Encircling 2

by Carl Frode Tiller

  “Talkin’ of food,” Ma says. “I’m fuckin’ starving. I think we should start making dinner. Jørgen, can you get the barbecue going?” she says.

  Jørgen nods, gets up and wanders back over to the shed. He stops at the spot where he almost fell last time, bends down and picks up a rusty length of pipe, some old gutter, it looks like. That’s what he tripped over, he chucks it into the nettles over by the Chrysler.

  “It’s pork chops for dinner,” Ma says, looking at Mona as she plants her hands on the arms of her chair and pushes herself to her feet. “We were really supposed to be having prawns, but Grandpa didn’t want them.”

  “I don’t eat prawns,” Grandpa says, picking up his beer can and taking a swig.

  “Oh, but they’re so good,” Mona says, smiling.

  “Aye, but I miss the old woman that fuckin’ much every time I smell them,” he says.

  “Oh?” Mona says.

  She looks at him, doesn’t get the joke.

  But I laugh. And Ma laughs, she looks at Grandpa and laughs so hard her rolls of fat jiggle. Her eyes narrow when she laughs as heartily as this, turning into two black slits in her pudgy face. And Grandpa creaks contentedly, he likes being the funny man, Grandpa does, likes to be the one who makes everybody laugh.

  “Oh, God,” Mona says, she’s just got the joke and now she cracks up as well.

  The only one not laughing is Sara, she looks at us, smiling uncertainly. She has no idea what we’re laughing at.

  “Don’t you get it?” Ma says, looking at Sara.

  “No,” Sara says, shaking her head, the corners of her mouth lifting slightly in a smile.

  “D’you mean to tell me the twat of a doctor’s daughter doesn’t smell?” Ma says. She gives that hoarse smoker’s laugh of hers, glances around at the rest of us while Grandpa creaks even louder than his camping chair and Mona has to put a hand over her mouth to save spraying beer all over the table. I look across at Sara, she’s flushed and smiling, like she’s in on the joke but she’s not comfortable. And Mona just laughs more and more, laughing with her eyes squeezed shut. I can’t really remember ever seeing her laugh like this before. Maybe she’s just laughing at Ma’s comment, or maybe it’s also because she’s not the one sitting there feeling uncomfortable. Maybe she’s enjoying seeing Sara in the same position that she used to be in and maybe that makes her feel a bit more like part of the family, I don’t know.

  I turn to Ma.

  “For Christ’s sake, Ma,” I sigh, but I shake my head and laugh as well, I can’t help it.

  “Aw, she knows I’m only fuckin’ jokin’, right?” Ma says.

  “She’s fifteen years old,” I say.

  “I know how old she is,” Ma says.

  “Yeah, but …”

  “You think a fifteen-year-old can’t take hearing something like that? How d’you think fifteen-year-olds talk when they’re with other fifteen-year-olds, eh? They’d make me sound like a Sunday school teacher in comparison, I bet,” she says.

  She picks up her pack of cigarettes, pulls out a cigarette and sticks it in her mouth, shuts one eye as she lights it.

  I look at her, feel like saying something about it maybe making Sara feel a bit uneasy to hear grown-ups like us using the sort of language she might use with her friends. A lot of kids do, it confuses them when we adults aren’t as boring and responsible as they expect us to be. I should maybe say something like that, but I don’t, I just shake my head helplessly and laugh.

  “Right, now I need to get some food inside me,” Ma says, tilting her head back and blowing a smoke ring. “Anybody want to give me a hand in the kitchen?”

  Mona and Sara both get up right away. “Of course,” Mona says. And off they go. Ma first, with her cigarette between her fingers, spare tire hanging over the strings of her bikini bottoms, wobbling heavily with every step she takes. Then Mona and Sara. Mona wearing the black T-shirt with the words “Stiff Nipples” on the front, Sara in a yellow wool hat and a pair of those hip-hop pants, both of them thin as stick insects. I sit for a moment just watching them, then I grab the cooler bag and stand up.

  “I’ll get some more beer,” I say. “It is 2006, after all, so I guess we can let the women do all the work.”

  I grin at Grandpa and Grandpa grins back. Then I walk off. Feel the long grass tickling my legs. Place a hand on the rail and go up the steps and into the hall, join the others in the kitchen.

  “I can set the table while you’re doing that,” Sara says. She has her back to me, she has opened the kitchen cabinet and is taking out the plates.

  “Nah, we’ll use paper plates,” Ma says, taking a puff on her cigarette and nodding at a bag of paper plates on the worktop. “Saves us having to wash dishes afterwards,” she says.

  Sara turns to look at her, still with her hands on the plates. She looks unsure, almost as if she’s trying to work out whether Ma’s being serious. It’s probably considered a bit common to eat off paper plates where Sara comes from, they probably don’t use paper plates, or certainly not when they’ve got company.

  “Oh, but I can do the dishes,” Sara says.

  “But Sara, pet, we’ve got enough paper plates, haven’t we?” Ma asks. Her cigarette dangles from her lip and she puffs smoke as she crosses to the counter, picks up the bag and holds it up. “Oh yeah, plenty,” she says, tossing the bag to Sara and Sara has to drop her hands fast to catch it. She stands there holding the paper plates, looking like she’s just been handed a bag of radioactive waste.

  “Sara’s worried about the environment you see, Grandma,” Jørgen says, right behind me.

  I turn and look at him, he’s leaning against the doorjamb, grinning.

  “That’s why she wants to eat off proper plates,” he adds.

  “Aw, Christ, don’t tell me you’re one of them?” Ma says. “Well, in that case of course we’ll eat off proper plates,” she says, talking with her cigarette in her mouth. Her voice sounds funny when she does that and the cigarette bobs up and down.

  “No, no,” Sara begs.

  “But of course we’ll use proper plates.”

  “Oh no, please, not for my sake.”

  Ma opens the fridge door, takes out a pack of pork chops.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of doing it for your sake,” she says. “We’ll do it for the environment, of course. It would be just too bad if the oceans were to rise just because the Williamsens insisted on eating off paper plates.”

  She slaps the pack of chops down onto the counter, turns to us and gives that rough, hoarse laugh of hers again and Sara smiles that slightly uncertain smile. She’s finding it hard to get used to this sort of humor. Something tells her she’s being made a fool of and laughed at, I can tell by her face. She looks almost hurt now, poor thing. Jørgen should say something, explain to her that there’s no harm in it, but he doesn’t, he just stands there grinning and Sara’s still smiling that uncertain smile of hers, a stiff, strained smile, and Ma laughs, and Mona laughs, feeling more and more like part of the family the more awkward Sara feels, so it seems. She’s screaming with laughter now, shaking her head at how funny Ma is.

  I look at Sara and smile. I’m just about to say that she shouldn’t mind us, this is just how we are, but I don’t get that far.

  “But you eat meat, right?” Ma says. She flicks her cigarette out of the open kitchen window and turns to Sara.

  “C’mon Ma, just because you care about the environment doesn’t mean you have to be a vegetarian,” I say, glancing at Sara and giving a little laugh, as if to say: don’t mind Ma, but then I see that Sara’s blushing, she stands there red-faced and smiling and Jørgen grins back at me.

  “You don’t eat meat either?” Ma cries, jutting her head forward and staring at the girl.

  “No,” Sara says with a little titter.

  “So what the hell am I going to give you to eat?”

  “I can just have whatever you’re having with the chops,” Sara says. “That’ll be fine, reall
y.”

  “Well, in that case it’ll be potato salad with ketchup,” Ma retorts.

  Mona and Jørgen laugh and Sara just stands there, red-faced and smiling.

  “You could have a little bit, though, surely?” Ma says.

  “No thanks,” Sara says with a strained little laugh.

  “Just a little chop?”

  I see how Sara seems to shrink. She’s still smiling, but she’s feeling less and less happy, poor thing, I can tell just by looking at her.

  “Ma, honestly, would you just leave it,” I say. I’m smiling, but the look I give her says I’m serious. She looks at me, raises her eyebrows.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, a little bit of meat’s not going to hurt the girl,” she says.

  “Yeah, but that’s not what this is about, is it?” I say.

  “Oh, isn’t it? So what is it about?” she asks. “If it’s the pig then it was dead last time I checked, so she doesn’t need to worry about that anyway.”

  And then Mona laughs again. Ma turns to look at her and she laughs as well. It’s like they’re allies now, these two. A couple of seconds then Ma turns to Sara. She lays her fingers lightly on the girl’s arm, looks at her and smiles.

  “No, no, that’s for you to decide, of course,” she says. She takes the plates out of the cabinet and hands them to Sara. “Here, you take these environmentally friendly plates and set the table, pet, and while you’re doing that I’ll see if there isn’t a pack of birdseed left over from Grandpa’s budgie.”

  And she glances at Mona and laughs again. And Mona laughs back. I look at Sara and smile, try to reassure her with a smile, but she doesn’t look at me. She keeps her eyes forward as she walks across the kitchen, red-faced and smiling. Jørgen looks at her and grins, teasing her a little because she still hasn’t figured out how to cope with his family. She’s met us all a few times now, but she still seems just as unsure and Jørgen finds that funny, I can tell. He goes on grinning as he puts his arm around Sara’s shoulder and walks her out to the garden.

  “Ma,” I say. “She’s fifteen.”

  “Still?” Ma says.

  More laughter from Mona.

  “I’m just trying to say you need to go a bit easy on her. You scare her,” I say.

  “Okay, okay,” Ma says, not even looking at me. She kind of waves me away with a flick of her hand.

  I’m just about to say that she might do it for Jørgen’s sake, at least, because if Sara doesn’t feel welcome that affects him too. But I don’t say anything. Ma’s never going to understand why Sara shouldn’t feel welcome anyway, so there’s no point. I look at her for a second, smile helplessly and shake my head, then I open the fridge door and take out two six packs of beer, pop them in the cooler bag and step into the passage. As I come out into the hall I hear the whoosh-whoosh of Ma’s asthma inhaler.

  Namsos, July 7th, 2006

  The first time I met you face to face was down on the beach at Gullholmstrand. Me and Bendik were there and so were Janne and her dog, a fat old Labrador with a gimpy hip. It was half-blind, this mutt, and would have been put down long ago if Janne hadn’t loved him more than anything else in the whole world and if her parents hadn’t been convinced that she’d be even more sad and lonely if she were to lose him. Janne wasn’t someone we chose to be friends with or invited to hang out with us, but she sometimes tagged along with Bendik and me because she didn’t have anybody else, and even though we weren’t always as nice to her as we might have been, we kind of accepted her and she was happy about that and grateful.

  When the grown-ups talked about Janne they said things like “She was at the back of the line when good looks were being handed out” and “She’s a nice, well-behaved girl, but maybe a bit more backward than other kids her age,” but they only talked like that because they all wanted to be seen as nice people, when in fact what they actually thought was what me and Bendik said straight out: that Janne was ugly and stupid.

  Because Christ knows she was. She had the kind of big, heavy glasses that left sore spots behind her jug ears and on her pug nose. She had a length of white elastic attached to her glasses that was supposed to keep them in place, but it was so tight that it made her hair stick up at the back, making her look like a peewee or a crested grebe or whatever it’s called, the bird I’m thinking of. She also had a double chin that wobbled when she walked and an ass so big it hung over the sides of the chair when she sat down. Her face was broad and flat and perfectly round with a big mouth that she never closed, not even when she ate, something that came in handy when you and me and Bendik wanted to upset the stuck-up, oh-so-prim-and-proper girls in our class, I remember. All we had to do was give Janne one of the bars of chocolate we’d pinched from the corner store and ask her to sit down beside them at break and eat it while they were having their packed lunches. That put them right off their food, I can tell you, and sent them running out of the classroom to throw up into the drinking fountain in the hallway. It was just as hilarious every time, or so we thought.

  But enough of that.

  Anyway, me and Bendik and Janne were down on the beach. I remember Bendik was cursing Janne because she had laughed when her dog climbed onto his foot and started humping it. They were both too taken up with this to notice you coming down the path with your swimming things in a Co-op shopping bag. You sat down on the sand just a few yards away from us.

  “You should’ve been an abortion, so you should,” Bendik said to Janne.

  Janne opened her big mouth wide and hooted with laughter, her eyes flicking between Bendik and me.

  “D’you even know what an abortion is?” I asked her.

  “Yeah,” Janne said. “I’m not a complete idiot, you know.”

  “Now, now, don’t exaggerate,” Bendik said.

  “Huh?”

  Me and Bendik looked at each other and grinned.

  “Okay, Janne, so what’s an abortion then?” I asked.

  “It’s one of them black guys, in Australia, right?” she said.

  Me and Bendik doubled up, howling with laughter. I shot a glance at you while I was laughing, but you weren’t laughing. You weren’t even smiling, you looked very serious, grim almost, and you scowled at us as you stuck your hand into the Co-op bag and pulled out a beach towel.

  “She’s thinkin’ of aborigine,” Bendik gasped. “She’s thinkin’ of aborigine.”

  Janne said nothing. She was still sitting there smiling with her mouth wide open.

  “Holy shit,” Bendik sighed, grinning. He wiped away the tears of laughter and shook his head. “You’re unreal, so you are. How many chromosomes do you actually have?”

  “More than you anyway,” Janne said.

  And that set us off again.

  But Janne was laughing as well. That was the great thing about her. She seldom seemed to know when she had made a fool of herself or was being made fun of, so she was usually pretty happy and contented when she was with us. But you still didn’t laugh. You sat there looking all pursey-mouthed, probably trying to show how morally superior you were to us and how much sympathy you had for those less fortunate than yourself, what do I know. But I must have been thinking something like that as I sat there, because it was really starting to piss me off that you wouldn’t laugh at something as funny as this.

  “I don’t think the vicar’s brat finds us very funny,” I said, nodding to where you were sitting. Bendik turned to look at you.

  “Oh yeah?” Bendik said, not taking his eyes off you.

  “Don’t call me vicar’s brat,” you said without looking at us. You wrapped your towel around your waist, stuck one hand underneath and started to take off your shorts.

  “Well, well, look at him,” I said. I looked at Bendik and gave a laugh that said no way could he tell me what to do.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?” Bendik asked. “Do you think you can come here and order us about just ’cause you’re the vicar’s brat?”

  You didn’t say anything. />
  “Hey,” Bendik said, a little louder. “Hey you, vicar’s brat. We’re talkin’ to you!”

  You still didn’t say anything. You pulled your shorts down to your ankles, slipped them off, put them in the Co-op bag and took out a pair of swimming trunks. Me and Bendik were just about to get up and come over to you, but we stayed where we were for a moment longer because suddenly Janne’s dog waddled up to you and started sniffing under your towel. You tried to push him away, but that wasn’t so easy to do because you had to hang onto your towel with one hand to stop it falling down and revealing all your equipment. In any case, the old dog had caught a whiff of your balls so he wasn’t to be put off that easily, if you know what I mean. Normally he was so arthritic and stiff that you could almost hear him creak when he walked but now, suddenly, he was as frisky as a ferret. He scampered about, darting here, there and everywhere so that for a while it looked like you were surrounded by black Labradors. Bendik and Janne and I just sat there slapping our thighs and roaring with laughter, but when you fell on your ass in the sand and the dog grabbed the chance to start humping your leg, Bendik and I leaped to our feet. Neither of us needed to say a word, we were both thinking exactly the same thing: that we should hold you down and let the dog finish what it had started. It was disgusting, I know, and I’ve apologized to you lots of times since then, but we did what we did, so I’m writing it down here. At any rate, Bendik held your arms and I sat on your legs and then the dog could get on with what he wanted to do.

  “Look at ‘im go, look how horny he is,” Bendik yelled, laughing and nodding again and again at the pointy, pink dog dick rubbing up against your leg.

  “I think he fucking likes you,” I cried, grinning at you.

  “He thinks you’re a real sweetie,” Janne piped up. Neither of us had known that she could be deliberately funny, but apparently she could and Bendik and I laughed so hard we nearly wet ourselves, and that in turn made Janne happier and more animated than I’d ever seen her before. She hung over you, laughing and laughing with that great, gaping mouth of hers. “Sweetie, sweetie!” she cried and she went on like that until the panting dog finally came, sending spurts of grayish-yellow spunk onto your knee and your calf. Then we let go of you and ran off sniggering, all three of us.