by Alex Dahl
It was a late-summer evening; it must have been early August by then. Johan and I had been invited to a work colleague of his for a crayfish dinner at his country house just south of Sandefjord. Nicoline was at my mother’s for a sleepover. It was a cool, beautiful evening – one of the first nights of summer when it had actually begun to get dark again – we’d been so used to months of midnight light. We sat outside, watching the peaceful back-and-forth dance of a buoy out in the bay rocking on dark, shimmery water. A plump moon sat high above us, and the scent of the day’s hot sun lingered on the yellowing grass. After the meal, the men had gathered at one corner of the table to watch something funny on someone’s phone, and we girls gathered together at the other end. I didn’t know the other women well, and I’d be damned if I had to pick any one of them out of a crowd now, almost a decade later, but they were pleasant enough ladies and the conversation flowed easily around the usual subjects: work, kids, travel. At one point, I went into the kitchen behind the hostess as she’d begun to clear some dishes and I thought I’d help her. We stood side by side rinsing the discarded pink legs of the shellfish from the plates into the basin, when she suddenly said casually: So, how many weeks is it now? They’ll almost be Irish twins, your two, I’d imagine?
The sensation of being unable to speak was truly physical. I tried. I shook my head and handed her a half-rinsed plate rather too forcefully, and glanced outside at where the men were huddled together, laughing drunkenly. Excuse me, I said finally. She nodded, and the last I ever saw of that woman was her standing there, rubbing at an ugly red rash which had appeared on her neck, as I made for the door. My aversion to alcohol had come and gone in the past few weeks, and that night was one of the nights when I’d been unable to drink even a single drop, in spite of the fact that I really wanted to. For this reason, the car keys were in my bag and I half ran across the gravel courtyard to our car, tears flowing freely now. How could I not have known? I placed a hand on the tight drum of my lower abdomen and screamed from the pit of my stomach inside the warm air of the car. I was crying so hard I could barely make out the road in front of me as I merged onto the empty main road, pushing hard down on the accelerator.
I was going to go home. I would sleep off the shock, and then the next day, I’d go to a private clinic and make the necessary arrangements to get rid of it. I racked my brain for dates. When did we last have sex? And when was the first time since Nicoline’s birth? The truth was, Johan and I had only slept together once since she was born, and that had been just a few weeks ago. If it had been him who’d impregnated me, I wouldn’t be far enough along to be starting to show. The only other option was DJSoulo, just over six months previously, in Punta del Este. I drove past the exit to central Sandefjord, continuing towards the E18. Thought after thought washed over me, pushing against each other in my mind, blocking out any sliver of sane reasoning. I had to get rid of the baby. Instead of an immediate rush of maternal affection, which I actually had felt in the early days of my pregnancy with Nicoline, I felt a deep and vicious repulsion for this impossible child. I knew that I’d get rid of it one way or the other, even if I had to do it with my own bare hands.
I drove and drove, past Drammen and then Oslo, aimlessly, and at times recklessly fast, but the roads were empty and I needed to still my heart and the dreadful rolling movements from within my belly. How, how could I not have realized? I could only blame the unbelievably awful aftermath of Nicoline’s birth and how it turned me into a deranged ghost of my former self; it was as though I was stunned for months by the sheer hell of parenting.
Near Oslo Airport Gardermoen I drove past a sign for a Best Western hotel and, on impulse, exited off the motorway. I lay atop the hard bed, staring up at a blinking red light on a fire alarm on the ceiling, running my hands over what was now undoubtedly a baby bump. To my horror, something within seemed to nudge back in response to my touch, but not even for a split second did I empathize with the creature growing inside of me. I just had to find a way to get it out. I knew I couldn’t go for an ultrasound to find out how far along I was; any pregnancy would obviously have to be registered and monitored. My only option would be to go into hiding.
I think it speaks volumes about what a resilient character I have that I found a way to deal with such a horrifying situation. I’ve never been someone with many enemies, but I suppose you could say I’ve also never been someone with the kinds of friends one may consider calling upon in a real emergency. But I did have someone; one person who owed me a hell of a favor, and now it was well and truly payback time. I didn’t close my eyes for a moment that night in spite of the fact that I ached all over and my eyes were bleary both from the crying and the hours of driving. I got back up and left again as the first early morning flights began to take to the skies from Gardermoen. Luckily, my aimless drive had actually brought me almost halfway to my destination. As I merged onto the E6 heading north, I glanced at my phone and its twenty-six missed calls. I rolled the window down as the car began to gain speed and tossed the phone into the roadside blur, feeling immediately saner and lighter. I could do this. I can do this, I told myself, but I only have one shot. One.
It’s the same now. I have one shot. Though my mind is muddled and it is the middle of the night, I have finished scrubbing the washroom, and as the grimy dirt has disappeared, the beginning of a plan has started to form in my head.
17
There are many things I don’t understand, but usually, if I sit and think about them for a long time they become more clear, like strange things at the bottom of puddles when the grubby water has dried up. Now there are some things I can’t understand even if I think about them the whole time, which I do. The mother in the family I lived in became very afraid and very sad, they told me, and that’s why I can’t be in that house anymore, even though that’s what I want and what the family wants. Please don’t think they do not want you there, Tobias, says the lady I hate, whose words I try to block out by closing my eyes and making a low humming sound. They are very upset you can’t stay there anymore, but the reason it has to be like this is that we have to protect you above all. But I’m not afraid of the mother in the family, I’m afraid of this place. And I don’t understand why the girls can stay there but not me. Why do they have to protect me but not Hermine and Nicoline? Nothing they say is true.
I think it’s my fault. Maybe it’s because of what I said. It made the mother in the house afraid, I could see that. What was a nice time on the beach wasn’t nice anymore because her face got angry and she put her hands on the side of my face and forced me to look in her eyes. Then she held a finger to her lips for a long time. It wasn’t true what I said, though. It wasn’t true that I know who she is. I only knew where I’d seen her before. The picture on the shelf above the bed in the old lady’s house was the same picture as the one Moffa kept in the desk drawer in his bedroom. I’d found it, when I was maybe six, and turned it around and on the back a name and date was written. Cecilia, 1994, it said. I know what it means, but I also don’t know, so I shouldn’t have said that I know, and now I’m here.
This house is bad. Not because it’s ugly but because they pretend like it’s a real home and not a house with orphans in it. There is a framed drawing in the hallway of two adults and three children of different colors, all holding hands and smiling, and behind them is a neon rainbow and some trees and a stupid sun with a face, and underneath them it says ‘Healing Families Everywhere’. I have my own room which has been made so that almost any kid would like something about it; one wall has fire engine wallpaper, one wall has Queen Elsa and Olaf dancing through falling snowflakes, the third wall is painted blue, and the last pink. The bed is made of wood and it’s the only thing in the room I like. It’s nice wood, too, the kind you can run your fingertips across in the dark, feeling every ridge and swirl.
They brought all my things from the family’s house but it made me cry and then they wouldn’t go away, they stood in the room for a long time as
if that would make me happy. Here, I don’t have a cool desk like the one with the drawers, so I have to keep the cards and the marbles at the bottom of the wardrobe in a tin box the man in the family gave me.
There are more things I don’t understand. The mother in the family gave me a bear, just like the one Anni took from me, the one Moffa said my mother made for me because she loved me when I was born. But I hadn’t told her what it looked like. Maybe all mothers know how to make those bears.
The other strange thing is, she knew my birthday. It was just a couple of days before the day they took me away after what happened at the swimming pool. It was the day after we came back from Hemsedal. She was sitting on the side of the bed in the very early morning again. Usually, I’d be awake before the family knocked on my door to say it was time to get ready for school, but that day I was still sleeping because I’d been drawing for many hours in the night, which is my favorite time. Happy birthday, whispered the mother. I didn’t think to ask how she knew it was my birthday, but I wish I had because I know I have not told anyone my birthday, even when they asked. One of the first days after Anni left me, someone asked me my birthday, and I said it was December fourteenth, even though it is December fourth. I’m not sure why. Which is why it is so strange that the mother sat by the side of my bed on December fourth and said, Happy birthday. She then handed me a heavy, round object wrapped in green tissue paper. Inside was a kind of large hollow, shiny stone, shaped like a jagged heart. Is it a diamond? I asked, and she smiled and said, No, honey, it’s a white amethyst. I found it myself in Yosemite National Park in America when I was just a little bit older than you. It looked like an ordinary rock, and I happened to kick it, and it split open to reveal this unbelievably beautiful core. And strangely, it broke into two pieces that looked a bit like hearts. So now you have one and I have the other.
Perhaps even stranger than this was that my birthday wasn’t mentioned again that day, and the mother said over dinner, in front of the others, So, Tobias, what do you want to do on your birthday next week? By then, I was of course already here. Two women and a man who work here and call themselves ‘family members’ came into the room in the morning with a cupcake like the ones they sell in 7-Eleven with a single purple candle stuck into its middle. They sang ‘Happy Birthday’ and handed me a teddy bear wearing a red woolen sweater. Across its chest, someone had stitched ‘Tobias’.
I’m not allowed to go to my school because it’s too far. Instead, a man named Karl-Henrik comes every morning for a few hours and we sit together downstairs in the kitchen, doing math and Norwegian and English on his Mac. Karl-Henrik is not old, but not exactly young either. He speaks in a low voice and never laughs. He does smile, but only with his lips pressed closely together. I think it’s because his teeth are very, very small and he doesn’t want to show them. If I want something, they usually let me have it. Help yourself, they say, and point to the cupboards and the fridge in the kitchen, which looks like the kitchen in a normal house except for the fact that everything has a little label on it saying what it is. Cereal, milk, cookies. Outside is a garden, and in the garden is a little fenced-off section where the ‘home’ keeps some animals. There are two bunnies named Pepper and Viggo, and one of the ‘family members’ told me that they are so shy because some of the children who lived here before were so angry and sad that they hurt the bunnies. You’re never allowed to hurt an animal, no matter what. Anyway, I’ve never really seen their faces, only their fluffy round bottoms sticking out in the air as they always hide when I approach the cage. There are also five chickens in a tiny enclosure, but I don’t like them and their fleshy pink necks, or the fact that they stand around all day in chicken shit, so I don’t bother with them.
There are two other children living here, and the adults say that they are my ‘house sister and house brother’. The boy, Hamed, is much older than me, almost fourteen, and he came from a country with war and bombs that killed his mother and father and many sisters. He came here alone and now he must live here until the adults can find a family for him. He is very quiet, but very kind, and all the time he says, Merci, merci. Sometimes, we kick a football around outside in the garden, but it has suddenly got very cold and Hamed doesn’t like cold or snow. The girl is also much older than me, and very strange. Her name is Sigrid and she has lived here for many years. She hates me but I don’t know why. What are you looking at, you little fucker? she shouts every time I look in her direction, even if I didn’t know that she happened to be standing there. When she does this, a woman called Pia, whose job it is to follow Sigrid everywhere, places her hand on Sigrid’s arm and says, It’s okay, Sigrid. It’s okay. They tried many times to find a family where Sigrid could live, but she had to come back here every time and now it’s been decided that she can live here until she’s eighteen.
There are more things I don’t understand, no matter how much I think about it. Like who killed Anni. When I lived with the family, the mother and father once sat me down on the sofa by the big windows and explained to me that I didn’t have to be afraid, and that whoever did it would be caught and put in prison, and that the police thought it was Krysz who killed her so they were looking for him in Poland where he’d run off to. They asked me questions about him, like did I maybe know where he was, or the names of his friends or anything at all that might help the police to find him, but I just looked down at my hands and said nothing, and they gave up. What I don’t understand is why they haven’t found him.
*
I didn’t love Anni because sometimes she was very angry with me and sometimes she forced me to do things I didn’t want to do, like finish all the food on my plate and on Anni’s and on Krysz’s when I was already full. It was also her fault that I’m not with Moffa at the farm anymore. I know she was sad about many things and that was why she was sometimes horrible to me, but it’s like those bunnies in the garden and those other kids. I didn’t love Anni but I didn’t want her to die. That’s why it happened. It was easier than I had thought it would be. And I had thought about it before, not in the kind of way like I might actually do it, but in the kind of way like it would be good if someone would do it.
It started the way it usually did – they were shouting at each other and Krysz suddenly hit Anni hard across the face, so she was bleeding from her nose and crying. That was when Krysz said, I’m leaving and Anni said, You’re leaving? and laughed that laugh that wasn’t happy laughing. He was shoving things into plastic bags, swearing and kicking the walls when they got in his way. They argued about who would take the fucking boy and Anni said that Krysz should take me, and then I felt really afraid. I thought about Krysz taking me to a new house, and then another, and another, and always screaming in my face. I was standing in the stairwell, quiet but shaking, when Krysz suddenly burst from the bedroom carrying his bags, pushing past me and suddenly seeing me as if he just hadn’t noticed me before, and screamed, Get the fuck away from me!
I ran out of the house and climbed up the rocky slope opposite, where I could sit quietly on a little patch of moist moss and wait for the bad time to stop. I heard Anni scream loudly once, followed by a series of thuds from inside. I felt my hands curl into fists at the sound and thought that maybe I should run in there and try to help her, but I knew that he’d turn around and then hit me. He’d hit me before, many times, and once he even threw me at a wall, but Anni always tried to stop him. After a little while, Anni burst out the door. Her lip was split open and black blood ran down the side of her face from a big cut over her eyebrow. Come! she shouted to me. Come down, Tobias. And then, Oh God, hurry! I felt as though I’d been frozen, and couldn’t move from the spot I was sitting on top of the boulder, because Krysz had appeared in the doorway, smiling the way wolves do, baring teeth. Anni turned slowly towards him, and maybe she relaxed for a moment because he didn’t throw more punches at her right away, but from where she was standing, she wouldn’t have been able to see the knife he was holding behind his back. I stood up
. I remember shouting something, maybe it was No! or Run, Anni! I don’t remember picking the rock up, but I remember every nanosecond of throwing it and watching it fly through the air; the way its weight went from snug and dense between my hands, to the dull crack as it struck Krysz right on top of his head, towards the back.
Afterwards, it was as though the world had stopped. I just stood there holding the empty space between my hands where the rock had been. Anni’s face twisted in a wild scream but no sound came out. Krysz fell face-forward and the big rock, almost as big as a football, lay right next to his broken head. The back of his head where the rock had hit him was open and dark and wet. Suddenly his body violently shuddered, but that was the last movement he made and I just knew that he was dead then. Come, whispered Anni through her bloody lips. I climbed down slowly, as though I was someone who didn’t know every crack in the stone and every root that crept across it like the back of my own hand. Stay there, she said, and went inside the house, so I stood beside Krysz and tried to not look at him, or the big knife which had been knocked from his hand, or the big rock. I looked up at the gray, low sky and began to whisper the prayers that Moffa taught me, I’m not sure why. After a little while Anni came back outside carrying a tarpaulin I recognized from when we lived on a campsite in Poland for a while. She moved strangely slowly, like her head didn’t yet know what her body was already doing. She flung the tarpaulin across Krysz’s body and as it landed perfectly, covering him completely, she let out a little cry, like Baby the time I stepped on her tail.
We went back inside and Anni did what Krysz had done just a half hour before – walking fast from room to room, shoving everything she saw into black bin liners. She went upstairs and shut the door to their bedroom and I listened at the door. She sobbed and wailed and it took me a while to realize she was talking on the phone – every word was followed by hiccupping and jagged breath. She was speaking in Polish and I caught only a few words: hurry and please, please! Then it went quiet for such a long time I almost wondered if she’d fallen asleep, but then I heard a long, slow draw of breath and realized she was smoking crack. I went downstairs and then outside to where Krysz still lay underneath his tarpaulin. I nudged the big rock with my foot and had to use real force to get it to budge at all, that’s how heavy it was. I made it roll all the way over to the side of the house and the dark bloodstain on it seemed to disappear as it traveled across the wet gravel.