by Alex Dahl
She smiles at us, a genuine smile, before her features settle into a sad seriousness. She nods towards a little window, through which we see another room where Tobias sits on the floor, watching a cartoon among piles of merry IKEA cushions shaped as animal heads. He is looking evenly at the screen, though he must be aware of the window, of people peering at him worriedly. A knot appears in the pit of my stomach, like a hand twisting at my intestines. I turn away and face Vera, Laila and Thor, trying to mirror the social worker’s expression of concern and empathy.
‘Cecilia, Johan,’ says Laila, ‘thank you both so much for coming, and especially at such short notice.’ I raise an eyebrow and purse my lips in agreement – short notice, indeed, but then I remember that the impression we are going for here is helpfulness and concern.
‘Oh, but of course,’ I say. ‘We are very concerned about Tobias.’
‘Yes,’ says Vera Jensrud.
‘This is, quite frankly, a highly unusual situation,’ adds Thor Ellefsen. ‘I’ve been a Sandefjord policeman for thirty-two years, and I can honestly say nothing like this has ever happened before. We are at a bit of a loss, and hope you can help us piece together some crucial information.’ Johan and I both nod. Sitting down on a low, green sofa, I lose sight of Tobias through the window, but he is vividly here, in my mind, as though my brain has memorized every last characteristic of this little stranger; the smooth olive-brown skin; the floppy black hair; the grown-up, expressionless eyes; the sharp, too-big teeth that seem to only just have come through; the thin, small hands held close to his sides in fists.
‘Could you please talk us through the events of last night that led to Tobias spending the night at your family home?’ continues Ellefsen.
I nod, clear my throat and begin to speak. I tell them about how I first noticed Tobias at the pool, how he’d seemed afraid. I tell them about the receptionist saying nobody had turned up for him, and that the number she had for his parents went straight to voicemail. How she’d asked me to please drop the boy at the address on Østerøya. I pause, nervous because of how they are all looking at me.
‘What was the address?’
‘Østerøysvingen 8.’
Laila Engebretsen nods. ‘“That is the same address he gave us,’ she says softly. ‘The poor boy. He’s traumatized. Doesn’t trust adults. It took me two hours to get him to breathe a single word.’
‘The trouble is,’ says Inspector Ellefsen, ‘the house at Østerøysvingen 8 has been empty since 2010 when the owner, an old lady, died. Her son, who inherited it, lives in Kristiansund and never comes here.’
‘But... I went inside. With the boy. And, uh, it seemed to me that someone had used it recently. There were mattresses upstairs, a new lamp...’
‘It has come to our attention that the building may have been used as a squat on a couple of occasions. We’ve stopped by there two or three times and always found it empty. There were some Latvians here last winter, doing odd jobs, who were unaccounted for, housing-wise. Also, as you may know, we’ve had some Eastern European beggars here in Sandefjord the last few years. Romanians. We wondered whether they might sleep in that house occasionally.’
‘But what about Tobias?’ asks Johan, his face red and splotchy. He gets like that with indignation, and I can only imagine the thoughts churning through his mind at the moment – he’s so kindhearted and sensitive, my Johan. ‘Who is going to take care of Tobias?’ I press my leg discreetly but firmly against Johan’s. He needs to understand that I’m the one who does the talking here.
‘He must be the squatters’ son?’ I ask.
‘We’re looking into that, but we have not had any reports over the years of any of the transient Eastern European groups having children with them. Also, his Norwegian is flawless.’
‘He looks like a gypsy,’ I say.
‘A gypsy?’ asks Laila, her docile eyes suddenly sharp on me.
‘Well, yes. You mentioned there have been issues with Romanians coming here to beg. It seems quite likely to me that he could be one of them.’ Laila writes something on her notepad. I can see it, from where I’m sitting: Romanian?
‘Okay, back to last night. What did you do when you realized there was nobody at Østerøysvingen 8?’ Inspector Ellefsen holds my gaze a long while and I feel irrationally nervous; after all, I haven’t done anything wrong.
‘I... I was going to call someone.’
‘Who were you going to call?’
‘I guess I was going to call the lady at the swimming pool. If I couldn’t get hold of her, I would have tried the police or social services.’
‘But you didn’t?’
‘Well, I would have, but I realized the phone was at home, with my eldest daughter. She’d been playing Minecraft on it in the car.’
‘Okay. So what did you do next?’
‘Well, if I’m honest, it was quite a frightening thing that happened. The house... it was so empty and cold. It was freezing and stormy outside, I was exhausted after a long day, my Tuesdays are terrible. And the boy, Tobias, I mean, well – I felt so desperately sorry for him. He didn’t look surprised at the abandoned house. He looked empty, broken, dejected. We got back in the car and drove to my house. I thought I’d get him a hot chocolate and a snack. I was planning on making a few calls...’
‘But you didn’t.’
I swallow hard and try to recover my harmless-and-concerned expression, but my mind is receding back to that irrational, black panic, and I want to stand up and crash through the door, running to the car, leaving these polite faces and sharp eyes and constant questions behind. ‘No, I didn’t.’
‘And why was that, Cecilia?’ Laila asked kindly.
‘Like I said, I was tired. Confused. When we got to the house, Tobias asked if he could stay the night. Begged, in fact. I said I’d have to make a few calls, figure this out, but he became so distressed and upset that I just didn’t know what to do. I suppose I couldn’t see the harm in letting him stay just the one night. He told me he goes to this school, and so I felt reassured that you would be able to help him if there really was a more serious family situation.’
‘I would have thought you’d come inside the school with Tobias this morning, just to make sure everything really was okay’ Vera Jensrud spoke slowly, watching me as though she were about to frame some criminal rather than ask a concerned mother some routine questions. Bitch.
‘Well, I would have, but he asked me not to, actually,’ I say. ‘He said, “Thank you, but I’ll be fine from here.” That’s what he said.’ Actually, he had asked me to walk him in, and I’d said I was in a rush, and leant across him to open the back door, filling the car with crisp air. Then I’d stared out the window until I’d heard him move, and then closed the door with a very soft thud. My face feels hot. My feet are itching. I glance quickly at Johan and find him looking at me, an expression of sympathy on his face, but mixed with something else – shock.
‘But he’s seven,’ says Vera Jensrud, writing something down on a notepad. I want to smack her in her plain, wrinkled face.
‘Eight,’ I say.
A long silence follows. I feel Johan’s eyes still on me. Laila Engebretsen rustles the papers in her notebook, most likely to break the tension. ‘In any case, we’re glad you’re here now.’
‘So... so, what happens to the poor child now?’ I ask.
Laila Engebretsen exchanges a quick glance with Inspector Ellefsen. ‘Well, we are obviously doing absolutely everything we can to determine the boy’s origins and to locate his family. In the short term, he will stay in a safe family setting here in Sandefjord.’
I nod. ‘And in the longer term?’
‘Well, we certainly hope we can solve this and give Tobias the best possible chance at a stable family life.’
‘So, you’ve found him somewhere for the short term?’ Johan asks, his face tight with worry.
‘Due to the international migrant situation, where Norway has seen hundreds, if not thousands, of c
hildren arriving unaccompanied, our short-term foster families are unfortunately completely exhausted in this region. In this phase of a traumatizing situation like this, it is of the utmost importance to limit the changes a child is exposed to as much as possible. We’d like to ask whether you’d consider the possibility of taking Tobias in for a short while, maybe a few weeks. He seems to have taken to you. And, of course, we know you will be able to provide him with a secure family environment while we sort this out.’
Laila Engebretsen looks at me expectantly, as if she’s asking me a perfectly reasonable favor like watering her plants or picking up her mail while she’s off to Tenerife. I am, for once, actually speechless. I shake my head hard, but as I do, I realize that Johan is nodding. Up and down his head goes and I want to reach across and punch him, the utter goon; his lip is wobbling and his eyes are even glinting with tears.
‘Of course we’ll have him,’ he says, and then, ‘thank you. Thank you.’
3
Krysz always says that if a person sees me then they will shoot me or at the very least shove me into a small hole in the ground where I’d have to sit staring at mud walls, eating stale bread and drinking slimy water. Nobody ever saw me because I know every stone and every tree near the houses I have lived in. When Anni and Krysz go away all day, or sometimes many days, I am outside in the woods where people rarely go anyway, but if they did, I would know where to hide. I’m not allowed to stay inside the house, in case police come. It has happened, that I’ve seen people and hid. Once, I was picking little red fruits from a bush when a man came running very fast on the path a few meters below where I stood. He was very red in the face and spluttering. He had headphones in his ears for his music and he wore a bright yellow vest and shiny, tight black shorts. He didn’t look dangerous and I didn’t think he would have shot me even if he had seen me. He didn’t because I stood very still against the trunk of the tree, stroking it gently the way I like to do. Sometimes I feel a murmur in return against my fingertips. Krysz says it isn’t true and it isn’t possible but it is.
A few days ago Anni and Krysz were very angry with each other. They shouted. Krysz put his things into an old brown bag and the things that didn’t fit he put into some plastic bags. Anni shouted while he did this, the fat smoke hanging from the side of her mouth, unlit. When he was finished he said, Goodbye, Anni. He’s done this before; they both have, so I wasn’t very afraid. I was only afraid of the shouting, because it often comes before smashing or worse. Instead of more shouting, Anni was quiet. She stared at the bags and at Krysz, who had sat down on the bare floor in the bedroom. She stared at me, hovering in the stairwell outside, and I tried to flatten myself up against the wall the way I do against tree trunks when I’m outside, but it’s much easier in the woods, and I wasn’t able to stop her looking at me in a cold, angry way. I’m leaving, he said. You’re leaving, said Anni, laughing, but not nice laughing. Yeah, said Krysz. What about the boy? said Anni. What about the fucking boy? Anni said: You can take him with you. Krysz said: Fuck, no. Anni said: Well, then he goes back to where he came from. Krysz said: What the fuck does that even mean? Anni didn’t say anything else, but walked over to where I still stood in the stairwell and for a moment I thought she might spit at me the way she sometimes does when she’s angry, but she just looked at me, up close. Her lips were pulled back, she was sneering like a wolf, revealing her brown half-teeth and the black gashes in between them. Come, she said.
*
Once when I was smaller, I asked Anni if I could call her Mother. She said no. Then she laughed, showing me her half-teeth and the long red gums over them. Why would you want to call me that? I’m not your mother, she said, and I did ask her then, again, who is, but she just shrugged and turned away. I guess my mother must have died, so Anni and Krysz couldn’t bring me to her like they were supposed to after Moffa died. It’s the only reason I can think of but I still don’t know why they bothered keeping me until now.
The voices of the other children holler around me like stones bouncing on a lake. I have almost never been this close to other children before. The water is such a special blue that I have to stare at. It is wonderful. I know how to swim a little because Moffa taught me, in the lake. No! I mustn’t let Moffa into my mind. I know not to think about him because it’s sad and if you think about one sad thing, you’ll probably think about all the sad things. Krysz told me this once when he wasn’t drunk, when he took me fishing, very early in the morning, when the sky was pink and gray at the same time and heavy birds flew close together, feet almost touching the water, which looked like a giant mirror.
Where are we going? I asked as Anni set off down the driveway, walking so fast I had to run to keep up. After all the shouting, more bad things had happened, very bad things, and now Anni had a bright smear of blood on her cheek. It was afternoon and black clouds hung low over the trees. To the town, she said, lighting a cigarette. She was crying, but only with her eyes. Her face was frozen, like a statue face. Anni and Krysz never took me to the town, except a couple of times in the car with their friend Pawel, who’s a baddy, because he has kicked me many times. I had to lie down on the floor in the back, but still, I’d been able to see pretty white houses, fountains, big boats, children playing on some strange, tall machines. If I made a noise, Pawel would turn around and hiss at me, like a tiger. If anyone sees you, they’ll put you in a hole or worse, they always say. Now, we walked fast along the side of the road until we reached the top of a hill, and from there we could see the beginnings of the town – gloomy church spires and a few redbrick buildings that were taller than all the others. You’ll stay with Fatma for a couple of days, said Anni. She owes me. Big time. I need to think.
Anni talked fast all the way to the town, which was quite a long walk. It wasn’t important things she talked about, like what had just happened, but strange stories of when she was a child, before she became like this. I hoped it would begin to rain because it bothers Anni and it doesn’t bother me. She’d swear and fall silent if it rained, and inside my head I could laugh a little bit about how her mud-colored hair would fall limp into her eyes and how the black on her eyes would wash away down her face like soot and how her cigarette would keep going out. But it didn’t rain. And Anni kept talking like everything might still be okay, but I could see that she was afraid and that she had smoked her special smoke because her eyes were so hard.
In the town we walked along the water promenade and I struggled to keep up with Anni because there were so many things to look at, things I’d never seen before. A huge boat was docked, so big that cars were driving into it in a line. On its side was a photograph of a family laughing in a shiny black car. The children sat smiling behind their parents, probably on nice car seats, holding fizzy drinks, with cameras slung around their necks. Further along the way was a skateboard ramp, but there was nobody there now and a pool of black water had collected at the bottom. I saw an airplane coming in low over the water, and as it passed, its landing wheels came out and I craned my neck all the way back to follow its path, but Anni yanked my arm hard and hissed in my ear, Come! I also counted nine dogs and they all looked nice and funny, with open mouths, long tongues and kind eyes, but none of them were as nice as Baby. Baby was me and Moffa’s dog.
Fatma’s house was a flat on the seventh floor of a gray building. It was noisy at her house, because there were many children. Anni waited for a bit after we arrived, and spoke quietly with Fatma in the kitchen, which really was just a bare room with a microwave and a sink full of plates and pans. Okay, bye, then, she said, turning away from me so quickly she was out the door before I had said bye back. A boy who looked a couple of years older than me came over to where I stood, and smiled. He had a narrow face and a long skull with dense black curls. Abdi, he said, and pointed to his chest. Tobias, I whispered, and he smiled and I couldn’t stop looking at his teeth because they were very white and all perfectly in line with each other, not like Anni’s brown half-teeth, or Krysz�
��s yellow ones. Maybe he knew that I didn’t want to talk, or maybe he even knew that I had almost never spoken to anyone besides Anni and Krysz and Moffa, or maybe Abdi didn’t like talking much either, anyway we sat down on the bottom bunk bed and played a football game. I had never played before and it made me really happy but really angry in a way, too. I had seen TVs before, because although we didn’t have one in Østerøysvingen 8, we had one in the house before then, and in the Poland-house, and at Moffa’s house. Most of the things I know about people, I have learned from TVs.
In the room with Abdi and me were his brothers and sisters, or maybe some of them were cousins, because I don’t think one lady can have that many children. I counted eleven, and they sat all around us – on the floor in front of the television, on the upper bunk, one on the window sill, watching us play the game. Abdi looked like the oldest one, but then I noticed two girls sitting on the floor by the door, reading, wearing purple headscarves and round glasses, and they looked older than Abdi. Occasionally the smaller children got up and walked out of the room and came back after a while. Many of the small ones had on T-shirts and only nappies, the kind you pull on like underpants. They all had the same dark skin, narrow faces and long skulls like Abdi, and they seemed to smile a lot. They all looked so much like Fatma, it was almost like one big person had been divided into many small bodies.
After a while, Fatma came in with a tray of white bread rolls. We all had one, and when the tray was empty she came back with a new tray of chopped carrots and very small tomatoes I had never seen before, not even on television. When that tray was empty, she came back with a new one, this one heaped full of potato crisps and cookies. I wished I could live with them in that flat. Maybe that was what Anni had arranged?