A Nearly Normal Family

by M. T. Edvardsson

  “Your dad followed me after practice.”

  “What?”

  I shivered and pulled my jacket tighter. Handball had started up again, but I’d skipped the first practice. I didn’t feel like playing.

  “What did he do?”

  There were tears in Amina’s eyes.

  “He was pressuring me, asking a ton of questions. Who you hang out with, if you’re with anyone, whether you’re having sex.”

  “Whether I have sex?” I seriously couldn’t believe my ears. “He asked if I’m having sex?”

  Amina nodded.

  “And if you smoke and drink and stuff.”

  “That’s just sick. Seriously, that is not healthy.”

  Amina shifted her weight from foot to foot. Brushed her hair off her cheeks. She was scared. Dad had threatened to blab to Dino, even though Amina didn’t drink or smoke or any of that shit. She hardly hung out with those guys. She would rather stay home and watch TV, play handball or basketball, hang out with the guys from our class. Every time she came along to Landskrona, it was for my sake.

  It was so unfair for Dad to attack her.

  * * *

  A few days later, we met outside the station. Amina was tired, not wearing any makeup—she looked like a fucking corpse.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said.

  I took her by the arm and pulled her onto an empty platform. I stroked her hair out of her face and patted her cheeks.

  “What’s going on? Tell me.”

  Her breathing was uneven.

  “Your dad,” she said quietly. “I told him. I had to.”

  “What did you say?”

  She hung her head and cried. I couldn’t help it—I shook her shoulders in desperation.

  “What did you say to Dad?”

  She could only produce a few words at a time.

  “I had to … he grabbed me … hard … my arm.”

  “That bastard!” I said. “What did you tell him?”

  She shook her head in despair.

  “The weed,” she cried. “I told him about the weed.”

  I stared at her. My best friend since forever ago. My twin soul. The only person who truly knew me.

  It was such a huge betrayal. So unfathomable.

  “How could you?”

  Amina rubbed her eyes.

  I watched her as my hand clenched. The muscles twitched and pulled. I couldn’t control myself. My fist flew through the air and it was almost like I was watching it from the outside, like it was a movie.

  Amina didn’t have a chance. My knuckles struck her square in the cheekbone. There was a crunch and it felt tremendous. Better than drugs. I had never felt anything like it.

  48

  The guards don’t knock. The key turns in the lock and an instant later they’re standing in my room.

  It’s Jimmy with the goatee and that new girl, the one who tried to stare me to pieces by the commissary cart the other day. They’ve come to pick up my meal tray.

  “Not tasty today?” Jimmy says with a smile.

  I’ve left a whole sea of baked beans on my plate. I mean, I’m not picky, I eat most stuff. But baked beans, I just can’t.

  “There’s commissary tonight, right?” I ask.

  Jimmy’s still smiling. He’s always walking around with that grin on his face, as far as I can tell. It’s not friendly at all. It looks smug, as if he’s smiling at his own imagined splendidness.

  “We’ll see. It’s so easy to forget to unlock everyone’s door. Isn’t it, Elsa?”

  The new girl doesn’t respond. She barely looks up. She probably wants to avoid getting caught in the middle.

  “You heard what he said, Elsa,” I say in an exaggeratedly clear voice. “You’re my witness. If I’m not allowed to buy anything tonight…”

  I trail off. It’s not worth it. It’s impossible to win, with someone like Jimmy.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he says, guffawing.

  He hands my tray to Elsa; his smile vanishes and he looks at me with disgust.

  “Is it true you stabbed him in the chest over and over?”

  I feel the internal struggle. I know exactly what he’s after, and I have no intention of giving it to him.

  Jimmy turns to Elsa.

  “Can you believe that this little chick is a brutal killer?” he says.

  Elsa gives him a pleading look that says she wants nothing more than to get out of here, away from the smell, back to her normal world where everything is puppies and rainbows.

  But Jimmy doesn’t give in.

  “You’d never think so, right?” he says. “Right, Elsa?”

  Elsa looks down at her feet.

  “You can’t tell by looking at someone whether they’re a killer, can you?”

  I appreciate her courage.

  “They? There’s only one person we’re talking about here,” Jimmy says with a harsh laugh. “Listen, Elsa, I was naïve when I first started working here too. You’ll learn. After five years in this place, I’ve come to realize that’s all bullshit. In fact, you can totally tell from looking at someone that she’s trash. Most killers look just like you’d imagine: swarthy Travelers, filthy Gypsies. Hardly anything is a surprise.”

  Elsa’s eyes widen. She looks like she wants to crawl out of her own skin.

  “Just shut up!” I say to Jimmy.

  I simply can’t keep quiet. It’s a problem I have. People have always told me to keep my mouth shut, back down—you don’t have to share every opinion or thought. Lack of impulse control, the psychologists call it. On one test I got, like, the worst possible score. I’m the kind of kid who would swallow the marshmallow in one gulp if I had the chance.

  “Who said you could talk?”

  Jimmy runs his hand over his goatee and pants right in my face.

  “Just let it go,” Elsa says behind him.

  But Jimmy’s not about to let it go.

  He’s, like, half a meter away from me now, and his eyes are glowing with hatred.

  “You dirty murdering cunt. You better think twice before you say a word.”

  He doesn’t know I have zero impulse control. If he did, he wouldn’t do this.

  “That’s enough,” Elsa says in an authoritative voice. I think she even tugs at his arm. “That’s over the line.”

  I like her.

  “Over the line?” Jimmy whirls around and Elsa is startled. “What fucking line?”

  “You aren’t allowed to treat—”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Are you defending this killer whore?”

  His arm flings out toward her.

  “Calm down,” says Elsa.

  “Calm down? You’d better think about whether this place is right for you.”

  I feel for her. It’s so clear that she doesn’t belong here. She should go back to her life in the white-bread fairy-tale land she comes from, where all the stories have happy endings.

  “There are only two sides here,” says Jimmy. “Either you’re on our side, or you’re on theirs.”

  Then he slowly turns back around to face me.

  He ought to know better. He ought to have a much better overview of the situation. He’s no rookie, and I’m hardly the only person in here who lacks impulse control.

  I size him up thoroughly and aim for a bull’s-eye. And in the same instant he turns around, I land a kick right in his crotch.

  He groans and doubles over.

  Elsa and I look at each other as Jimmy writhes in pain between our feet. Although I make it clear to her that I’m not going to put up any resistance, she takes me down with some sort of judo throw. My cheek is pressed to the filthy floor and her knee is in my back.

  So much for that sisterhood. But then again, a good girl never compromises her do-goodiness.

  Elsa soon receives help from two colleagues, and after a few seconds of conferring they decide to take me to an observation cell.

  They drag me out of the room,
and on the way to the elevator I give in and stop resisting. There’s no point.

  The observation cell is really meant to protect inmates from themselves. It’s small and dark, with only a mattress on the floor, and everything you do is observed through a window in the door.

  I have to spend the whole night there. It doesn’t help when I bang on the wall or scream myself hoarse or threaten to report them.

  By morning, when they open the door and bring me back to my room, I haven’t slept a wink.

  “Welcome home,” says the guard who unlocks my room.

  The smell invades my brain.

  I fall straight into bed and sleep until lunch.

  49

  I still haven’t forgiven myself for hitting Amina. Four years later, the memory tortures me several times each week. What kind of person are you, if you hit your best friend?

  An instant after it happened, I cracked. I ran around like a madwoman on a high, shrieking and flailing my arms. I had trouble accepting what I had done. I just wanted to erase the last few minutes and do them over the way a normal person would.

  Worst of all: I had enjoyed it. That wonderful, liberating feeling when my knuckles struck her cheek.

  Amina sat on the bench next to me with her face in her hands. I pried her arms loose and inspected the screwed-up eye and the reddish-purple lump that was swelling up over her cheek.

  “I’m sorry, sweetie! I’m sorry!”

  There was no way I could ever fix this, nothing could go back to normal after this. I had ruined it. The only constant in my life, the only thing that was unconditional and truly meant anything—I had destroyed it.

  I knelt down and held her hands tight. Passersby stared. A few stopped to ask if everything was okay.

  It wasn’t. It was fucking far from okay.

  I had hit her. I had hurt Amina.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I deserved it.”

  “Bullshit! This is all Dad’s fault.”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything to him. Can you forgive me?”

  “Stop that! You’re not the one who should be apologizing here!”

  It didn’t matter what she said. I realized that you can’t forgive someone for this sort of thing. You can say you do, and even believe it yourself, but deep down you will never forget.

  We rested our foreheads together and cried.

  * * *

  That winter, I needed Amina more than ever. Mom felt like crap and spent most of her time hiding in her office. Sometimes it seemed like she would rather talk to Amina than me. I got it into my head that she would have liked to trade me for Amina. While I brought disappointment after disappointment, I think Mom saw a lot of herself in Amina, the smart, good girl who never did anything wrong.

  At the same time, Dad became more and more paranoid. He went through my pockets, my bag, and my room. He ordered phone records to see who I’d been calling. He went through the search history on my computer and demanded access to all my passwords.

  I quickly developed strategies to meet Dad’s requirements even as I continued to live a relatively unrestricted life. I was over weed, but there was so much more: guys to kiss, nights to enjoy, parties to have. I let Dad go through my clothes, smell my breath, peer at my pupils, and believe he had insight into everything I was up to. It’s much easier to hide something when you give the impression of being transparent.

  * * *

  When the chatter about confirmation camp started going around, my ears pricked up right away. There were a lot of tempting rumors thanks to last year’s camp. Alcohol and sex and cigarettes. A ton of ungodly activities. And above all, the icing on the cake, a camp leader called Robin, who was, all sources were unanimous, the hottest being you could imagine.

  The Christian elements of confirmation left me completely cold. Of course I didn’t believe in God, but neither did anyone else who was going to camp. Most of them didn’t care, as long as they got presents and a sweet week of camp. Maybe there was some higher power somewhere, but it had about the same significance in their teenage lives as whether there was life on Mars. I was about the only one who would take any sort of active position the few times questions of belief came up at school, and my hostile attitude toward the church and religion mostly had to do with Dad, of course.

  I knew exactly how to lay it out. If Dad was given the tiniest shred of hope that I might develop an interest in the Bible, it wouldn’t take much to convince him.

  “What do you think?” he asked Mom at the dinner table. It was only a few days before the application had to be turned in. “Should we let her go?”

  Mom responded with an empty gaze.

  “Don’t know. Maybe.”

  Her standard answer of the past six months. She was sleeping poorly at night, ate like a size-zero model, and wandered around the house like a zombie. I had a hard time dealing with her apathy, not least because I felt responsible for it. Instead of putting my tail between my legs and trying to reach out to Mom, I pulled farther and farther away from her. Even if it was my behavior that had set Mom on a decline, it seemed to me it was her job to fix it.

  “You’re the one who had me. I never asked to be part of this family.”

  Childish? Sure, but I was practically still a tween.

  When Dad talked about Mom’s exhaustion, that she had hit a wall and ought to take time away from work, I protested.

  Mom dropped her fork on the floor and took an extra-long time to pick it back up. Dad bit his lower lip.

  “She says she’ll work less, but she stays up late working every night. Don’t you get it?”

  I could tell that Dad agreed with me, but he didn’t say anything. Was this some sort of strategy? Like, it was better for this to come from me.

  In any case, it was soon decided that I would be allowed to go to confirmation camp. Mom and Dad agreed, they claimed, and I set about planning right away.

  We brought along a variety of tobacco and alcohol products. When you’re only just fifteen, you can’t afford to be picky. Someone had filled a shampoo bottle with whiskey and liqueur from their dad’s liquor cabinet. Someone else had nabbed half a bottle of mulled wine from their grandma’s cellar. And a couple girls had managed to get a wino to buy them a small bottle of Explorer vodka. The cigarettes were hidden in our bags, wrapped in foil, packed up in plastic jars or tin boxes.

  I still remember the feeling of freedom in my chest as the bus pulled out of the parking lot.

  * * *

  The first few days at camp flew right by. We hardly even had time to think about the bottles at the bottoms of our bags. One late evening I snuck out to the woods with a few guys and smoked three cigarettes in a row and coughed almost until I threw up. Some people hooked up even that first night and made out under the blankets in our dormitory.

  There was a lake where we went swimming every day. One morning, Robin was standing there squinting out over the water for a long time, in up to his knees as the sunbeams glittered against his wet chest.

  The other girls ran up to the shore, giggling. The lake was still way too cold to stay in for longer than fifteen minutes or so.

  I waded slowly past Robin, met his gaze, and smiled. I knew he kept watching me as I continued up to the beach. I took an extra-long time bending over to pick up my towel.

  A little further up, in the grass, stood two of the counselors, smiling. I tossed my wet hair and swept the towel around my body before padding back up to camp.

  I really should have been surprised, even shocked, to see Dad there. But all I felt was an aching sadness.

  He stood there like everything was normal and gave me a hesitant smile. He couldn’t even let me have this. Not even this.

  I told him to go to hell. Then I ran all the way up to the buildings.

  That was when I made up my mind.

  A self-fulfilling prophecy, Dad? If chaos was what he was expecting, then chaos he would get.

  50

  “How are you feeling tod
ay?” Shirine asks cautiously.

  I don’t respond.

  She places a new book on the desk in front of me.

  “This one isn’t quite as depressing as The Bell Jar.”

  I read the back cover and flipped through it absentmindedly.

  “I loved it when I was your age,” says Shirine.

  It seems to be about a seventeen-year-old named Holden who thinks most people are idiots. I like the English title better than the Swedish one: The Catcher in the Rye.

  “What happened yesterday?” Shirine asks.

  Apparently she heard about my night in the observation cell.

  “Nothing.”

  I don’t want to talk about it. To be honest, I don’t think Shirine quite understands how things work in here. She’s not dumb, that’s not what I’m trying to say. She’s not even naïve. I just think that if you try hard enough to keep your eyes closed you can keep living in denial for as long as you want. Shirine has formed her own impression. She knows how she wants things to be and she basically turns her back on or looks away from anything that contradicts that impression. Swedish jails are good places. People still have rights and are taken care of while waiting to stand trial. In Shirine’s world, bullying, assault, and the abuse of power are things you only see in movies.

  “I understand that you’re having a tough time,” Shirine says.

  She doesn’t understand shit.

  * * *

  The next morning, I wake up with the book on my pillow. Fuzzy images from the night linger behind my eyelids and I have trouble telling the difference between what I read and what I dreamed. I feel like Holden when he wakes up on the couch in the home of his old teacher and the old guy is sitting there stroking his hair. I stand by the sink for a long time, splashing cold water on my face.

  It feels really nice when breakfast arrives. The guards are cheerful, and for once the coffee doesn’t taste like goat piss.

  I’m paging through the book a little as I eat, trying to figure out how far I got before I fell asleep, when the door behind me opens again.