24. Marge
MARGE
1985
It was summer, according to the calendar, but the thermometer wouldn’t climb past five degrees, and rainclouds were hanging over the slalom hill. Marge watched her colleague Pirjo’s deft hands as she drove the car, parked on the hill on Gruvv?gen, and set the hand brake.
“No niin,” Pirjo said, glancing at the rearview mirror. “This woman can be a little interesting.”
“How so?”
“You’ll see. There are some things you just can’t explain.”
Pirjo opened the car door and the wind caught it; she had to hold on tight. At almost sixty, she’d been a home aide for forty years and had seen it all, knew everything there was to know. Marge hadn’t worked in the neighborhoods around Gruvv?gen before, and she was grateful that Pirjo was here to guide her. Pirjo never hesitated to give an accurate picture of each client. If it was an angry old man on the verge of dementia, she said so. If it was a woman who would chew them out for not managing to clean to her standards, she said so. And if it was a relative of someone on the municipal council, she would mention that, too. Even more important to know if it was one of the boss’s relatives. You really had to stay on your toes then, because damned if those old folks didn’t love to tattle. Pirjo was awfully fond of cursing, and she had to keep a lid on it around the Christian ones. There was one woman who refused to let her in on account of her salty language. This had never happened before, in all her years, and Pirjo took it personally. She informed the boss that either she would continue to visit that woman or else she would quit. She was the only one who could get away with such ultimatums.
Marge tied her hair up in a ponytail as they took the elevator to the sixth floor. She struggled to collect her thoughts; they kept wandering to Estela, who was at nursery school right now. They had waved goodbye this morning, but Estela had shot her a glare that was hard to interpret. Marge’d had to prop herself up against the rough white wall as she rounded the corner. Each drop-off felt like she was abandoning her daughter. Even though they would see each other this afternoon, she feared that Estela didn’t believe it. That the girl’s little body spent all day in a state of tension, to make sure she would be prepared when Marge failed to turn up and wait in the schoolyard. She had seen the worried look on her daughter’s face during the first week, when she came out of nursery school, and the way her jaw relaxed when Marge waved with both hands. She had held out her arms to offer a hug, but Estela met her with hands behind her back.
“Hej d?, Estela!” a little girl had shouted from a distance, and her daughter whirled about to wave with a smile.
“Hej do, Sofia!”
But her smile faded the moment they began to trudge home. It was painful, and Marge had no one with whom she could talk about it, no one to ask if her daughter’s behavior was normal, and above all no one to tell her that it would pass. Sometimes her mind filled with irritation and the forbidden thought: the girl should be grateful she had been given a home. This thought was always followed by a vast abyss of shame.
Estela no longer held her hand as they walked from nursery school to Kyrkogatan, because she knew they were going home. That must mean she understood there was no need to be afraid, which was a good sign, but Marge missed holding that small hand in her own so much that her chest ached.
In her darkest moments, she decided she was an unfit mother. God had made sure her womb would never bear a child, and she had defied him, gone against what was preordained, so of course it would never turn out well.
Pirjo, beside her in the elevator, cleared her throat and opened the door. “Like I said, she’s an interesting one, this lady here. Hold on to your hat.” Pirjo rang the bell, pressing the button firmly three times. A moment passed before they heard footsteps approaching. “Oh, dear! I left her new pill organizer in the car. Here! Take the key and go get it. I’d better soften her up before you come in. She doesn’t like new people.”
Marge took the car key, went back to the elevator, and pressed the call button. The door to the apartment opened and Pirjo stepped in with a spirited greeting in Finnish: “Hyv? p?iv?!”
The elevator was slow and stopped with a little bounce. Estela loved riding elevators, so Marge had taken her to some of the few high-rises in town, where they rode up and down countless times. Too bad there was no elevator in their building on Kyrkogatan.
She reached the car and opened the trunk to search among the neatly arranged boxes and plastic bags until she found a pill organizer with tiny drawers that pulled out. That must be it. Back inside, she found the front door ajar, so she went in. The door to the bathroom was open, and the faint scent of urine wafted out. Marge hated scrubbing the yellow stains from tiled bathroom floors, but she wasn’t sure if that was part of the job at this lady’s house.
She heard Pirjo speaking Finnish in the kitchen and found her clattering busily at the sink. The old lady’s back was stooped and her scalp shone through her gray hair, which looked rough and dry.
“This is Marge. She’s going to start visiting you as well,” Pirjo said, this time in Swedish.
The woman didn’t turn around. Bottles of pills sat in front of her.
“She doesn’t think she needs the organizer, but I’ve told her she simply has no choice. She already took the wrong pills twice last week.”
Marge stepped toward the table and set down the red box, preparing herself to offer a kind smile—her smile typically landed well with the old folks. The woman looked up, her eyes watery and edged with red behind her glasses. She had liver spots on her cheeks and a few lone strands were all that remained of her eyebrows. Her hands were as spotty as her face, and her nails yellowed.
“She needs her eye drops and is well aware that we should administer them, but she insists on doing it herself and the drops land on her cheeks,” said Pirjo.
Marge had never liked it when people talked over the heads of the elderly. She often chattered and joked with those who had it in them but was serious and understanding with those who needed a gentler approach.
Now she found herself at a loss, unable to work out which tactic would be best. There was something off about this woman. A feeling of disgust spread through her body in a way she’d never felt before, which was saying something considering that she had visited the homes of alcoholics who had vomited all over themselves, and any number of people who should have been admitted to the mental hospital.
“Don’t be difficult now, Rita. Let Marge put in the drops. Your eyes aren’t looking good at all.” Pirjo rolled her eyes in Marge’s direction as she scrubbed between the burners on the stove.
“Why aren’t you speaking Finnish?” the woman asked.
“Because Marge doesn’t speak Finnish very well.”
Rita? Marge’s mind caught up to her body; in a flash her physical reaction made sense. My God! She forced herself to examine the aged face. No doubt about it, that was Rita Olsson. Even her voice was the same.
Her head buzzed like a swarm of bees. She felt an impulse to correct Pirjo, say that it wasn’t entirely true, what she’d said about Finnish. She spoke Me?nkieli, at least, though “fancy Finnish,” as Isá liked to call it, was harder. She couldn’t stop herself from staring, but at the same time her whole being was shouting at her to flee. That really was the witch. Their nickname for Housemother flew into her head.
Rita Olsson, who had always made such a big deal of only speaking Swedish. In fact, she had spoken true standard Swedish, without the accent that shone through for everyone else. And now here she was, speaking only Finnish.
“Are you a Lapp?”
A shudder ran through Marge as she heard that voice again. She wanted to clap her hands over her ears, like when she was little.
“I can tell by looking at you, you’re a Lapp,” Rita Olsson continued, in Swedish this time, and she licked her cracked lips.
“?l? houra nyt,” Pirjo said, her tone sharp. “That’s enough.”
The floor swayed beneath Marge’s feet and she grabbed the back of a chair. Surely this wasn’t happening. Could it really be happening?
“Just do it,” Pirjo said behind her.
Marge fumbled with the small box that held the eye drops. Her hands shook as she removed the lid of the plastic bottle. “Lean your head back a little,” she said, and it was a miracle she could speak at all.
Rita Olsson stared out the kitchen window and pretended not to hear. “The food I got yesterday was no good.”
“Oh, really? But it was such a fine meal. Reindeer hash,” Pirjo said, knotting the trash bag.
“I don’t eat reindeer hash.”
“Lean your head back now,” Pirjo said with a sigh. She took the bag of trash to the front door.
Marge squeezed the plastic bottle in her hand tightly. “I need to give you the drops, your eyes are awfully red.” Was that her voice? It sounded so professional. Kind. It was incredible.
Rita Olsson tilted her head back but closed her eyes. How could Marge touch that face? She was overcome by a surreal feeling and placed a hand on the cool tabletop. A cramp rose deep in her belly, and she felt a clot of blood leave her body. It fell heavily into her pad; it was horrible. On the second day of her period, the pain was sometimes unbearable. The blood came in black clumps and she had to borrow the old folks’ bathrooms to change her pad several times a day. This wasn’t a normal amount of pain, as she’d come to understand. Her friends never fainted, never had to call in sick to work. She should have stayed home today.
“Aren’t you done yet?” Pirjo said, back in the kitchen. “Open your eyes now, Rita.” She had switched back to Finnish.
Marge’s trembling palm hovered above the old woman’s forehead; she knew it often calmed the elderly if she rested a hand there. But how could she touch this woman? Her eyelids fluttered, but Rita Olsson refused to open them.
“I won’t look, for a Lapp,” she whispered.
“Now, Rita, as a Christian I’m sure you treat all people the same,” Pirjo continued in her no-nonsense tone.
Marge looked around the kitchen for religious symbols, then glanced toward the living room, where she saw, on one wall, Jesus on a gaudy gold cross. In the front hall hung a tapestry embroidered with words from a popular Swedish hymn: “Blott en dag, ett ogonblick i s?nder.” Just one day, one moment at a time .
Rita Olsson scoffed and looked up at the ceiling, and Marge couldn’t bring herself to put a hand on her forehead. Instead she placed an index finger on the thin, violet skin under Rita’s eye. She pulled down to expose more of the bloodshot eyeball and squeezed out a drop, which landed on the iris; she repeated the process with the other eye. She put the bottle back in its box and looked at her hands, which were sullied. She hurried to the sink to wash it off.
“You forgot to wash your hands before you did it,” Pirjo whispered in her ear.
Marge blushed. She had never slipped up with her hygiene before, she was always so careful. Her knuckles were red and dry for that very reason; she washed her hands so frequently. “Oh my God,” she blurted.
Pirjo shook her head and smiled. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t you take the Lord’s name in vain,” said Rita Olsson.
Once again, Marge’s knees felt weak. She had always said that. Even back then.
She scrubbed her hands but didn’t want to dry them on the grubby yellow kitchen towel that hung from the rail on the oven. Instead she took paper towels and rubbed them hard on her skin.
She couldn’t stand to be near Rita Olsson any longer, to smell her, to look at her. Marge wanted to get out, get away. Her body trembled as though she had the chills. It could also just be her period, she tried to reassure herself. She needed to change her pad, but she couldn’t use the bathroom here. She would rather suffer the discomfort of sitting in the car.
“That’s all for today. Next time just Marge will come,” Pirjo said, opening a window vent.
“Send someone else.”
I N THE ELEVATOR , P IRJO smiled and checked her reflection. “Like I said, she’s a real shrew. Not a drop of kindness in her.”
“Does she have dementia?”
“Not in the least, but she has trouble with her eyes and needs help with her medications and some light housework, of course.”
“I don’t want to go back there. Can I switch with someone?”
Their eyes met in the mirror, where little hands had left fingerprints.
“Don’t let her scare you off.”
Marge shook her head. “It’s not that.”
“Well, what is it, then?”
Pirjo pushed open the elevator door and looked at her, puzzled.
Marge was afraid of her own thoughts. She couldn’t very well tell Pirjo there was a chance she might kill that old woman. But it was the honest truth.