Tell Me You're Mine(59)

She needs to sleep now. It takes a while, she has a stomachache and she’s crying. She cries and cries and cries.

I spank her a little. Carefully, carefully. Spank her just a bit harder. She protests, screams even louder. I hold her with one hand, spank her with the other. Pushing her head against the pillow. I’m careful, but determined. Children need boundaries. I hold her down and spank her. Spank and hold her. She tries to fight me, of course, she’s such a lively, spunky little thing. You have to be firm, show her who’s in charge. A mother can’t back down. Routines are important—without them everything turns to chaos. The girl needs her sleep. I hold her head down and keep spanking. Singing to her, humming.

Now she’s sleeping in her cradle, and I fall asleep next to her.

Then I wake up. But Isabelle is still sleeping.

She sleeps and sleeps and sleeps.

I hold her in my arms. Speak sweetly and kindly to her. But she’s completely still; her little body is limp. Then it’s cold. She mustn’t get cold. I shake her a little bit, just a little bit. She doesn’t wake up. I shake her just a little, but it doesn’t help. I shake and call her name. I shake her, even slap her a few times. She still keeps sleeping.

Silly kid.

Silly, silly, disobedient little kid.

Dad thinks it’s my fault.

He doesn’t ask me what happened, but I can see it in his eyes.

I see he’s scared of me. He thinks I did it. How could he think I’d hurt my own daughter? She’s my everything.

I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m a good mother, I always do my best.

I am a good mother.

The days go by. She is always with me. I read her stories, she sleeps in my bed. I wash her, I brush her hair. We have breakfast together. We go for a walk. She lies wrapped in a blanket on the floor, and I sing to her. Everything is easy, she’s stopped crying. She’s with me all the time. I tell her that it’s okay if she cries. It doesn’t matter, Isabelle, I promise.

But she’s only silent.

You sleep and sleep and sleep.

One night, Dad enters my room. Isabelle is beside me, wrapped in her pink blanket. She’s so small and defenseless. I want her next to me forever. Why can’t he understand that? That I have to protect her from all evil?

He ignores my tears, and I plead and beg. He pushes me aside and picks her up. He puts her in a trash bag, puts in some stones, and ties a nylon rope around it.

I scream: I hit and kick. It has no effect on him. It doesn’t matter what I do, how much I cry, how hard I beg. I stand at this cliff and watch him row the boat out. He lifts up the little bundle, throws it over the side. My child sinks down into the deep dark water.

Every evening, I sit out here by her. Stay long after the sun has gone down. I want to be close to my girl. Show her I haven’t abandoned her. I bring the stone deer up here. It’s watched over her ever since.

Then one day they arrived.

They were beautiful; they were happy. They came to Strandgården and acted like they owned it.

I can see them now. A perfect little family. Watch them walking along the beach again. Watch them laughing and teasing each other. And they touch each other in a way you shouldn’t in public. They’re not even adults, just a couple of snotty teenagers. Spoiled brats from the big city. Who happen to have a baby. They play with her, laugh loudly. They don’t have a care in the world. They think they know what happiness is. They think it will last forever.

Do they know what sorrow is? Have they felt fear and self-hate push down on them every day like a yoke around their necks?

Never.

They fuck. Enjoy themselves. They sound like animals. They have no clue what it’s like to have a hand pressed over your mouth while another rips off your underwear and gropes you down there. What it’s like when your legs are pushed apart. How the pain and shame take root in you forever. How rage and impotence burn through your body like poison. How your vagina becomes a wound that never stops bleeding.

They fuck. They enjoy it. They have a beautiful, healthy baby.

Have they known the agony of having a child and then losing it? Never.

They should not have a child. They’re no more than children themselves.

I follow them. Follow and am disgusted by all I see and hear. Caresses, kisses, moans. Lustful, writhing bodies moving together. Even though a small child is asleep in the same room.

Someone should teach them, show them anything can happen. Anything. Someone should show them the other side. Show them what life is like when happiness is gone.

I go there again and again. Go there to watch and listen. It’s as if I’m driven to seek them out. As if I have to do it. As if some invisible force is driving me.

And then I see it.

I see what no one else can see, no one else can understand.

As I expected. As I hoped, as I wished, she came back.

My little girl has come back.

My Isabelle.

There you are.

I was tested, and I overcame. I proved my strength, not weakness. Now it’s that conceited bitch’s turn to be tested. I lift up my love, carefully, carefully. I kiss her forehead and her soft little cheeks. She’s with me, where she belongs.

I’m her real mother.









I want to show Dad the miracle that has happened. We are sitting in the rocking chair next to the fireplace when he comes home. I’m cradling Isabelle, and it doesn’t matter that she’s crying. She cries a lot. I comfort her. I sing and hum. Shush her quietly.

Dad doesn’t understand. Even though I’m calm, even though I explain. He doesn’t want to listen; he doesn’t want to understand. Isabelle has come back to me. See, Dad? Can’t you see this miracle?

He doesn’t want to listen; he doesn’t want to understand.

My father is weak. He always has been. A weak and timid man. Otherwise, he never would have left me with my whore of a mother.

He says I scare him. Says I’m sick. He says I make him afraid.

Why are you afraid? I don’t understand. It’s me, your daughter. Why would I scare you? How can you say I’m not like myself? That I am sick? How dare you say that Isabelle is not my child?

I lift her up and show him. It’s Isabelle, your granddaughter. We’re going to live here together. You and me, and my little love.

Dad refuses. He fetches a bottle and drinks until he’s drunk. Until he’s drunk as a skunk. Just like my mother. A disgusting pig. A wreck of a human being who’s lost all his dignity. I’ll never be like that.

Later I hear Dad calling the police. He slurs that he has information about the girl at Strandgården. The one who disappeared. He says he knows what happened. Come here tomorrow morning. I’ll tell you everything.

My heart breaks. I tell him that I heard him. My own father, you have betrayed me, you are a traitor. I hate you. Dad says, Everything will be okay, Kerstin, everything will be fine. He has tears in his bloodshot eyes. And I know what he’s going to do. He’s going to take my child away from me again. Wrap her in a blanket and put her in a trash bag. As if she’s a piece of garbage that needs to be thrown away. He’ll sink her to the bottom of the sea.

He’s drunk. Slurring and stumbling around the house. Babbling like a madman. He’s crazy. He is the one who is sick.

In the end he passes out on the sofa.

Dad, have you taken your insulin? I’ll help you. Here’s your dose.

It’s easier than I thought.

Just like when I took care of Isabelle’s father. That one overdosed on heroin.

I feel joy, I feel relief.

I feel free.

Still, I weep as I inject the insulin. I have feelings for my dad, despite all the evil he has done to me. And I don’t know it then, but I will feel the same thing with Hans. I’ll cry every time I give him the blood thinners.

Life and death.

There is a way through everything. I know that from experience.

My beloved father is gone.

The policemen come the next morning, at the same time as the ambulance I called. I beg them to be quiet because my little girl finally fell asleep. She was anxious all night, crying. She’s learned how to say “mama.”

Mama, Mamamama, Maaaaamaaa.

She cried out like that all night. The happiness I feel is indescribable.

I open the door. “Good you came so fast. Dad is in here.” The EMTs and one of the police officers come in.

“He was drunk yesterday,” I say. “He drank all night long. And as usual it got to be too much. I found him this morning. He probably had hypoglycemia.”

“Hypoglycemia?” the police officer asks.

“Low blood sugar,” I say. “It’s not the first time that’s happened. He has—he had diabetes.”

Sven Nilsson is kind. It’s easy to deal with those kinds of people. They’re easy to dupe. Regular, nice people who’ve never seen the other side of life. Never been forced to live in the shadows.

“As you know, a little girl disappeared from Strandgården,” he says. “Your father said he knew something. I understand if you’re upset, but I have to ask.”

“I heard about that. So horrible. So sad. We talked about it yesterday, but he was drunk. He drinks a lot. Drank, I mean. I have a daughter myself, it must be so horrible what that mother is going through.”

“What did he say? Do you remember?”

“About what?”

“About the girl. Alice. That’s the name of the girl who disappeared.”