly at her chin, and her bangs were a bit crooked, as though someone had trimmed them in a hurry, or at least carelessly. Maybe the orphanage staff had realized at the last minute that she needed a fresh haircut to look nice. Marge wondered if her hair had been long before, because the girl was in the habit of tugging at a lock and looking surprised when it stopped near her ear.
Estela had her own room, but Marge didn’t want her to have to sleep alone, so she’d pulled the bed into her room. The little girl would see her the moment she woke up. Her daughter. She had to correct herself. This wasn’t just any little girl, it was her daughter.
“Aren’t you going to rename her Stella?” her enná had said when Marge was back home for a visit and had told them that it was time, that her daughter was called Estela and would be arriving soon. “Estela sounds so, I don’t know, different. She might have a hard time at school, with such a strange name.”
Marge knew she meant well, that her words were rooted in concern, but even so it wasn’t easy to digest.
“Adopting a child, and all by yourself,” Isá had muttered. “Either you have your own kids, or you don’t.”
She hadn’t responded, instead retrieving her jacket from the back of a chair and leaving the house. She got in the car and drove back to Giron. Enná called as soon as she walked in the door of her apartment on Kyrkogatan.
“You know how Isá is,” she’d said. “When he sees your little girl, he’ll be as thrilled about her as he is the other grandkids.”
Her brother had three boys, and her sister had a boy and a girl. Her siblings were younger but had managed to do everything before her. They were both married. Her brother was a reindeer herder and her sister’s husband was, too. And they quickly had babies. Marge loved them deeply. She was Auntie Marge, Marge-goaski to her brother’s kids and Marge-siessá to her sister’s.
Relatives gossiped about how she didn’t have a man, maybe never had, but no one would ask her directly about it. To be perfectly honest she wasn’t all that pretty—or so she’d overheard her siessá say once when she thought Marge was out of earshot. Marge wished she’d had a quicker tongue that day, but what would she have said? That she was too ? Siessá hadn’t exactly called her ugly, not really. In any case, the moment soon passed.
So, fine, perhaps she wasn’t anyone’s idea of beautiful. Her nearsightedness had worsened over the years, and these days her eyes were almost pinheads behind her thick glasses. She had recently switched to pale pink plastic frames, large ones that extended down her cheeks. The optician had convinced her to try contact lenses, and she wore them on occasion but always felt naked. Perhaps her glasses made her unattractive, if that’s what her siessá was getting at, but they were part of her personality. Even if she still didn’t like seeing everything with such clarity. And it really was a mercy to remove her glasses when she wanted her surroundings to become soft and shapeless.
Maybe it would have been easier to find someone if she’d gone out more, spent time dancing at Malmia. Instead she worked, taking every shift she could get as a home aide and pitching in on both Christmas Eve and Midsummer’s Eve. Saving up to become a mother. She’d always felt that there would never be a man for her. A child, though, she knew would come to her eventually. But it would require money. She had taken a second job at Triangelkiosken, the convenience store, but above all she had her steady job caring for the old folks in town and knowing that she was one of their favorites. She spoke the languages, both Sámi and Me?nkieli, and they always wanted her to stay a little longer, just a few minutes more, they said, enlivened by finally getting to talk to someone who understood.
When she told her family she was going to adopt, silence fell around the kitchen table. It was Isá’s birthday; she had chosen the day for this announcement with care, imagining that he would be in a good mood on account of the cake and presents, that a grandchild wouldn’t provoke his ire. She had let them believe that it would be a baby, because somehow that felt better. But even so, she noticed that they seemed uncomfortable, as though they were ashamed on her account. Finally her sister, her oabbá, managed to offer congratulations, and the others murmured their agreement.
“But you don’t have a husband,” her oabbá said tentatively.
“No, but single people can adopt as well.”
“But that means…” Her sister must have figured it out, had surely read somewhere that if you were single and middle-aged, that meant an older child. The two of them had always been able to communicate with a glance, and Marge only had to send a pleading squint her way for her sister to stop talking.
“I’ve heard it’s expensive,” said Enná.
“It costs money?! You’re buying a child?” As usual, Isá had blurted without thinking, and the others laughed. This sudden levity seemed to ease everyone’s discomfort. Everyone’s but Marge’s.
If they only knew how hard she had fought, about all the studies she’d undergone, all the forms she’d completed, and the psychologist who’d scrutinized her loneliness under a magnifying glass. That had been the hardest part, baring those feelings to a stranger. She’d never talked to anyone about how it felt to long for a child or what it was like to live on her own.
“Are you hoping that a child will cure your loneliness?” the psychologist had asked. “Do you expect this child to make up for what you didn’t manage to attain with another adult?”
The question nearly knocked Marge out of her chair, but she didn’t take the bait. She emphasized that she wasn’t alone, that her immediate family was large, not to mention all the relatives. And a child, that was something different—it wasn’t about avoiding isolation. It was about love and care, she said, looking down to hide her tears.
“It’s not going to be as simple as with a baby, who depends on adults to survive,” the psychologist said. “This will be an older child with a will of their own.”
A silence followed, and Marge knew she was expected to share her reflections. What was the right thing to say? It was impossible to know.
“I want to hold a little hand, I want to provide security for a child, I want to be a mother. I always have. You know—I told you how I took care of my siblings when we were younger, and now my nieces and nephews.”
“And yet you didn’t ask any of them to write letters of reference.”
“But my cousin Gáren did, she was able to describe the situation more from the outside, and I thought it was better to have an impartial voice.”
The psychologist looked at her for a long time, but Marge held firm and gazed right back, even though inside she trembled. “You talk a lot about your big family. What do they have to say about your wanting to adopt?”
She had anticipated that question and rehearsed her lies at home in front of the mirror—a perfect smile at the corner of her mouth as she spoke about her parents and siblings, how they always supported her.
“And what was your own childhood like?”
“Fantastic. Truly. In every way. Stable and lovely.”
“How about your school days?”
“Great.”
She had made it through all the tests and all the sessions, and now Estela was lying there in her red wooden bed with its safety railing. It had been four days, and her daughter had said little and fell asleep, exhausted, before seven almost every night. Marge had never been good at languages; she could hardly manage English, and Spanish felt wrong in her mouth. But she had repeated what she wanted to be able to say. “Hello, Estela,” “Welcome home,” and “Mama.” But she hadn’t dared to say the last one yet. Did the child see her as her mother? Marge, in any case, had fallen for Estela immediately; her whole body surged with powerful maternal feelings.
Bonding was important, according to the adoption agency, especially at first, and so the apartment was their safe place. But they had gone out the day before, and Estela had held her hand tight as they crossed the road on their way to the grocery store.
Marge steered the cart with one hand and held on to Estela with the other. She had to select items with one hand, pedagogically naming each one in Swedish. Mjolk, brod. Milk and bread. Somewhere inside her, a voice piped up and wanted to say them in Sámi, too. Mielki. Láibi. She’d asked the ladies at the agency if she could teach Estela two languages at once, and they all but sputtered their responses, had looked at her as though she were deeply irresponsible. “Goodness, no! Two languages will never do.”
So she picked Swedish and buried her feelings about the choice.
When they got home from the store, Estela dropped her hand and separated herself once more.
The truth was, her daughter kept her distance in the apartment. She sat at the end of the white kitchen table, tucked herself into the far corner of the leather sofa in the living room, and kept a watchful eye on Marge. But the moment Marge looked at her, she glanced away.
The hand she had been holding at the edge of the bed was slack. She had grasped it once the girl was asleep. Only then was she able to touch her.