To Mervas (7 page)

“It's a pity, really, that we're not Catholic,” I began, noticing at once that my suppressed anger made my voice vibrate slightly.

Kosti gave me a stern look.

“If we were, we wouldn't even have to discuss the subject of children, we wouldn't have to. We'd just let the children arrive.”

“Come on, give it up,” I heard Kosti cry out, from somewhere far away, from the other side of the sea.

But I kept going, I had to get into it, it was an old dry wound that I had to scratch and tear at now, until it bled.

“Catholics are really the only ones who dare to speak the truth,” I said. “They come right out and say that contraceptives are a sin. That it is a crime, a crime to prevent conception! You have to agree with this at least; they come out and say it and even though I don't think it's a crime against God, it's a crime against nature. It's a crime against mankind, against women, yes, especially women. Oh, I don't think you understand anything at all, we've spoken about this so many times but you've never heard the truth, you've never gotten to hear what I truly think and feel.
You know why? Because you wouldn't understand it. You're lost inside your pretty little world where everyone's just friends and the notion of men and women, instinct and differences almost doesn't exist!”

I was aware of how agitated I sounded, half screaming, as if I were being attacked or held down by someone. As if I were afraid.

“That's why I've never told you what I've felt when we've made love using contraception, without a thought of having children. You wouldn't understand, you who live in your own sweet little fairy-tale world. But I want you to know that I've felt like a whore, like a cheap fucking whore every time you slept with me. And it's you, Kosti – no one else – who's defiled me, who's made me dirty, who's made me feel disgusted with myself, simply because you've denied me the right to be a woman. Do you get it? You've denied me my womanhood!”

Kosti had now demonstratively turned away from me, letting his gaze disappear into the darkness outside the window. It was actually quite odd that he didn't leave the room or at least growl at me to shut up. But this was a one-person show and my words could not be stopped. I was a ditch full of sewage and the messy words gushed out of me.

“Your greatest flaw is that you don't know what a woman is. No, you don't, and you probably don't know what a real man is either. You'd probably shit your pants if you met a real woman; she'd scare you, Kosti, because she's not part of your worldview, she doesn't exist in your pathetic, friendly teddy-bear world where every damned person is so smart and kind it makes me want to throw up. You know, a real woman, she is a mother, first and foremost a mother, and even if men can run around spreading their seed here and there – yes, spread it into the storm on the Orkney Islands, by all means, do that – women are made to carry, you understand, she wants to carry the heavy fruits, she wants to be fertilized and carry, fertilized and carry. You get what I'm saying? She
simply doesn't want to be some kind of fuck-buddy and have a good time between the sheets because that's not what it's about! No, she doesn't want to be a worthless tramp, which you seem to want to reduce me to. That's what you make me into when you humiliate me like this; you deny me the right to become a mother, you won't make me feel like a real woman and give me a child even though I've asked for one. It's the most revolting, cruel thing you can do to a woman, and that's what I want you to understand, that's what you have done to me with all your talk about contraceptives and wait until later and all that. That's what you've done to me, that's what you've done – ”

Finally, I ran out of words. There was simply nothing more to say and I remember that I felt emptier than I ever had in my entire life. It was as if an army had passed through me, an army that had plundered and burned everything and left nothing behind but bare, scorched earth. The room was once again quiet. It was quiet for a long time. Until Kosti turned to me and looked at me with those eyes in which no love was left.

“Leave,” he said. “I want you to leave. I don't want to look at you. I no longer know you.”

Feeling completely numb and blank inside, I went out to the hallway and put on my coat. Then, without a word, I left the apartment. All night, I lay folded in the backseat of the car with my eyes open. I couldn't sleep. Couldn't cry. And I remember that it felt terrible that I didn't cry, that I couldn't even cry.

It is a Saturday evening in the apartment we call the Exception. Mom, my older sister, my twin brothers, and I are in the big sitting room drinking tea and listening to the radio. My little sister is asleep in the smaller room, where Mom's bed is.

When someone rings the doorbell around eight-thirty, Mom's eyes get empty and distant. She buttons the lowest button on her muumuu and pulls her hand through her hair.

“Please, Mom, don't open the door,” my little brother whispers.

Mom only looks straight ahead. The doorbell rings again, a longer tone this time.

“Take those things away,” she says absentmindedly, nodding at the tea tray. It's my task to try to hide things that are easily broken. Fortunately, we no longer have a teapot that we care about. We've been brewing our tea in a regular pot on the stove for the past few months, and that's been fine.

As I'm running to the kitchen with the tray, the pounding on the front door begins. Soon I'll hear Daddy's voice through the mail slot. He usually calls for me, telling me to open the door.

I hide as much of the china as I can in a small space I've discovered
behind the kitchen drawers. The teacups don't fit in there, but there's room for tall glasses and coffee cups. We've kept all the plates in the drawer under the stove for some time now.

My hands tremble violently as I put away the glasses. I have to hurry now; pounding and ringing signals echo through the apartment. I carefully put the lower drawer back on its tracks and with some effort push it back into place. When I hear the squeak of the mail slot opening, I run in to the others again.

Mom is standing in the middle of the floor. Her chin quivers almost unnoticeably; the rest of her face is taut. Her back is very straight; in some way she seems large where she stands. My sister quietly comes out of the bedroom, where she has taken the twins.

“Soon the neighbors will call the police,” Mom whispers.

It happened once before. I don't think Mom had ever been more ashamed. The police officer told her that in the future, we had to handle our family business without disturbing the neighbors. He didn't want to hear any more complaints about “gypsy behavior” from our building. We ought to be ashamed and behave like everyone else. Mom stood there with her head bent, her face bright red. Dad had quickly disappeared.

“Marta!” he calls, his voice shrill with rage. “Come here immediately!”

He said my name hard and fast, made it sound like the crack of a whip. That's why I've never liked my own name. It sounds beautiful in English, and in Finnish too. But in regular Swedish it sounds as though someone has slapped you in the face twice; I still think so. Kosti called me Mart. I loved him for that. He came up with it himself too; I didn't have to ask him.

Mom gives me a look I've seen before. My knees are shaking and my skin stings when I stumble out to his voice in the hallway. I have to be the one who lets him in. Once again, I have to open the door and look into
the terrifying face that is simultaneously rigid and dissolving.

As soon as I've cracked the door open, he forces it wide open and gives me a hard push so I fall backward onto the shoes under the clothing rack. He shuts the door with almost unnatural care; it makes me think of a lizard, some kind of reptile. With no apparent transition, he could always move from rest to immediate attack. He's already reached Mom. I hear him calling her names, hear the sounds of him beating her, and I don't want to see it but I have to, I have to. My older sister is in the bedroom with our younger siblings, trying to calm them down. They're sobbing. Someone has to stay and witness this. If I close my eyes or try to hide, I'm abandoning Mom and then I can't protect her with my gaze. In some odd way I have to when I wanted to close my eyes, when they closed even though I didn't want them to, I forced them open with my thumbs. I have to protect Dad with my gaze too, because he can't be left alone in this situation either.

God wants you to see this, said something in my head.

As a child, I believed in God even though both Mom and Dad called it superstition. I prayed to him every night before going to sleep, but no one knew except for my oldest sister.

“Dear God, make Daddy be good and make sure all children have food to eat. Let there be no more wars.”

I didn't have to say it aloud; God couldn't hear my voice, he heard my heart. I tried to speak to him with my heart. I tried to explain this to my sister but she never quite understood.

“The heart doesn't have a mouth that can speak,” she said.

“The heart
is
a mouth,” I said. “Another
kind
of mouth.”

After Mom died and my sister and I moved into our grandmother's, when I entered puberty, I killed my own faith in God. I started to despise it; I didn't want it. In the years that followed, I was angrily antireligious
and spoke like Mom and Dad about superstition. I agreed with Marx about religion being the “opiate of the masses.”

Now I don't know what I believe. Except that my heart is mute, even petrified. Sometimes I wonder why there wouldn't be a God when so many other seemingly impossible and unthinkable things exist. Life is so mysterious and I miss my heart, which has lost its strength. The heart is pure, they say. And I actually believe that, I'm almost sure it's true.

I've put on my shoes and through the doorway I see Dad, who is out of his mind with anger, attacking Mom.

“Bitch!” he pants, trying to keep her head still by grabbing her hair in his fist while he hits her.

“You think a legally married wife can run away from her own husband? You think you own his children? You think you can take the children away from their own father? I'll teach you! I'll teach you how such a wife should be treated. I'll show you, you sly, hypocritical bitch in heat! I'll break you in until you can neither sit nor stand!” Mom is half-prostrate, bent over on the couch, and Dad is standing over her beating her rhythmically, synchronizing the blows with his words.

“Marta!” he yells suddenly. “Bring me the carpet beater!”

“Children!” he then screams. “Come out of the bedroom right now!”

The bedroom door slowly slides open. My sister is standing there, pale and tense, with the twins close by her side.

“Aren't you even going to say hello to your father when he comes to visit?” He spits out the words. “Aren't you? Aren't you going to say hello?”

“Yes,” my sister whispers. “Good evening, Dad.”

I'm standing slightly to the side behind him with the awful carpet beater in my hand. I'm so terrified it's as if I were standing in a highly charged electrical power field.

“And you?” he snarls at me. “Lost your tongue?”

I have lost it. I try to speak, but no sound comes from my lips; my tongue is like a piece of bark in my mouth.

“You naughty child!” he screams, and tears the carpet beater from me. He gives me a few blows on the legs with the handle.

I gasp from the pain and swallow several times.

“Good evening,” I blurt out.

I can't say “Dad.” It's impossible.

But this evening is apparently about Mom. She, not the children, is the one who will be disciplined.

“Sit down, children,” he says, in an unexpectedly friendly voice. “You see, I want you to know what a family father must do to a woman who has run away, and who also refuses to bring children into this world. Sit down!”

We sit down on the floor, as far away as we can, and now we see how Dad with his free right hand gives Mom a few more slaps in the face while his left hand gets a better grip on her hair. Mom whimpers, it's a drawn-out sound; she's whimpering something and I can finally hear what she's saying.

“Don't let the children see . . . don't let the children see . . . don't let the children see,” she repeats indistinctly.

“Silence! They'll see. They're going to see what you're worth. They're going to see who their mother really is underneath this robe. They'll learn how a bitch like you should be treated.”

He pulls at her clothes and finally gets her garter belt to slide up until it sits like a belt around her belly while her blouse is inside out, covering her face and head. The words are still streaming out of her mouth, she's half-crying and her voice is shrill and we hear her repeat:

“Don't let the children see . . . don't let the children see . . . don't let the children see . . .”

She struggles and fights back in a way we've never seen her do when Dad has hit her. But this is different. He's never undressed her before, and now he also begins to whip her with the carpet beater, on her legs, wherever he can reach.

“Now shut up and be still, or I'll tie you up the way you bind a sow,” he pants between the blows.

Then he forces her onto her stomach and I hear her sob and cry while the carpet beater hits her buttocks and thighs.

My youngest sister, who was only about one at this time, comes crying from the bedroom. She totters over to my sister and curls up next to her. This makes Dad pause for a moment.

“Turn off the ceiling light,” he orders. “Turn off all the lights!”

We do as he says. At once, the small apartment is filled with darkness and suddenly everyone's breathing can be heard. Our shallow, terrified breathing, my little sister's sobs, Mom's soundless tears, and above all and over everything else, Dad's panting, growing deeper. He has stopped beating her and in the dimness he and Mom look like one body there on the couch.