by Anne Holt
“Why don’t you go and have some children of your own instead?”
“I might well do that someday as well. But that’s not why I work here, of course. Because I don’t have children of my own, I mean. Most people who work here do have children of their own.”
“How many pages are there in the Bible?” he asked abruptly.
“The Bible?”
“Yes, how many pages has it got? There must be fuckin’ lots! Look how thick it is!”
He grabbed the Bible that was lying on the bedside table, as on every bedside table, and slapped it over and over again against his thigh before handing it to her.
Maren began to flick through it.
“You can have a look at the last page,” he suggested. “You don’t need to count them, you know.”
“One thousand two hundred and seventy-one pages,” she concluded. “Plus a few pages of maps. And you . . . I mean what I said about that swearing of yours. Shall we try the fire ladder now?”
He stood up, and the bed sighed in relief.
“Now I’m going down. The stairs.”
There was nothing further to discuss.
• • •
I made contact with children’s services. Yes, when he was two years old. I was scared to death. I needed help. Someone had to look after him for a bit. Just a few hours a day. I had decided to phone several months earlier but kept putting it off for fear of what action they would take. They can’t take him away from me. There were only the two of us. I was still breast-feeding him, although he now weighed nineteen kilos and devoured five meals a day. He ate everything. I don’t know why I let him go on so long. For the ten minutes he was suckling, he was at least quiet. I was in control. It became like small pockets of peace. When he began to lose interest, I was the one who was beaten. Not him.
They were friendly. After being at home with me a few times, two or three, perhaps, they granted him a kindergarten place. From quarter past eight to five o’clock. They said I shouldn’t leave him there so long, since I was a stay-at-home mum and could allow him to have slightly shorter days. It would be tiring for him, they said.
The boy was delivered at quarter past eight every morning. I never collected him before five. But never too late either.
I got a place at kindergarten, and survived.
• • •
Olav longed for home. It was like a craving in his body, something he had never felt before. He had never been away for so long. He tried to shrink the hole in his stomach by breathing hard and fast, but that only made him dizzy. His entire body ached. Then he attempted to take deep breaths again, but the craving, the painful hole, returned. It was enough to make him cry.
He did not know if it was his mum or the apartment or the bed or his belongings that he missed. He did not think too deeply about it either. It was one big jumble of loss.
He wanted to go home but he was not permitted to leave. He had to stay there for two months before he would be allowed a home visit, they had told him. Instead, his mum came to visit him twice a week. As if his mum had anything to do with the foster home. He saw the other children staring at her and the twins laughing every time she appeared. Kenneth was the only one who spoke to her, but then he did not have a mum at all, poor soul, so he was probably envious. An ugly and horrible mum was better than none at all.
She was able to stay there for two hours each visit. For the first hour, everything went well. They chatted a little, perhaps went for a walk around the neighborhood. Twice they had gone to a café and eaten cakes. It was a long walk, however, so on that visit the excursion had consumed almost all their time. The one occasion they had returned half an hour late, Agnes had scolded his mum. He saw that his mum was sorry, although she did not say anything. So then he had vandalized his cloakroom peg, and Agnes had been furious with him as well.
When the first hour had passed, it was more difficult to think of anything. Agnes suggested his mum should help him with his homework, but that was something she had never done before, so he was not thrilled with that. Instead they spent most of the time sitting in his room, without saying very much at all.
He longed to go home.
He was hungry.
He was always, always hungry. It had become much more agonizing since he had arrived at the foster home, where they did not give him enough food. Yesterday he had wanted a third serving of meatballs with lashings of sauce. Agnes had said no, although there was plenty left in the pot. Kenneth had offered him his portion, but just as he was about to push it all over onto his plate, Agnes had snatched the food from him and handed him an apple instead. But he didn’t want an apple, he wanted meatballs.
He was so bloody hungry.
At the moment, the other children were outside. At least it was peaceful in the enormous house. It was an in-service day at school, and that was probably why they had held the fire drill today. He hauled himself out of bed, shaking one of his legs, as it had gone to sleep; it was tingling and prickling, and although painful, it tickled a little as well.
His leg almost gave way when he put his weight on it and limped across to the stairs. He could hear some voices from below, but it had to be the grown-ups. Padding over to the window at the near end of the corridor, he spied Kenneth and the twins sledding on the slope down to the road. A sissy slope. Far too short, and besides, you had to brake to avoid crashing into the fence. He didn’t know what had become of the older children, but they were given free rein and allowed to do almost anything. Yesterday Raymond had even been to McDonald’s with his girlfriend. He had brought back a little figure, which he had given to Olav. It was bloody childish, so he passed it on to Kenneth.
Trying to sneak down the stairs, he discovered that the treads creaked slightly. It dawned on him that if he placed his feet at the extreme outer edges of each step, it did not make a noise, and he managed to descend the stairs almost soundlessly.
“Hi, Olav!”
He nearly jumped out of his skin. It was Maren.
“Why aren’t you outside? All the other children are!”
“I can’t be bothered. I want to watch TV.”
“No TV watching so early in the day, I’m afraid. You’ll have to find something else to do.”
She smiled at him. She was the only adult in the foster home that he could abide. She was logical, something almost nobody was. Not his mum either. And certainly not Agnes.
“I’m starving,” he whispered.
“But it’s only half an hour since we ate lunch!”
“I only had two slices of bread.”
Looking around, Maren saw no one and, placing her forefinger over a smiling mouth, she crept toward the kitchen with exaggerated movements, all the while humming the Pink Panther tune. A smiling Olav crept behind her even though he thought it fairly stupid.
In the kitchen she opened the fridge a tiny crack and they both thrust their faces toward the gap. The light blinked on and off because the door was not properly open, so they had to swing it open a little wider.
“What do you want?” Maren whispered.
“The meatballs,” Olav whispered back, pointing at the leftover food from the previous day.
“You can’t have that. But you can have some yogurt.”
He wasn’t particularly pleased, but it was better than nothing.
“Can I put muesli on top?”
“Okay.”
Picking up an economy carton of yogurt, Maren poured some of the contents into a small, deep dish. Olav had brought out the muesli packet from the pantry and was in the process of sprinkling a third scoop over the bowl when Agnes appeared at the door.
“What’s going on here?”
Both of them froze for a second, before Maren grabbed the bowl of food and positioned herself in front of the boy.
“Olav’s so hungry. A little yogurt can’t do any harm.”
Agnes did not utter a word as she circumnavigated the massive dining table to relieve Maren of the bowl. Still without a word, she produced a
roll of plastic wrap from a drawer and, using it to cover the food, she pushed the two sinners away from the refrigerator and placed the bowl inside before closing the door.
“So. We do not eat between meals in this house. You both know that.”
She did not even glance at Olav. But she stared hard at Maren as she spoke. Maren shrugged her shoulders in embarrassment and planted her hand on Olav’s shoulder. After his initial astonishment, Olav pulled himself together.
“Fucking cow.”
Agnes, about to leave the room, froze in midmovement and then turned around slowly.
“What did you say?”
Maren squeezed the boy’s shoulder in an attempt to warn him.
“Fucking cow, bitch from hell!”
Now the boy was screaming.
Agnes Vestavik set upon him faster than anyone would have thought possible. Grabbing hold of his chin, she forced his face up against her own. He displayed his protest by narrowing his eyes.
“Expressions like that are not used here,” she snarled, and Maren could have sworn that her left hand was raised as though for a stinging slap. If so, it would have been the first time in history that Agnes Vestavik had ever laid her hand on a child. After a moment’s hesitation, she lowered her hand but continued her grip around the boy’s face.
“Look at me!”
He screwed up his eyes even more tightly.
“Olav! Open your eyes and look at me!”
Olav’s face was crimson, contrasting starkly with the livid marks around the director’s fingers.
“I’ll take care of him, allow me,” Maren suggested in a muted voice. “I’ll speak to him.”
“Speak! We’re not going to do any speaking here! We’re not going—”
“Tramp cunt,” Olav muttered through gritted teeth.
The director was now deathly pale. She lifted her left hand once more, and once again let it fall after a few seconds. Her grip around the boy’s face became even more ferocious. Then she swallowed twice and slowly released her grasp. Nevertheless, the boy did not open his eyes and remained standing there with his face turned upward.
“I’ll phone your mother and tell her she doesn’t need to come here for a fortnight, do you understand? That will be a suitable punishment.”
Maren opened her mouth to object, but closed it when she caught the director’s eye. Instead she tried to place herself between the boy and Agnes, something that was rather difficult since Olav, on hearing the punishment, had opened both his eyes and his mouth, and was now ready to launch himself at the other woman. She, for her part, had turned away and was on her way out the door. Maren managed to stop the boy in his tracks by grabbing his arms and twisting them behind his back.
The boy roared. “I hate you! I hate that fucking cunt woman!”
Agnes slammed the door behind her and vanished.
“Mum,” the boy yelled, trying to struggle free. “Mum!”
And then he deliberately bit his own tongue so it gushed with blood.
But he did not cry.
“Mum,” he mumbled as the blood streamed out of his mouth.
Standing behind him, Maren suddenly noticed the boy was no longer attempting to tear himself free. Slowly she let him go and escorted him to a chair. Then she caught sight of the blood.
“Oh, my God, Olav,” she said, terrified, grabbing some paper from a kitchen roll.
It rapidly became saturated with blood, and she used almost the entire roll before the flow was stanched sufficiently for her to inspect the injury more closely. Part of his tongue was almost torn off.
“Olav, there, there,” she said, patting the paper towel on the wound.
At that, she realized there was not much more to be said. Apart from one thing.
“You must remember this, Olav, if you have a problem, if things are difficult, if the others are nasty to you, then you really must come to me. I’ll always be able to help you. If you only hadn’t got so angry just now, we could have sorted this out together. Can’t you try to remember that another time? That I will always help you?”
She wasn’t entirely certain, but she had a feeling the boy nodded, and she then stood up to phone for the family doctor.
His tongue had to be sewn with three stitches.
• • •
Only one member of staff was absent from the total of fourteen, and Agnes chaired the meeting. The staffing rosters for the next two months had been drafted, though they spent some time adjusting Maren’s suggestions. Thereafter, they discussed the children, one by one.
“Raymond has been allocated a place on that course,” Terje said. “He starts next week, so then he’ll have three days of school and two days tinkering with motorbikes every week. He’s looking forward to it.”
Raymond was doing fine. He had lived at Spring Sunshine since the age of nine, and had been a hard nut for the first year. From then he had relaxed his shoulders, exhaled, and settled down, accepting that he could visit his mum only at weekends. His mother was fantastic. She had all the qualities a mother should have, considerate, stimulating, protective, and loving. When she was sober. For the first five years of his life things had gone well, and then she fell off the wagon again. At seven years of age, Raymond was placed in an individual foster home and all hell broke loose. He was so attached to his mother that it was impossible for anyone to assume the parental role, and after three pairs of foster parents had worn themselves out without his mother having managed to relinquish the bottle, he was transferred to Spring Sunshine, where things improved. His mother stayed dry from Friday morning, and opened her first bottle as soon as Raymond left on Sunday evening. Then she drank herself through the week to steel herself for the next forty-eight hours of sobriety. However, she was indisputably Raymond’s mum and Raymond was doing fine.
There was not much to mention about the other residents, apart from Olav.
“We’ve really got our hands full with that one,” sighed Cathrine, an anorexic day shift worker in her thirties. “Honestly, everybody, I’m actually scared of that boy! I haven’t a chance when he refuses to budge!”
“Eat a bit more, then,” Terje muttered, but was ignored.
“It was pretty melodramatic when his mother was leaving on Thursday,” remarked Eirik, who had been on duty then. “He hung on to her legs, and she just stood there stock-still, staring at me, without even attempting to bring him to his senses. When I crouched down to try, I got this for my trouble!”
Leaning forward over the table, he tilted his head to one side, and everybody could see a bluish-yellow ring surrounding his left eye.
“The boy’s downright dangerous! And his mother is creepy, for sure!”
“He never attacks the other children,” Maren objected. “Quite the opposite, for he can actually be helpful. He has good habits and polite manners when he wants to show them. We mustn’t exaggerate. As far as his mother’s concerned, she’s just desperate.”
“Exaggerate! Is it not melodramatic when he kicks me in the eye, threatens to kill me, and then rips up all the other children’s drawings into a thousand pieces?”
“As long as it’s you and the drawings that suffer, then we have to take it in our stride,” Agnes concluded, without even mentioning that morning’s dramatic episode and indicating the meeting was over by packing her papers together. While chairs scraped the floor as the others stood up, she made a restraining motion with her hand and added, “I’d like to have an interview with each and every one of you,” she said, without looking at any of them. “A kind of appraisal interview.”
“Appraisal interview?”
Cathrine pointed out it was not normal to conduct reviews now, without warning and two months in advance of the due date.
“We’re having them now. They’ll be fairly brief. Terje, you first. We’ll go up to my office.”
In reality if not by name, Maren Kalsvik functioned as a kind of deputy director at Spring Sunshine, and she scrutinized her boss now. Agnes seemed e
xhausted. Her hair was lifeless, and the features of her usually round, smooth face had become sharper. Unbecoming shadows were visible underneath her eyes, and she occasionally appeared almost uninterested in the children. It had to be her marriage. Maren and Agnes weren’t exactly friends, but they worked closely together and sometimes chatted about this and that when they were alone. Her marriage had been ailing in the past few months, that much she knew, and perhaps it was more serious than Agnes had confided. The punishment she had dished out for Olav’s outburst was troubling. Had Agnes gone stark raving mad? Maren would use the interview to probe her boss’s psychological state. She would ensure that Olav’s punishment was overturned, and rightfully so. Punishing children by denying them the company of their parents was not only uneducational, it was also totally illegal.
“Can I be number two?” she asked. “I have a dentist’s appointment later today.”
Agnes did not complete the interviews with her colleagues until almost four hours had elapsed, despite the final two interviews lasting only ten minutes.
• • •
The house seemed to be breathing. Deeply and quietly. A safe, snug fortress for eight sleeping children.
At least they’re having a good rest, Eirik thought contentedly as he switched off the TV.
The hour had drawn on until half past midnight, but, unusually for him, he did not feel tired. Could he have been asleep without noticing? He lifted a deck of playing cards and started a game of solitaire, normally a good sleeping pill, and after cheating a couple of times, it drifted over him. It would be just as well to use the bed that was made on the upper floor. On the way upstairs, he noticed Agnes had not left for home yet, or at least he had not observed her departure. It was unlikely that Agnes would leave without popping her head in the door of the TV room to say good night. Come to think of it, he did not understand why she had returned earlier that evening at around ten o’clock. All the reports were up-to-date, as that had been undertaken during the meeting earlier that day, and now she had been in her office for quite some time. He glanced again at the clock. Almost one. Stepping warily, he took a left turn in the corridor on the first floor and slowly depressed the door handle of the twins’ bedroom. They were both lying in Kim-André’s bed, looking like little angels with their arms around each other and small, open mouths breathing lightly and regularly. Eirik cautiously took hold of Roy-Morgan and lifted him over to his own bed, where the boy mumbled sleepy protests before rolling onto his stomach, sighing, and returning to his slumbers. As usual, the boys had left their light on. Leaving it like that, Eirik continued on his rounds.