38. Anne-Risten
ANNE-RISTEN
1986
She stepped over the shoes in the front hall, moved them onto the shoe rack, remembered that she’d forgotten to refill the stash of Tylenol in her purse, and went back to the bathroom. As always, her gaze slipped up to the black spots in the corner of the ceiling that kept spreading. The mining company’s property management arm had sent painters to slap a coat of white paint over the area, but it was mold: painting over it was no solution, and Anne-Risten had told them as much. No one would listen to her. If Roger had put his foot down they would have listened. But now there was no Roger in their shabby old apartment on Bromsgatan. It was just her and the kids. He’d put up with her for a long time, though. He’d listened to her fretting about the mold and the eczema it caused Niklas, looked at all her own rashes, and brought her chilled towels when she had to lie down in a dark room with a migraine, which she was sure was also a result of the mold. But eventually he couldn’t take it anymore. He came home after a long night at Malmia with his work buddies, smelling like other women’s perfume. One woman’s, specifically. As she would come to find out later.
He left Anne-Risten and the children and moved in with that woman. She was young, almost embarrassingly so. But he was happy—it was like he became a different person around the children too, less strict, and he took Niklas out to practice driving and they became close in a way they never had been before. Cecilia had just turned fifteen when the family split up, and she became much quieter after, but he didn’t notice. Maybe she kept up a cheerful facade in front of him. He bragged about his new house in Lompis, how he could drive his snowmobile out of the yard and straight into the forest. And of course it wasn’t long before his new wife got pregnant and gave him a son.
Back when Anne-Risten lost their baby twelve years earlier, he hadn’t blamed her and the cigarettes, at least not at first, but she’d seen it in his eyes. In the years that followed, it smoldered like a welding flame, burning holes in the fabric between them; when they argued, he would blurt that she smoked too much. He surely knew she smoked more than she admitted. But really, it wasn’t even about the smoking and the miscarriage. He’d gradually come to despise her manic anxiety and constant hypervigilance when it came to symptoms and illnesses. She had bought a medical book at Landstrom’s bookshop and hidden it in the wardrobe among the fancy tablecloths. When he—shockingly—found the book one Christmas Eve, he threw it down the building’s garbage chute.
Her friends on Bromsgatan had moved away; lots of families had jumped at the chance to take out affordable home loans. Anne-Risten begged Roger to take advantage, but he declared his intention to remain debt-free all his life. He paid for his car in cash and never bought anything on credit. He had no intention of paying interest for decades.
Then he met that woman and suddenly had no qualms about buying a single-family house in Lombolo and paying a mortgage and interest there.
Anne-Risten was glad her friends had moved away before he left her. She couldn’t have taken their sympathy, couldn’t have handled her own fears that they began talking about her behind her back the moment she went home. Presumably they would have understood where Roger was coming from.
They had never known she was pregnant, so at least she avoided their pity on that front. These days she walked the other way when she saw Gun-Britt or Eva-Lena in town. She expected they knew about her divorce; there was no keeping it secret in such a small town.
Her parents had been ashamed and even angry with her. Divorce just wasn’t done . She tried to appease them, had meant to bring the children to the village more often after the separation. But of course it was too late. They were teenagers, ashamed of being Sámi. Just yesterday, Cecilia had snapped at Anne-Risten that she would die if her mother wore anything in public that might reveal her heritage. It was like her daughter didn’t even know her. She had never worn Sámi clothing in town, no gákti, no silver, nothing that would betray her background. She was Anne Nilsson. Roger Nilsson’s wife. Roger’s ex-wife.
She had worn a gákti to her uncle’s funeral. Back then, Cecilia looked at her with eyes aglow and said that Mama looked like a princess with all the sparkles on her chest. The brooches, her riskun, were now packed away in a wardrobe, the silver tarnished. The next time she wore the gákti was when a cousin got married in the village. Cecilia had been a little more hesitant then, newly ten and aware of what people said about the Sámi at her school. But she could still go along with it in the village, where no one would see her mother. These days, though, it was totally out of the question. Cecilia had objected when Anne-Risten wanted to hang a woven Sámi-made rana on the wall after Roger left.
“I don’t want my friends to see that. You don’t get it, no one knows that I’m—I mean, you—are Sámi.” She had emphasized that “you,” spitting it out from between her straight white teeth.
“I’ll hang it up in my bedroom, then.”
“No, you won’t.”
And that was that. Anne-Risten rolled up the rana and kept guksi, knives, needle houses, and coffee pouches tucked away in yet another wardrobe. Her entire life was in those wardrobes.
Niklas wasn’t as angry—boys were easier. He’d even spent time out on the land with his áddjá and the reindeer a year ago, once Roger could no longer object. He was enjoying it, but then at a sorting the other boys around the corral gave him funny looks. Anne-Risten hadn’t learned this until later. Niklas hadn’t told her, he’d just said he didn’t have the time or the interest when áddjá called asking for his help again. But Cecilia had tattled.
“They say he has no business being around the reindeer. Because he’s not really Sámi.”
“Who said that?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“But how do you know about it?”
“I just do.”
Talking to her could be so exhausting. Anne-Risten had followed Niklas around, trying to wheedle it out of him, but he wouldn’t tell her what had happened. She suspected it was Nilsa’s sons. She had heard about their behavior—nasty little brats. Just like their father. It made her feel better to think that Nilsa had gotten what he deserved. Given Aslak’s drinking, and more besides. But you really weren’t supposed to think such things.
She rummaged through the medicine cabinet and found some Tylenol, and considered grabbing some Treo tabs too. Wasn’t that a headache she felt coming on? Yes, something was happening at her temples. Maybe she should take a tablet right away, let its aspirin and caffeine kick in before she felt worse.
She went to the kitchen for a glass of water and dropped one of the effervescent tablets in. These were better to take at home, too obvious for drinking at work. Tylenol, though, you could toss back whenever, and the same went for aspirin in capsule form. She found the fizzy sound calming.
Cecilia walked into the kitchen, trailing a stifling cloud of perfume. For her birthday Anne-Risten had given her the exact Date perfume she’d asked for.
“So you’re sick again,” Cecilia said, her voice full of scorn. Wasn’t it?
“I just have a little headache.”
“You are addicted to painkillers.”
Anne-Risten recoiled as if she’d been slapped. “I am not. Now, Birgitta at work, she takes some strong stuff. That’s the kind of thing you can get addicted too—this is just a Treo.”
Cecilia was wearing blue eye shadow and shimmery blue mascara. Her daughter looked so much like both her and áhkku. You could tell which family she belonged to from a mile away. But she knew Cecilia hated it. She was jealous of Niklas, who looked like their father. No one would guess that Anne-Risten’s Sámi genes were swimming around in him. But it was obvious in Cecilia. She’d developed a particular method for makeup around her eyes in the hopes of making them appear rounder, and she never used blush that would accentuate her cheekbones.
Sometimes Anne-Risten was nearly bowled over by her beauty. But if she told Cecilia she was beautiful, she’d receive a look of poison arrows in return.
When had she last stroked her daughter’s hair, embraced her? When had that stopped? When had anyone else last touched Anne-Risten? Back when Roger still slept beside her he radiated warmth, and she missed that, the warmth of another human body, but she hadn’t always wanted the intimacy. She didn’t miss the sex, but rather the way he would walk past her, touch her waist, laugh and say he liked her pempa as he ran his hand over her bottom. Being seen. Being touched. He’d stopped praising her appearance long before he left her, which contributed to her fear that she didn’t measure up.
She missed holding the children’s soft bodies, but hadn’t that closeness often been marred by worry? It hadn’t occurred to her to be in the moment, she hadn’t imagined that this intimacy would ever end.
She wanted to pull her little girl close. She ran her hand along the counter, approaching Cecilia—it should have been easy, but it was impossible.
“I’m sleeping over at Linda’s tonight,” Cecilia said, pouring a glass of orange juice.
She had just come home from school, kicked off her shoes, dumped her bag, and dropped her coat on the chair in the hall. This was the kid who wouldn’t leave Anne-Risten’s side while she cleaned. Anne-Risten had taught her how to use a toothbrush to get at the tiny gaps behind the radiators. Instructed her that rugs really ought to be laid out in the snow but taught her to beat them hard on the rack in the courtyard when they couldn’t. Got her used to the smell of bleach on a rag.
And now she left clutter everywhere and wouldn’t clean her own room. She made fun of Anne-Risten’s clean-freak ways.
“Who are you even cleaning for? No one ever comes over anyway.”
Anne-Risten held her head high and wouldn’t be provoked. Cleaning was all she had left, it was necessary to her survival. She kept a spotless house. If Gun-Britt got the wild urge to visit one day, Anne-Risten would have no reason to be ashamed. Quite the opposite.
She downed the fizzy Treo and turned her back on the accusatory looks. Peering over her shoulder, she saw Cecilia bending double and running her fingers through her crisp, hair-sprayed bangs and around her temples before flipping up again and tossing her head so her long, dark hair flew back and landed over her shoulders.
“Will Linda’s parents be home?”
“Yes, obviously.”
Of course they wouldn’t be. Linda lived in a big house up by Hogalid School; her father was an engineer with Esrange and her mother was a manager at Sparbanken. Anne-Risten had said a quick hello to them at the last parent-teacher meeting at the Bolags School, the final one they attended before they moved and Linda started attending Hogalid. They hadn’t been eager to chat with her, preferring the company of other parents. Ones who seemed more stable and didn’t live in moldy apartments on Bromsgatan. Anne-Risten sniffed her coat—maybe the other parents had noticed a smell, maybe the mold had settled in their clothes and even their hair and skin.
Because Cecilia had gotten to know Linda before she changed schools, she grumbled about being forced to go to the city’s slum school while Linda got to go to the best one. She demanded to switch to Hogalid, but Anne-Risten had no idea how to make that kind of thing happen. Still, she was happy the girls had managed to stay friends; now they were both on the social sciences track at high school.
“Us kids from Bolags learned nothing,” Cecilia said to her once. “My grades are awful, I have no idea what’s going on, it’s so hard! But Linda gets perfect grades. It’s all your fault! I should have switched schools too.”
Anne-Risten hadn’t yelled back. No, she simply checked on the dough she’d left to rise. The store of bread in the freezer was almost gone, and Niklas ate a lot on account of all the hockey. He was a skilled player, had gotten his picture in the paper a couple of times when his team won. She’d heard other dads say to Roger that Niklas had talent, which made Roger puff up like a rooster. Then Roger moved out and of course he was the one who drove Niklas to practice, which meant that her son slept over at Roger’s more often so he could get a ride.
“Why don’t you have a driver’s license like normal moms do?”
No, Niklas never said so. It was Cecilia, furious whenever she couldn’t get a ride to the dances at Centralg?rden.
“Put on your long underwear when you walk up there. So you don’t catch a cold,” Anne-Risten would say.
“Do you have any idea how fat long underwear makes you look? If I get sick from walking all the way there, it’ll be your fault.” Then she left, without even a hat although it was twenty below.
“You don’t drink, Cecilia, do you?” Anne-Risten asked now, glancing at the clock. She couldn’t be late to work.
Cecilia just rolled her eyes. Of course she drank. Anne-Risten knew that. But how could she tell her she wasn’t allowed to? She tried to appeal to Cecilia’s conscience sometimes, but unfortunately it appeared that her daughter didn’t have one of those. She had to laugh at herself for thinking like that. She was a funny woman, in the end. She could be sarcastic. People at work appreciated that. She hadn’t made anyone laugh in a long time, had almost forgotten she had it in her. When Roger was around, only he was allowed to be funny. He would fart and send the children into fits of giggles. When she tried a bit of sarcasm, he was insulted.
Anne-Risten had worked as a home aide for almost six months now. She’d run into Marge in line at Ica-Toppen, and Marge had mentioned that the home-health service was hiring.
“You should definitely apply. You would be a good fit.”
Marge had looked so happy, standing there with her little girl beside her. Anne-Risten felt sad afterward, at the reminder that she and Marge had once been friends back home in the village. But once Anne-Risten became Roger’s, suddenly he was the only person in her world.
She applied for the job the next day and was very impressed with herself when she called the manager to say she was available. She had worked as a sunshine girl at a nursing home when she was younger, wheeling the old folks outside in nice weather, and had put in a summer as a home aide. She didn’t mention how long ago. Unsurprisingly, the manager was delighted to hear from a mature woman who was looking for a job. She began by covering shifts and ended up staying on as a permanent hire.
At first she had been tentative, almost shy; it wasn’t easy stepping into the homes of strangers. But soon enough the old women noticed that she knew how to clean in that meticulous way they’d once been able to manage. They watched raptly, and she could actually see how much they enjoyed watching her handle the mop, the vacuum cleaner, and the right rag or sponge for each task. The old men sometimes said she was too pretty to do their laundry, that they wished they were younger, and she would offer them a kind laugh. When their praise reached her boss, Anne-Risten began to walk with a fresh spring in her step, head held high as she entered each home.
It hadn’t always been so simple. She’d hardly had time to process the shock of her husband leaving her before the first rent check was due. Life as a housewife ended abruptly. She was expected to become a new person, a working woman. And did she ever work. First she was a cashier at the Konsum on Tr?dg?rdsgatan. But working at the grocery store, with all those eyes on her, had been a nightmare. Before people found out, they cheerfully told her to say hi to Roger. Later, when they knew, they acted awkward and their small talk made her anxious. She quit and got a job doing heavy janitorial work, at City Hall among other places. She’d laughed at herself—she had finally made it to City Hall. The Tempo department store was long gone by then, but it wasn’t like she ran off to Domus to buy lunch either. No, she bandaged the blisters on her palms and ate leftover meat sauce from the night before. She was well-liked; the offices were cleaner than ever before, and she was praised for it. But Cecilia was terribly ashamed—almost hated her, in fact—especially when a classmate’s mother mentioned that she’d seen Anne-Risten with her cleaning cart. Cecilia had told her it was only temporary, then demanded her mother find a different job.
“I saw Bolags School was looking for a janitor,” Anne-Risten replied, laughing inwardly when Cecilia raised her upper lip and bared her teeth like an angry lemming.
So, working for the home-health service was a good thing for the family. Anne-Risten enjoyed spending time with the old folks, especially glad when she could speak Sámi with some of them. She sometimes lingered, but it didn’t matter to her if her workday was longer because of it.
If only I could turn back time , she often thought after visiting someone she could speak her heart’s language with. She would go back and refuse to let the gap between her children and her parents grow so vast. Without language, there was no true closeness. Even though they’d played so much on the kitchen floor with áddjá over the years, that connection never became real; it didn’t go deep. He fumbled for words and they grew up and eventually there was a gulf between them. It made her chest ache—how could she betray her parents like this, how could she betray her children? Then out came the photo album, and she tore out yet another picture of Roger, as though the fault lay with him alone.
Anne-Risten liked having Marge at work. It felt almost like before. At least, she wanted to think so, but just as Anne-Risten had chosen Roger once upon a time, Marge chose her daughter now. She talked about how important it was for them to bond, and naturally she didn’t have time for much else; Anne-Risten understood that. But it was still nice to have someone to turn to at work. Above all, they shared the anxiety of having to face Rita Olsson.
On their first day working together, Marge had looked at the schedule and taken Anne-Risten aside. “I’d hoped you wouldn’t get assigned to her, or that I would at least have time to warn you, but unfortunately,” she pointed to a name on the list, “you’ll be visiting Rita Olsson.”
It took Anne-Risten a few seconds to realize who that was. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m afraid I am. I’ve been going to see her for a while now, and it’s… well, it’s awful.”
“I can’t. I just can’t.” Her hand automatically slipped inside her sleeve and her nails dug deep into the skin; the scratches would run from elbow to wrist.
Marge looked at the clock. “If we hurry, I can go with you. I should still have time to visit Jakobsson. But we have to leave now.”
It was probably the way there was no time to think, the way she was simply thrown straight into something and did what was expected of her. Really, wasn’t that typical of her life? Things were always just tossed at her. She couldn’t refuse, not when there were children to take care of and rent to pay. She pictured Roger’s face when she entered the apartment. Cursing him over and over in her mind. Damn you, Roger, this is all your fault!
This must have been what saved her from a breakdown when she saw Rita Olsson. It was easier to be angry. And Marge was by her side. Anne-Risten had even tried to crack a joke before they rang the bell: “You brought the switch, didn’t you, Marge?”
Today, the time had come again. She had to visit that horrid person. Cecilia would never argue with her if she knew. She would have understood why she needed that aspirin. What if she had the strength to tell her daughter what she had endured as a child? She would have liked to see her face. Would Cecilia cry? Stop looking at her with such loathing?
But she couldn’t drag Cecilia down into this dark place of hers. Nothing good would come of it. Besides—the aspirin helped, it really did.