by Tua Harno
“No.”
Without asking, Sanna opened the letter, glanced at the total, and sighed. “Mom, I can pay this, but why are you buying things on credit? You shouldn’t do that, the interest is really high.”
“It didn’t cost anything. I ordered curtains and a bedspread. I’m allowed to have something new once every ten years, too, aren’t I?”
“The problem is the interest. Show me the bills.”
Sanna sat down at the table and Mom brought her the bills and a fat Ellos catalogue. Sanna glanced at the kitchen window but didn’t notice any new curtains.
“They’re in the bedroom.”
“How much do you make a month?”
“It’s not polite to ask about money, religion, or politics.”
Sanna remembered this was a rule Mom had picked up from her own parents. Mom guarded her vote as if she thought it was a crime to tell for whom she’d cast her ballot. Sanna had been shocked when Janne’s parents discussed their preferred candidates by name at the dinner table.
“Give me a ballpark figure,” Sanna said.
Mom started getting nervous again. “What are you trying to count?”
“I want to know if you can afford this. Whether you’re going to have enough money left over to make the payments.”
“I can afford curtains and a bedspread!”
“Of course, but you also need to have money for electricity and food, too.”
“I can eat at work,” Mom said and refused to divulge how much she made.
Sanna didn’t get into the fact that Mom wasn’t allowed to eat whatever she felt like from the canteen. Mom stashed yogurts and plastic-wrapped packets of grated rutabaga and carrots in her pockets and purse, then proudly presented them at home. And then she’d spend hundreds of marks on all kinds of creams and fat-burning pills, since she’d saved on her monthly grocery bill.
Sanna sighed and pinched the back of her hand; she was trying to train herself to not be so critical of Mom. She made a rough guess of Mom’s salary and calculated a monthly budget for her.
“You have enough for curtains and even the magazine, but collection fees like this are a total waste.”
“It said there weren’t any extra charges,” Mom insisted.
“Well, they’re not going to go around handing out money for free.”
Mom’s plump cheeks and neck blazed with embarrassment, and she looked like she was letting the anger build so she could release it in a single torrent.
“Oh, Mom,” Sanna said, giving a little smile.
But Mom’s irritation didn’t melt. Sanna circled around to the other side of the table and massaged her shoulders.
“There’s no need to talk to your mother that way,” Mom said.
“You’re right, I’m sorry.”
But that wasn’t the last time Sanna had to straighten out her mother’s finances. Getting to the bottom of them wasn’t made any easier by the fact that Mom thought she was doing Sanna a favor by keeping her most shameful expenses a secret, which meant they came out of left field: the payday loans, the hundreds spent on psychics, the candles and baby clothes bought at parties people threw at their homes, the cosmetics bought on credit, the socks that regularly dropped through the mail slot.
“She’s completely impossible,” Sanna complained to Janne.
“Maybe you should let her make her own mistakes.”
“And what am I supposed to do when her debts go to the collection agencies? You want her to come live with us?”
“It’ll never get to that point. And if it did, there’s always the welfare office . . .”
Sanna felt like laughing, and not because she was amused. The second it came to taking care of his girlfriend’s mother, Janne was calling the welfare office to the rescue, even though in all other instances he stressed the importance of personal responsibility.
Sanna wondered whether it was wrong to think your parents were stupid, because that’s what Mom was. Sanna found herself wanting to forbid Mom from looking at flyers or taking calls from telemarketers, and maybe even watching TV, because that was where she found all these amazing offers. But because her words fell on deaf ears, she just had to tolerate making the occasional deposit in Mom’s account before the end of the month.
“I’d love to turn responsibility for her over to someone else,” Sanna said, knowing full well no one else existed. Ville had just shaken his head when Sanna had mentioned Mom’s financial problems. Wasn’t that what siblings were for, sharing the parental burden? But when had she and Ville ever shared anything? A bedroom, years ago.
There must be something wrong with her; you were supposed to love your mother. Why wasn’t Sanna capable of being more gracious, kinder? I don’t know how to love was the conclusion Sanna had come to years ago.
Now, Sanna slipped her phone into her pocket. Mom had sounded so sad. She had a tendency to exaggerate and play the martyr, but Sanna knew she was lonely.
Before long, Sanna would be with her every day. She lowered her head into her hands and pictured the moment when she returned to her Mom’s place for good. Mom would sleep in the bedroom, Sanna and her pregnant belly on the living room couch. Would it kill her if she never went any farther than the corner store? Would it be a life if she just kept herself, her baby, and her mother alive? On Christmas Eve, Ralda had made her feel hopeful and bold, and Sanna had promised the baby that she wouldn’t hurt herself. But what would happen when she didn’t have Ralda anymore?
Her phone vibrated with a message from Martti: You left your access pass in the car. I’ll drop it at reception.
Did Martti mean the hotel reception or the gate at the pit? Sanna headed downstairs. He was sitting at the counter, facing the stairway.
“Hi. Here,” Martti said, handing over the ski-pass-type card on its lanyard.
“Thanks.”
“You eat yet?”
Sanna nodded.
“Never mind then. There’s a decent place a block from here.”
“Good to know.”
Neither of them made any sign of moving. In his civilian clothes, Martti looked nice, easy-going.
“You’re probably working,” Martti said.
“Yeah. I am. Luckily.”
Martti frowned.
“What else is there to do here at night, other than sit in the bar?”
“There’s a golf course,” Martti said.
“A golf course? Jesus Christ. An artificial green built in the middle of the driest desert imaginable. And here I was thinking that the pit was the worst environmental crime around here.”
“I knew you were an environmental activist. Are you trying to infiltrate the company, take it down from the inside?”
Sanna laughed. “I wish. I knew someone at business school who said that was her plan when she took a job at an oil company. She went on and on about how good it was that she knew how the business world worked even though she was an environmentalist at heart, claiming she’d be able to accomplish a lot more than the protestors with their wispy beards. But working at the company changed her, and at some point she pretty much dropped the environmental stuff. I think idealism requires a critical mass of similarly minded people to survive.”
“Or a really strong idealist.”
“A voice crying in the wilderness.”
“You’re headed out into the desert, aren’t you?”
Sanna smiled.
“Can I buy you a beer?” Martti asked.
“A Coke, please. It’s a school night. I should do some work.”
Sanna noticed that her mood improved; she had edged away from her sorrow. Martti had aggravating, misinformed opinions, but he was easy to talk to, and Sanna would rather be with him than alone.
7
Dad had invited Sanna over after Ville told him about the breakup. Sari hadn’t been at home.
Dad made them coffee while Sanna watched. She couldn’t even remember the last time she had been there. She looked around at the white kitchen cu
pboards; they reflected her face and clothes like figures dissolving in the rain.
The coffee machine took up half the counter. It ground beans and shrieked like the ones at coffee shops. Dad grimaced at the racket as if he were just getting used to it himself. Or maybe the look was a way of explaining the machine: I know, I know, it’s loud, but the coffee is a totally different caliber than what you get from your basic drip.
Sanna guessed that it was the device’s shine and bulk that had tempted Dad and Sari; it lent class to the entire kitchen. She had a hard time believing either one of them had a very delicate palate when it came to coffee. Back in the day, Dad used to heat up day-old bargain-brand stuff in the microwave.
“So what’s this I hear? Ville tells me you and Janne broke up,” Dad said after finishing his dance with the coffee machine. He trained his colorless eyes on her, void of pity or concern. What they wanted was an explanation. “Didn’t your contract just end, too?”
“Yeah. UNICEF outsourced payroll.”
“You could have planned this a little better. There is such a thing as an exit plan.”
Sanna could feel the tension in her throat; it made her voice shrill. “What?”
“Companies hire people to ease the end, too, to steer them into bankruptcy in an orderly fashion, instead of taking the kamikaze approach.”
“I’m pregnant.”
Dad’s eyes remained fixed on her. “What?”
“I said I’m pregnant.”
“What the hell? So why are you—? What did he do?”
Sanna was silent for a moment.
“It’s nothing like that. You don’t have to worry. He wasn’t violent.” She met her father’s gaze. “Don’t tell anyone. Not even Sari. I don’t want anyone to know in case something happens.”
Dad cleared his throat. “Sanna, what if you and Janne still tried to give it a shot? Or did he have a—” He flicked his fingers as if he were trying to shake off loose dirt.
Sanna glared at her father. “Janne left me. He met someone else. He wants me to get an abortion.”
Dad let his eyes ask the question.
Sanna shook her head. “I’m going to keep it.”
“Sanna, you don’t have a job, and you still have to finish your degree.”
“All I have left is the thesis,” Sanna said defensively, and immediately regretted it.
It was Dad’s and Janne’s fault she had ended up at business school in the first place. They had promised her she could get a degree in whatever she wanted at the University of the Arts, and while she was there she could take all kinds of electives, too. Dad would pay for it, her high school graduation present. “You’re good at math. Don’t become one of those cardigan-wearing humanities majors,” Janne had said. Sanna remembered the look on Janne’s and Dad’s faces, how pleased they had been when they finally talked her into it.
“Do you have time to finish it before . . .” Dad asked, nodding at her belly.
“Maybe.” Sanna shrugged. “I just want to go away for a while.”
“Where? Somewhere abroad? Why?”
Sanna shut her eyes. She wished she could just stand up and walk out the way she did after arguing with Dad when she was a teenager, but she felt horribly tired. She leaned her head against the wall and swallowed down the hollow sensation. What was Dad afraid of? That Sanna would ask him for something?
“I’ll be fine.”
“It doesn’t sound like it. It might be the case if I could see your choices leading somewhere, see you aiming for something, but I don’t. Where are you planning on going with the baby? You moved straight in with Janne from your mom’s. Have you ever been alone?”
I’ve been alone ever since Janne graduated and got a job, Sanna thought, but Dad wasn’t talking about her feelings.
“Could you do your thesis in Australia?” Dad asked.
“Australia? At least it’s far enough away. I just don’t know how it could happen.”
“I know some people there, at a mining company.”
“A mining company?”
“That pit mine in Utah made a pretty big impression on you.”
“Impression! I was in total shock! It was an atrocity. They dug a mountain into the earth. It was a crime against humanity!”
Sanna still vividly remembered the trip to Utah, even though it had been seven years ago. Something between her and Janne had shifted there, though the trip had started out promising. Sanna had been excited about going to America. A business trip like that—spouses invited—had made them feel like they were living a TV series. She had participated in the daytime tours scheduled for the wives, driven around in a minibus with ladies who found her refreshing and funny.
The wives were set loose in outlet malls, where they bought shopping bags full of name-brand clothes. Sanna looked at herself in the dressing room. She was the only one who tried on anything before she bought it. The piqué shirt accentuated her thick biceps and the collar made her head look like a balloon. She decided to buy it, anyway, in sorbet tints. The ladies presented their hauls to each other, the glossy, transparent plastic bags sliding across the floor of the minibus.
In Salt Lake City, they were taken to see the Mormon temple standing proudly in the center of town. It was the weekend and wedding parties popped out every hour on the hour, like from a Swiss cuckoo clock; a teen groom and teen bride would emerge from the doors with all their siblings in matching outfits, groomsmen, and flower girls. Sanna turned away.
The men joined them for the tour of the mine—the deepest pit mine in the world. The hole looked like the earth’s jaws had popped out of joint, the corners of its mouth massively split. The gash was teeming with workers and machines, and in the distance they could see dust clouds from the blasts, like swarming locusts darkening the sky. The sun struck the Oquirrh Mountains, and the ruddy tint accentuated the soil inside the pit, gangrene gray and yellow at the edges.
One of the guides told them that there was another pit nearby, an abandoned one that had gradually filled with groundwater. “You guys should go see it! It’s really cool. It has every color of the rainbow, but the water will eat through any living thing it touches. Nothing grows there, not even algae.” The water in this lethal Technicolor lake was bright red, blue, green, and yellow. You could make out animal bones at the bottom, the eyeholes in the skulls black and meaningful.
“Seriously, you’re making your life difficult acting this way,” Janne had said when Sanna couldn’t sleep that night. “It’s not some Chinese coal mine where people die. It’s just a big pit mine.”
At the time, Sanna had decided to pull herself together. Expecting Janne to share her outrage was asking too much.
Back in her father’s kitchen, Sanna shook her head.
“It was the most hideous place I’ve ever seen. The only thing missing was a mushroom cloud hanging over it.”
“You don’t have to approach it from that angle. Your thesis is about HR management, isn’t it?”
Sanna was surprised her father remembered. Maybe it was because Ville had teased her mercilessly about it. Her brother had laughed in her face when he heard that she was taking a thesis seminar about integrating diverse employee groups into workplace culture.
“It’s just going to cost the company money when you say some group’s needs aren’t being met, and eventually some young female employee or person who’s allergic to smells says, Boo-hoo, life is so hard. The best-case scenario is that you guys finish your loser theses and graduate, at least the university will be financially compensated for your degrees.”
Sanna had restrained the urge to pull out Ville’s hair by the roots and asked if, say, making it easier for a developmentally disabled person to get a job didn’t conserve common resources and generate well-being at the individual level. And before you could offer job opportunities to special-needs groups, you had to know the best way of doing so.
“Right, right.” Ville laughed. “Good thing you’re looking into it. Now you�
��ll finally finish your degree so you can get a real job. I don’t understand how Janne can stand watching you drag your feet like that.”
But Sanna had never finished her thesis. After a day at the office, reading and making notes felt like too much. So she just surfed from link to link, scrolled up and down other people’s profile pages and pictures, wondered why she couldn’t come up with anything clever to say about her life. One time she wrote, Yay, the weekend starts now, but then deleted the status update.
The thought of contacting her thesis advisor filled her with shame. But Dad talked her into it, and to Sanna’s surprise the professor thought it was perfectly kosher for Sanna to continue where she had left off two years earlier.
The mining company would pay her to conduct the HR research if Sanna made her way to Kalgoorlie. Sanna couldn’t believe that everything was going so smoothly, and she asked Dad if there weren’t any invisible conditions attached to the agreement.
“They spend huge sums on employee training. Of course they want to know if it’s having an impact,” Dad said.
But Sanna couldn’t get past the feeling that Dad had promised the company a discount if they’d let him ship his daughter out there. It was quite the performance, getting her and her belly out of sight in the blink of an eye, and somewhere useful to boot. Satisfaction shone through the cracks in Dad’s poker face.
“Just imagine, what would have happened if I’d retired?” he said.
Yes, imagine. Would you just have thrown up your hands, then?
Dad could have said, Move in with us, we have more room than we need. But Dad didn’t want her there, never had. Maybe if your own life was flawless, it was more uncomfortable to tolerate the tiniest cracks—say, a daughter like her.
8
The room served as storage space for surplus furniture: two desks and clunky upholstered office chairs, binders with years on the spines but nothing inside. Cooper had shown her to it and gazed around approvingly, then thrown an arm around her shoulder.
“So you’re busy all day?”
Sanna had nodded without saying a word and stepped inside. She left the door open. She didn’t even close it during interviews; it felt safer that way.