Tell Me You're Mine(45)

“You’ve made a lovely collage of us,” I say.

“Yes, isn’t it?”

“Why aren’t there any photos of me as a baby? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of me under the age of one.”

“You know you were born in Denmark.”

“Yes.”

I wait for an explanation. But one never arrives.

“Is that why, is that what you mean?” I say.

Mom sighs. She gets up and puts on a kettle. Takes down two cups and tea bags.

“We moved back to Sweden. It happened in a hurry. We weren’t able to bring the photos with us. Do you want to make me feel guilty for that, too, now? What else have I done wrong?”

“What was it that made you move home? Were you fighting with him?”

Mom doesn’t answer. She turns her back to me, showing me she doesn’t want to talk.

“Was he around at all? Why has he never contacted me?”

“All you need to know is that he was a very dangerous man.”

“Was he mean? Did he hit you? Was he a criminal?”

“Isabelle.” I jump when she slams her fist into the kitchen counter. She turns around. “All these questions. You know how they exhaust me. You know I can’t take your snooping. I’m getting a migraine again.”

She sees that she’s scared me and takes my hand. It’s not as easy between us as it was when we were in Vällingby. One minute everything’s great, the next it’s like this. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because we’re here, in this house. Too many years of ingrained behaviors. Or maybe it’s me. My questions, my talk about how I miss my friends, my tendency to disappoint her.

It was a mistake to follow her home.

“You haven’t been this inquisitive since you were five years old,” she says, forcing a smile. “Do you remember how you drove me crazy? When, how, where, why?” Mom squeezes my hand and pulls me up. “Come.”

I follow her to the library, behind the kitchen. She tells me to sit down. I do as she says. She hands me my cup. I warm my hands on it and sip the tea. It’s sweet. Mom has poured in a lot of honey. She tells me to close my eyes. I obey.

I hear her unlock the cabinet under the desk with the key she keeps hidden in the bookshelf. I know its hiding place, but she doesn’t know that.

“Now you can look,” she says, sitting next to me with a binder.

“Here are the papers from Hvidovre Hospital in Copenhagen,” she says. “That’s where you were born. On August 29, 1993.” It’s been ages since I’ve heard her voice sound so soft and loving. “I’d wanted you for so long.”

“And that was the best day of your life,” I fill in.

“Who told you that?” she teases.

I’m surprised. It’s not often she makes a joke.

“Yes, of course it was,” she says. “But also it was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. I was a hairsbreadth from death. You almost cost me my life, little lady.”

I lean against her arm. “Tell me again. I’m Rh-positive and you’re Rh-negative and our blood got mixed? Is that right?”

“That’s exactly right. I ended up with acute blood poisoning. Hovered between life and death for several days. I didn’t even see you until you were three days old.” She runs her fingers through my hair.

“But isn’t it the baby who gets sick if the blood becomes mixed?” I say. “That’s how I understand it. And usually, it’s the next child who is in the most danger. Immunization, they call it.”

I’ve read up on it since we talked about it in group therapy.

“But I said I got blood poisoning, didn’t I?” Mom says.

“But you said it was because of . . .”

“Please, sweetie.” Mom puts a hand on her forehead. A migraine again. “You know I hate when you twist my words like that. Doesn’t the tea taste good? You sat outside in the cold for so long. You mustn’t get sick again.”

I drink up the rest of the tea. Might as well do as Mom says. She continues flipping through the papers.

“You were pretty small, see here? Six pounds, four ounces; nineteen inches. And you had a very thick, curly, blond lock of hair. Right in the middle of your head. You were my doll.”

“Curly? And blond?” I wrinkle my forehead. Look down at the hair hanging over my shoulder.

Mom slams the binder shut with a bang and stands up.

“Yes, it’s not uncommon.”

Now she’s gotten sad. Sad because of my questions. I’ve ruined our moment.

“This accursed headache. Now I have to go to bed,” she says. “That psycho bitch. She’s twisted your mind completely. You should have listened to me. Instead, you think you need to question everything. Destroy things between us. I hope you’re satisfied.”

Mom stands up, locks away the folder, and puts the key in the bookshelf. She forgets to tell me to close my eyes. She leaves the library and goes out to the hall.

“I’m sorry,” I cry after her.

She waves it off and continues up the stairs with heavy steps and a self-conscious huff. How many times has this scene played out?

I wish I hadn’t destroyed our moment. But there’s so much I don’t understand. So many answers I want. But Mom keeps everything to herself.

Maybe I’ve been more affected by Stella than I realized. Mom has had it hard, I know that. It’s wrong of me to push her this way. I put my cup in the kitchen. Go up to my room.

As usual, I have a big lump in my throat. As usual, I lie in bed, weeping into my pillow. I wish Fredrik was here to take care of me.





Isabelle



The house should be quiet, but it’s not. It creaks and scrapes in the stairs and the walls. The wind makes the roof howl and the gutters shake, and in the cellar the boiler rumbles to life.

I’ve never liked the atmosphere here, but now it feels like a direct threat: the house is alive; it sees me. It’s waiting for me to stumble and then it will strike, slice me open with a knife or make me seriously ill. There is some invisible essence here, an evil shadow that wishes me ill.

I tell myself I’m being childish, ridiculous. But the feeling won’t pass. I open the door to my room. Stand there listening. I tiptoe out into the hall, stop outside Mom’s bedroom, put my ear close to the door. Not a sound comes from inside.

I hurry down the stairs, head outside, grab my bike, and head in the direction of Ornäs. Traffic noise roars above me as I bike through the viaduct under the highway.

I keep biking. After a while I see the Ornäs kiosk and pizzeria. I wonder how many times I convinced Grandma to take me there for a pizza instead of eating real food. Like Mom wanted. I bike on past the railroad crossing. Fortunately, there’s no train, or I’d end up waiting here for several minutes. I cycle over the train tracks and turn left, roll down the hill toward the village where Grandma lives.

The river is flowing at full force next to the brick mill. The sun breaks through the clouds, and fields spread out on either side of me. In the distance, Lake Ösjön glitters, and to my right the Ornäs House sits on the cape. Every time I pass by, I wonder if it’s true that King Gustav Vasa fled from the Danes through the latrine, or if it’s just a legend. It’s a good story anyway. And every year the tourists come here to drink super-expensive coffee and take selfies in front of the ramshackle old outhouse.

The ride uphill is long and I have to stand on the pedals and push hard when I pass the tennis court at Haganäs. There’s a beach down there, but I’ve never been. Only employees at the steelworks have access to it, which is quite strange considering Sweden’s freedom to roam law. What would happen if you went swimming there anyway? Do guards check to make sure you’re entitled to be there?

The big red house on the right side is an old village school. It’s been closed and abandoned for what seems like forever. After that it’s not far left to the village sign. Kyna. When I was young I thought it sounded so exotic. As if Grandma lived in China.

I know every twist and turn of the road between Ornäs and Kyna, the curves between the fields, how the landscape changes with the seasons. This is my home, more than Barkargärdet ever was. When I’m homesick for Dalarna, this is what I’m longing for.

If I kept riding straight a few hundred feet, I’d end up at the maypole. They leave it standing there most of the year, until just before midsummer, when it’s taken and covered with new leaves. I’ve celebrated midsummer here many times, picked buttercups, wild chervil, and clover out on the meadows and in the dikes. I’ve run around while Grandma worked with the others to get the pole ready, wrapping the flowers we picked around the rings and heart of the pole. She taught me how to make flower wreaths and put seven different wildflowers under my pillow at night. I’ve listened to the fiddlers fiddling in their folk costumes, bought raffle tickets and hoped I’d win. When the celebrations were over, our tradition was to walk home hand in hand and get a good night’s sleep, just Grandma and me.

Just past the maypole, there’s a path down to the spot where I’ve gone swimming every summer of my life. Except this year.

I consider going down there, just touching the water, but slow as I near Grandma’s place. I look over my shoulder and turn left onto the gravel road. I speed up on the downhill and see Grandma’s house on the other side of the railroad tracks. The smell at that railroad crossing is special. When the sun has been on it all summer, it smells like tarred crossties. I roll through the gate, throw the bike on the gravel path, and bounce up the stairs.