It’s sick, but Dad was a die-hard atheist before he got saved. Years ago I found an old column he’d written for his school newspaper. I think he had just started high school. He truly hated religion, and wrote stuff about how Christianity was a fraud, a security blanket that had torn the world apart, and that baptism should be considered abuse of innocent children. He called pastors black-coats and charlatans.
I’ve wondered sometimes if everything would have turned out differently if Dad had a different career. If he’d been a pencil pusher or middle management or some kind of academic, like normal parents.
To be honest, I think Dad and I are a lot alike. Deep down. I’m also easily consumed by ideas; I can get completely absorbed in something that feels really crucial at the moment. In fifth grade I was the very definition of a Potterhead. I read the books in Swedish and English, watched all the movies at least twenty times, and wrote long fanfics online until my social life just about withered away. A year or two later I went through a period of being addicted to The Smiths and wearing raccoon makeup and spending every waking minute on the Helgon forum for indie kids. There are some autistic traits in our genes. Luckily I decided early on to avoid religion of any kind, unlike Dad.
“Never say never,” he liked to tease. “I didn’t understand that this was my calling either, until I was eighteen.”
“I’d rather scrub toilets,” I responded. “I mean, I would rather become one of those New Age women and go on nudist vacations in Ghana and chew khat.”
“We’ll see.” Dad laughed, just nervous enough.
Like every other eighteen-year-old, I’ve spent hours thinking about the future, about education and various careers. And sure, some jobs are more than just a job. Not like working the register at H&M. You turn on your salesperson smile at five to ten and discard it five minutes after closing. It’s not a big part of my identity. I would absolutely jump ship to KappAhl if they offered a thousand kronor more per month. I could just as easily work the register at a hardware store. Who cares? Cash is the only thing I would miss if I lost my job. Which I’m sure I will.
No, I don’t think Dad knew what he was getting himself into when he became a pastor. Nowadays he works his ass off to fit into this archetype: the perfect preacher, the perfect father, the perfect human. Just like everyone says we young women try to do. Obviously we’re not the only ones.
Clearly it chafes, it hurts, if you don’t really fit into that mold. Until, finally, it starts to crack.
Check it out, Shirine. Not a bad psychoanalysis, right? Five years in the psychology program, top grades in all your classes at high school, was it really worth it?
I am my own best psychologist.
I’ll never understand people who open up like shaken champagne bottles as soon as someone tilts their head and offers a listening ear. People who bare it all on a blog or on social media; people who tattoo words about how awful they feel on their forearms and torture every soul they run into with their pathetic self-analyses.
I have just one friend, one person on earth who knows all about me and understands everything I feel, think, and do. I wish I could talk to her now. I need her. I don’t know what to do without Amina. I don’t know if I can manage. Last night I seriously banged my forehead on the wall and screamed so loud it hurt my ears. The only thing that would be worse is if Amina had to be locked up. One afternoon, as the guards were leading me to the elevator, I thought I saw her. I turned around and shouted her name, but behind the black hair hid a strange face. This cell is making me go crazy.
45
Agnes Thelin almost looked apologetic when she explained I was a suspect. My thoughts were like a whirlwind. A suspect? I sank back in my chair and tried to collect myself.
I was still dazed a little while later, when the attorney marched in and demanded to speak to me in private.
“We’re going to figure this out,” he said, placing his left hand on my shoulder as he squeezed my right hand. “Don’t worry.”
His hand was large and sticky and he looked like a cross between Tony Soprano and Tom Jones. The size of a bear, tan, gold chains around his neck and wrist. A pigeon-blue shirt with the top three buttons undone. The type of man who drives his SUV all the way to his single-family home even though the neighborhood is supposed to be car free. Who has a grill the size of a camper in the backyard and thinks everything was better when he was young, even though he doesn’t feel a day over twenty-three. I’m sure he was high up on the divorced young moms’ fuck lists.
“So this is what you look like?” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t quite remember.”
“Have we met before?” the attorney asked.
“I think so.”
A light went on in his head.
“Stella Sandell. I should have realized. Ulrika’s daughter?”
I nodded.
“This’ll be quick,” he said. “They have nothing on you. Some cops nowadays have awfully itchy fingers. They have their homicide guidebook and stuff to follow. They think the first few hours are totally crucial so they haul in the first best option, for better or for worse.”
He sat down, his legs spread wide, and placed his large hands on his kneecaps.
“But they must have something,” I said. “They said there was some witness who pointed me out in a photo.”
“She can hardly be called a witness. Some silly girl who claims she saw you from a window. In the dark! And she’s one hundred percent certain it was you, even though she doesn’t know you. No, that’s not much of a witness.”
I could picture her in my mind. A shady figure in a window on the second floor. Was that really all they had? Was that the only reason I was sitting there?
“They want to continue questioning you as soon as possible,” said Blomberg. “You’re lucky. Agnes Thelin is one of the most sensible people in this place. Good to talk to.”
He stood up and messed with his phone a little, holding it half a centimeter from his nose. Apparently the thought of wearing glasses made him feel old or ugly, or maybe both.
“Forgot my contacts,” he mumbled.
My legs felt like overcooked spaghetti when I stood up. The attorney walked ahead of me to the door.
“So what am I supposed to say?”
Blomberg turned around so fast his hair fell down across one eye.
“What do you mean?”
“What should I tell the police?”
“Just tell it like it was.”
He looked at me, slowly, up and down, until I pulled my cardigan over my chest. I felt like a show cat. The attorney brought his hand to his forehead and stroked away both hair and sweat.
I stretched.
“Is that all you’ve got? Tell it like it was. That’s your strategy?”
Blomberg shrank a bit.
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re supposed to be one of these big-shot lawyers,” I said. “Haven’t you won a bunch of major cases? Didn’t you have a better strategy those times either?”
Blomberg threw up his hands.
“What do you want, exactly?”
I had managed to arouse some uncertainty in him. Some philosopher once said that knowledge is power. That is definitely true. Other people’s ignorance is also a powerful factor.
“What if I did it?” I said.
Blomberg had transformed completely. He had come marching in here like an alpha male straight out of the tanning bed. Now he looked like nothing but a pale little boy.
I thought of Dad’s motto, how lying is a rare skill. Did Blomberg share that belief?
“Why would you have done something like that?” he wondered.
It was, of course, a good question.
46
The book Shirine brings me is three hundred and seventeen pages long. Single-spaced, no room to breathe.
“I thought you might need something to read,” she says. “There’s not much else to do around h
ere.”
I page expectantly through it, my fingers eager. I read the first sentence: It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they executed the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.
Six months ago, I would have laughed. If someone handed me a fifty-year-old book full of long sentences and references I didn’t get, I would have assumed it was a bad joke. I can’t remember the last time I read a whole book. I’ve never been able to hold still for long enough. After a few minutes, my thoughts wander off and I completely forget what I’ve read and I have to start all over. But in here it’s different. I long for something that can kidnap my mind for a while. I’m so tired of myself.
“So what kind of book is it?” I ask, as I glance through the blurb on the back.
“It’s something of a feminist classic.”
I raise one eyebrow.
“Give it a chance. I think you’ll like it.”
I bring it back to my cell anyway. Then I buy a large Coke and two chocolate bars from the commissary cart. The guard who locks me back in is new, must be one of the temps always coming and going. She stares at me in horror as I reluctantly return to my hundred square feet of smell. The new girl keeps standing there in the doorway, and I feel her eyes writhing across my body like terrified larvae.
“What the fuck is the problem?” I say at last.
Her head jerks back. Her eyes gape.
She looks like a perfectly normal girl. The kind who finishes the social-sciences program with good grades, buys clothes at Forever 21 and Urban Outfitters. In another life, I’m sure she and I could have been friends.
“Nothing,” she says, hiding her face with one hand. “It’s nothing.”
Then she rattles the keys and looks generally stressed out. As the lock clicks, I lie flat on the bed with my mouth stuffed with Daim and Coke.
I open the book and it doesn’t take long before I’m hooked. Finally, I can escape myself for a while. A whole different world opens in my mind and I throw myself headlong into it. I never want to come out again, never come back to this fucking cell.
I can’t even smell it when I’m reading.
* * *
The next morning, Shirine returns to my room.
“I finished it.”
I toss the book on the bed, but from Shirine’s face you’d think it landed on her toes.
“Already?”
I shrug.
“What happened? Did you like it?”
“It was fucking depressing.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
Shirine’s face is heavy with guilt.
I don’t know why I don’t tell the truth, that I loved the book, that it made me furious and sad, but that I have nothing against feeling furious and sad. I need those emotions. I would never forgive Shirine if she brought me a book full of sunshine.
“Can you get me more books?” I ask.
Her smile travels from eye to eye.
“Of course I’ll get you more books.”
“Great.”
She is about to sit down next to me when the tears well up. I can’t explain why. Maybe a thought happened to brush against something that burns. I press my palms to my face, which aches and stings. And I think about Esther in the book, and that mental hospital.
“Are you okay?” Shirine asks, her voice gentle.
I can’t answer her question. No matter what I say, it will sound petty, probably incomprehensible. Presumably egotistical. My life is ruined. Chris is dead and I have made a mess of everything. How will I ever be able to look Mom and Dad in the eyes again? There’s no solution now, only escape.
“I want you to leave now,” I say to Shirine.
All I deserve is darkness.
47
Amina and I have always been told we’re an odd pair. She’s so levelheaded and reserved and rule abiding. And I’m constantly taking up space and being loud, always finding some ridiculous rule to break.
But behind these façades, we’re a lot alike. I’ve always seen myself reflected in Amina. Inside, we’re the same flesh and blood. We just choose to show different things to the outside world. That’s how it works. We all have our secrets, depths and darkness few others are allowed to see. If you only dig a little deeper, it’s easy to find some scary shit in every single person. Amina is no exception.
I truly wish she had been there at confirmation camp. I honestly believe things would have turned out differently. Not just camp—everything.
The butterfly effect, it’s called. A single beat of a butterfly’s wings can have enormous consequences and affect everything that happens.
But Amina didn’t even dare to ask her parents if she could come. I’m sure her mom would have been fine with it, but her dad is Muslim. Not that I’ve ever seen him do anything related to Islam. Rather the opposite. Dino loves beer and would never get it into his head to fast or kneel facing Mecca. Plus, Allah would definitely have an opinion about the four-letter words Dino would bellow at our handball games.
But it didn’t matter; Amina wasn’t going to ask if she could come to camp. She was Muslim and it was important to say that you were Muslim even though no one really cared. Shit, at home they even ate hot dogs and ribs, but at school she always got her food “pork free.”
I’m sure Amina would have stopped me. If only she had been there, at that camp by the little lake. She would have told me what a dumb fucking idea it was. She would have shaken some sense into me, would have been all big-sistery and convinced me to stay in our room and play cards with the other confirmands.
I wouldn’t have gone with Robin if Amina had been there.
Maybe I wouldn’t be sitting here now.
Butterfly effect.
* * *
On summer vacation between seventh and eighth grades, we traveled to some Danish backwater town for a handball championship. As usual we brought home the gold and I was the top scorer. We slept on air mattresses in a sweaty, snore-filled classroom, and on two of the nights there were dances in a tent in the schoolyard.
From day one, Amina and I got stalked by a gang of Croatian guys who were a few years older, with irresistible eyes and muscular arms that made my mouth water. At first we tried playing hard to get. We ignored them or teased them, mostly because that was what we were expected to do, what all girls are always expected to do. But during our last group-stage match, they sat in the bleachers wolf-whistling every time Amina or I got the ball, and that night we followed the Croatians away from the dance. We sat in a big circle down by the beach; gulls were wheeling above the treetops and the waves washed white scum onto the sand. The guys were passing a cigarette around, and it wasn’t until it reached my hand that I realized it wasn’t a regular one.
“No strong,” Luka said in English.
His green cat eyes glittered in the dark. I had wanted him from the moment I saw him. Amina, though, had her eyes on the Croatian goalkeeper.
I took a few drags. I coughed and laughed and the voices around me grew slow and tinny, but otherwise not much happened.
As soon as the joint reached Amina, she began to squirm.
“She doesn’t want to,” I said.
Luka and the others looked at me curiously.
“You have to respect her,” I said, reaching for the joint.
An hour later I was lying on my back in a hidden hollow with Luka kissing my neck full of hickeys before he put his fingers inside me and tried to charm me with lines from porn movies.
* * *
A summer vacation. When I think back on it now, it feels like an eternity, but it really was just one summer. Our lives shifted into a higher gear and it was like the whole world opened up.
I was fourteen, and everything was an adventure. In my own eyes, I was practically an adult and certainly didn’t need any parents interfering in my life. I had more and more trouble controlling my outbursts of emotion and every day felt like a battle.
Mom mostly avoided everything, hiding out, working late,
and getting headaches. But not Dad. He would go all over town to chase me down when I didn’t come home on time. I knew he went through my pockets, and every night he was standing there in the entryway like a goddamn bouncer.
“Blow,” he said, bending over so I could exhale into his face.
“Again.”
He sniffed the air like a dog and stared at me with skepticism.
“You haven’t been smoking, have you?”
The funny thing was, I’m pretty sure Dad wouldn’t have recognized the smell of weed even if you lit a spliff under his nose.
His worry wasn’t totally unfounded, though. After the Denmark trip, I’d gotten a taste for weed and soon I was lighting up every day. It rubbed out my thoughts, made me weightless and free.
Ironically enough, I was still more afraid of my mother.
“Promise not to tell Mom,” I said, holding Amina in both arms.
“I swear.”
“On the Koran?”
“On whatever book you want.”
Amina and Mom had always had a special relationship somehow, and that summer it was like they became even closer. I would come home and find them sitting in the yard, laughing at something they could never quite convince me was that funny.
I had gotten to know a group of guys from Landskrona who could get alcohol and pot. They shared everything with me and I felt more alive than ever before. One night I ran away from home and slept under the stars out on the island of Ven. I lost my virginity in a prickly bush and had a two-week relationship with a Danish guy called Mikkel.
It was like everything was dancing and smiley when I filled my lungs with smoke.
“I don’t like it, that you’re into all of that,” said Amina.
“I’m not into it,” I responded. “It’s just for fun. For the summer.”
Even though we drifted apart for a while, since Amina preferred to avoid the Landskrona gang, I never doubted our friendship. Amina was always there.
There was just one week left of summer break when I found her waiting outside our house one evening.
A Nearly Normal Family Page 16