by Alex Dahl
All of these things I’ve put into the top drawer. I like to sit on the chair and open the drawer and then close it again and then open it again, looking at the things and listening to the way the marbles roll back and forth. Other things the mother and father in this house have given me: a white-and-blue scooter, a green helmet, many clothes, an iPad, a noisy toothbrush with Luke Skywalker on it and a book about the planets.
It’s nice here. Maybe nicer now than before because I don’t have to meet the police and the other people every day anymore and answer questions. It made me angry because they asked me many questions I think they already knew the answers to. And the questions I did know the answers to, I didn’t always want to say. After I went to Østerøysvingen 8 in the night to look for my bear, the mother in this house has been more nice to me. She was nice to me before, too, but in the kind of way when you have to, like at school to the teachers even if you don’t like them very much. I thought she would shout at me when I woke up and saw that she was sitting next to me on the floor in a dress. The reason I didn’t think she was so kind before was because she gets stressed and sad sometimes because of her problems and I didn’t know about that so I thought she was just angry.
It’s the weekend again and the dad in the house came back from another country yesterday. I’ve been here almost four weeks. The mother in the house has been more quiet than usual for many days, like she was thinking about other things, when the girls fight or talk to her. Then, when the father in the house came back, she put on nice clothes and made her hair curl and laughed a lot at the things he said about his trip. He said the place he went is so clean that you go to prison if you throw chewing gum on the ground. He said that the houses are so high you have to lean your head back all the way to see the tops of them. And that it was hot and sticky, so he had to change his clothes three times a day. Here, it’s cold now. It has already snowed a few times but it hasn’t stayed on the ground. Soon it will be Christmas and all the kids talk about it every day, because they like to make decorations and get presents. I haven’t made decorations before, but it is my class’s job to make some bags to hang on the school tree, so I will next week.
The Christmas I had with Anni and Krysz was very bad. I still know what Christmas is supposed to be like because Moffa and me used to do it, and it was the nicest thing. We went into the forest after breakfast on Christmas Eve to get a tree, and Moffa always let me choose which one. That one? he’d say, and point to one that was really perfect, with no gaps in between the branches. I always liked to choose one that was a bit strange, because it’s sad if those ones never get picked. Then, at home on Moffa’s farm, Baby would run around the tree in circles and bark, because she thought it was strange that we took a tree into the house. We hung glass balls and little Santa figures on the tree and strung silver glitter garlands from the star on the top. Moffa always gave me a julebrus and I sat on the sofa drinking it with a red straw, watching cartoons while he made our Christmas dinner in the kitchen. After dinner, Moffa gave me my presents, and then he’d sit and listen to old records while I played with the things he gave me.
Krysz said that Christmas is stupid because it is just a way to make people buy many things. He said fuck off to Santa in the shopping center when we lived in the Poland-house and many people stared at us. On Christmas Eve when I was with Krysz and Anni, it was just me and Anni in the end because they had a very big fight and Krysz went somewhere the day before. Anni and me did Christmas a little bit, I don’t think she hated Christmas as much as Krysz. We ate a whole grilled chicken and made a fire with one of those logs you can buy in the shop that burns a very long time. Anni gave me a Kinder egg and some pencils. She told me about when she was small and she had Christmases with her mother on their farm, and how they used to cut down a tree from their forest, too. They used to leave some milk and a cookie for Santa’s reindeer in a big barn they had, and I told her Moffa and I used to do exactly the same thing. Anni always brought her horse, Besta, a big peeled carrot on Christmas Eve. After Christmas, before the New Year, Anni and her mother would ice-skate every day on a lake in the woods. Moffa and I had a lake, too, and I asked him many times if we could ice-skate there, and he’d shake his head like he was sad and say that because it is warmer now than it was when he was a boy, the ice isn’t safe enough anymore. We’d walk around the lake, and though it was always frozen in the winter, it was true what he said about the ice, because close to the shore it was brown and see-through, even cracked in many places. Before I was born, Moffa knew a lady who had walked on the ice on our lake and fallen through, and it was four months before they managed to pull her out again.
Nobody has said anything about Christmas here. I don’t want to ask them because it’s not my family, and maybe they will have their Christmas and send me somewhere else. Hermine has made a list of what she wants and stuck it on the fridge door. It says: a horse, new iPad, iPhone 8, nail polish, eye shadow.
I open the drawer in my desk and look at the things in there. If I was going to write a list I don’t know what I would write now that I have the Yoda pencil case and the cards. Maybe I would write dog but that would be stupid because I wouldn’t get it. I’m trying to think of something else I could maybe want, but I keep thinking about Baby. She was small and white, with floppy ears and a brown spot on her back. She liked it when it snowed – she would chase the snowflakes and bark really loudly. She also liked pigs’ ears and tummy-scratching and me. I asked Anni many times what happened to Baby, but she would never tell me and I think maybe she didn’t know. Baby was not very old, so maybe she is still alive and living with someone else. I write Baby on a piece of paper and cross it out. I do it one more time but it was stupid because now I have thought about what it would be like if I opened a box and Baby was inside it. Someone knocks on the door.
Hey, kiddo, are you okay? says the dad in the house. I nod, but he’s come just when I was thinking about Baby in a box, so he sees that I’m very sad. Do you want to practice some hoops with me? he asks. It’s not that cold this morning. I don’t want to play with a ball, but I don’t want to say that because I still feel bad for what I said about him when the mother told me his secret. Moffa always said that if you are not sure about someone, listen to what your stomach says about them, because it usually knows. I think the dad in the house is a good man but Krysz says that men who like men are disgusting and should be shot. There was a man who used to come to the Poland-house. He was quite old and had different clothes to most people. He looked like a man in a play because he wore a suit and a tie and colorful scarves. He had a mustache that pointed sharply down at the ends, and a small dog who wore dresses. He used to come to look at the things that Anni and Krysz were selling, things like silver spoons and silver candlesticks, and old jewelry and watches, and then he would sometimes buy things to sell from his shop and Krysz and Anni would get money for smack. Fucking faggot, Krysz said every time the man left the house, leaving a strong mint smell from his perfume behind. I asked him once what that meant and he said it meant men who like men instead of women and that that was a wrong way to be and that in many countries men like that were rightfully punished. I never really thought about it again, until the mother in the house I live in now told me the secrets.
Yes, okay, I say and stand up. He’s kind, and my stomach knows that. Anni was kind, too, but only sometimes. Krysz wasn’t kind most of the time, but sometimes he taught me things, like drawing horses and dogs with one single line. Anni said that life had been very bad to Krysz so he forgot what it was like to be nice.
Outside, it is very cold even though it isn’t snowing or raining. It’s Christmas in a few weeks, says the man. Have you thought about what you want? I bounce the ball on the ground a few times and take a shot, but I miss. I shake my head and he looks at me, holding the ball in his hands. Is everything okay today, Tobias? I want to tell him that I like him and his whole family and that I want to stay with them when it’s Christmas, and they don’t have to
buy me any presents because I only want Baby anyway. Can I stay with your family at Christmas? I ask in the end. The man looks at me strangely for a long moment and I realize that he thinks it’s difficult to tell me that I can’t stay here at Christmas because I’m not in their family, but then he throws the ball so it lands in a hedge on purpose and leans down to me, so his face is really close. Hey, he says, hey. Did you think you weren’t going to stay with us for Christmas? You don’t have to worry, Tobias. We are going to have a really nice Christmas, all of us.
*
I haven’t told anyone about Moffa. Not one single person. The police and the tall lady who came many times to talk with me from social services asked me a hundred times about how long I was with Anni and Krysz, and I said, Always. I could have said everything I remember but I didn’t. When I was small, no one knew about me, or that I lived with Moffa, but I don’t know why. People know about most children, I think, but not me. Once, a car came driving up the driveway to the farm when Moffa and I were picking apples off the trees, and Baby was barking like a crazy dog because she thought it was a game and that the apples were balls. Moffa suddenly looked really serious when we heard the car’s wheels crunch on the gravel in front of the house. Quick! he said. Go to the barn. I ran really fast to the barn and hid underneath a huge concrete bench with a heavy red wax cloth over it that stood against a wall. Nobody came for a very long time, but I stayed under the table until Moffa came and said, You can come out now, Tobias, in his nice, slow voice. Who was it? I asked, and he smiled and said, Someone who wanted to sell me things I don’t want.
Some people did know about me, though. Moffa had a woman who was like a wife, but she wasn’t his wife because she lived on another farm nearby. Her name was Carolin and she used to come to our house and sweep Moffa’s kitchen and make waffles for me. One time I heard her ask Moffa, How long is he staying this time? and Moffa said that I would stay for a week, which was a strange thing to say because I stayed there the whole time. In the summer, some people came to help Moffa with the farm work, and they would see me around the farm. I don’t remember many of them now, and I never spoke with them because they could not speak Swedish, or Norwegian, which is what Moffa and I spoke, even though it was Sweden we lived in. When Moffa had to go somewhere, like maybe the town, Baby looked after me and I looked after Baby. Before Krysz and Anni took me away from the farm, I had not seen anything that wasn’t the farm.
The summer Krysz and Anni came to the farm, I was a bit more than seven, but not eight. Their job was to pick the strawberries in Moffa’s field with some other people. Moffa gave them money to do it. They lived in a blue tent next to the barn, and there was also a red tent and a black one. In the barn, Moffa had made a shower for the people. Anni always said hello to me, and one time she came with me and Moffa to swim in the lake and I thought she was strange because when we walked back up the grass hill to the house she began to cry, but real quiet, and Moffa didn’t see it.
Krysz hit Anni many times, and she always said he didn’t, but one time, Moffa heard him hit her and stopped him and then Moffa and Krysz had very angry words outside of the tent. Krysz always used to say ugly things to people, like fucking faggot and fucking Santa and fucking Jew and fucking bitch and fucking paki but to Moffa he shouted fucking pedo! Moffa never got angry with anyone, at least not that I saw, not even me when I brought a dead bird to my room and it began to smell, but he got really angry then and made his voice very loud and shouted, Leave this farm immediately, or I will call the police. Krysz screamed many more ugly things and then he ripped the tent out from the ground and shoved it in the back of the old red car he and Anni had arrived in, without even folding it. Come on, he said to Anni, let’s go. Anni cried, and Krysz pulled on her arm and then Moffa said, You can stay here to Anni. Don’t go. Moffa said she could stay with us to help him with me so Anni moved into the yellow room in the attic because she didn’t have the tent anymore.
For a long time Anni was sick so she couldn’t help Moffa with me anyway. She stayed in the bed and I only saw her if I went up there to look at her from the door. She was always shaking and her face was as white as a ghost’s. When I came up to the attic, she’d wave at me if she was awake, but I never went in the room, because she was frightening when she was so sick. After a while, she started to come downstairs and she drank tea in the kitchen every morning and evening. I didn’t like it so much when she was there because I was used to it being Moffa and me and Baby. Now, when I went to sleep, I could hear them laughing downstairs. Moffa began talking about Anni, saying things like, That poor girl and, What a lovely person she is and, Aren’t we lucky that Anni came and Krysz went away. But Krysz came back.
10
I’m exhausted, to the very bone. Perhaps it isn’t so surprising, with everything going on, but I just can’t seem to find a moment to clear my mind. This morning, after dropping the kids off, I decided to stop by the gym. Now I’ve finally lost that excess weight, I might as well take advantage and tone up as well. Something odd happened while I was there. I was on the cross-trainer, minding my own business, my eyes roaming between the TV high up on the wall, the mirror on the far side of the room and the sweaty faces of the other gym-goers, when a woman walked past outside. I saw her reflected in the mirror, walking fast with her head bent, a scarf drawn tight beneath her chin against the wind, and I could have sworn it was Anni. I craned my head to follow her as she rushed past, and I must have stopped abruptly, because suddenly the cross-trainer jerked my arm hard as the woman was lost from sight. I’d been at the gym for less than a half hour, but I couldn’t bear to continue. In the changing room, I caught my own eyes in the mirror and realized they were brimming with tears. I was afraid to go outside and cross the parking lot in case I bumped into that woman, so I sat down on a hard wooden bench. Again, the images of her dead, face-down in the harbor water flooded my mind, and I closed my eyes, pressing my fingers firmly into their sockets, sending tears down my wrists. Still, she was there. In my mind. Mouth open in a silent scream, eyes half-closed, looking straight at me, fingers reaching – reaching for me... My heart began to pound much harder than it had while I was working out and I lay a hand to my chest to calm it, but nothing worked and I sat there for a very long time, just trying to ride out wave after wave of panic. How had I got here? How had this impossible situation happened to someone like me?
I stepped carefully outside, as if I might be struck down by falling rocks. It was past nine, and the moon was only just slipping down the sky, leaving a foggy, wan morning behind. The parking lot was empty of people, and I began to run towards the Range Rover parked badly across two bays. As I got closer, I saw a yellow parking ticket snapping in the wind. Swearing to myself, I stuck my hand in my pocket to find the keys and realized the phone was ringing. It was Johan, calling from the office. I got in the car, slamming the door shut, sealing myself inside its cold, quiet space. My sense of unease increased and for a moment I felt completely overwhelmed by the impulse to get back out, fling the phone into the sea and just run away from the car, away, away, it wouldn’t even matter where to; just away from this dark and rainy winter; this boring little town; my ungrateful, sluggish daughters; impossible Tobias; tormenting Anni; my insipid job; my spiteful friends – I wanted it all to be gone. For a mad moment, I even wanted to be like her; struck still forever, cold and immobile, held gently by the sea.
‘What is it?’ I said, realizing how tired and angry I sounded as I spoke. I tried to fix it immediately – if there is one thing I believe in, it is that with men, you have to accurately strike the chord between demanding diva and submissive sweetheart. ‘Darling, sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I just fell on a patch of ice in the parking lot. It’s so good to hear your voice, baby, are you okay?’
‘Hi, uh, yeah.’ Johan sounded flustered by my sudden change in tone. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Well, I’ve hurt myself, if I’m honest. But I’ll be fine. Is everything okay?’
‘Yeah
. I, uh, called to see if you can organize playdates or sleepovers for tomorrow night. Remember how Morten said we really should prioritize our date nights? It’s been a while.’
‘You’re right, it has. But, Johan, we have just taken in a random kid, and a lot’s been going on.’
‘Cecilia, I’d really like for us to talk, okay?’ A bitter dread, like the smell of death, drifted into the car, threatening to strangle me.
‘I... Okay, yes of course. I’ll fix it.’
I leaned back against the cool leather seat and closed my eyes against another onslaught of irrational tears. Could it be that Johan was planning on leaving me? Had he already begun to separate himself from me and our life together, and all that remained was to tell me he was going? I focused on my breathing exercises and tried to envision Morten’s face as he said, This insecurity of yours is unfounded, Cecilia. It’s in your head. Morten is a marriage therapist Johan and I have spent tens of thousands of kroner on in a bid to strengthen our marriage. I do believe in preemptive measures, rather than little tweaks when it’s already too late.
At home, I caught Luelle watching TV in the living room, the duster flung nonchalantly at her tiny feet. I glared at her until she scampered away, then made a triple macchiato. I took a couple of my pills and stood a long while at the window, staring out at the white wooden houses clinging to the rocky hills, like little boats riding enormous gray swells. Once, they were inhabited by whale fishermen who’d leave huge carcasses strung up to dry in their courtyards. These days, the whales have been replaced by Range Rovers and Porsche Cayennes.