True (9 page)
Authors: Riikka Pulkkinen
Tags: #Cancer - Patients - Fiction., #Family secrets - Fiction.
Her tummy is round and warm, rising and falling feverishly.
“You seem to like her,” Elsa says.
I nod. I'm afraid that my uncertainty shows. I exaggerated my child care experience a little. I want to get away from Vieno's sarcastic remarks, want to be in these rooms, in this friendly, self-assured woman's sphere of influence.
Elsa tells me about her research group, her traveling. Here is Elsa, proud, permissive, and sure of herself, explaining her extraordinary plans as simply and modestly as other people talk about an evening bowl of oatmeal.
I realize immediately that she is one of those people who will have it all, people compared to which others are wallowing in shiftlessness.
Elsa asks her husband to help her in the kitchen for a minute. I know that a discussion of whether to hire me is going on in hushed voices.
I don't know that it's the man who's not sure. He later tells me about it when we're lying silently side by side. He had an inkling of this and suggested the wrinkly one, but went along with Elsa's wishes.
I sit on the sofa with the little girl in my lap trying to hear a conversation about me. The little girl covers the sounds with chatter. I look around. A chest of drawers, books on a shelf. Careless housekeeping, modern furnishings. There's a television in the corner. I don't know if I know what to do with it.
On the wall are paintings, some of which, I later learn, are painted by the man, others by friends. The little girl climbs off my lap to the floor and runs to her mother and father in the kitchen. She's still shy of me.
I go and look at a painting leaned upside down against the wall. Something sloshes inside me. It's a Schjerfbeck. I've only seen them in museums.
Elsa steps into the living room, straightens her back.
“Why is this here in the corner?” I ask.
Elsa flutters a hand in the air and laughs. She bends toward me and lowers her voice like she's sharing a secret: “It's old-fashioned. My husband wants to take all the old pictures off the walls. Do you like it?”
The man is looking at me, smiling. I look away, then back again.
Elsa says with eagerness in her voice, “We'd like to hire you. If the position interests you.”
The little girl turns her head and looks at me, her eyebrows raised. I do the same, and she bursts into bright laughter.
“I GOT A
job,” I tell Kerttu that evening.
She's sitting at the table eating. Her expression of surprise changes in a moment to enthusiasm.
My Kerttu: dark, thick hair, eyes black as lumps of coal. Kerttu's family is well-to-do. People still call her grandfather by his Swedish name, Brännare, although he changed it to Palovaara, believing that the country deserved people who said their names in their own language. Kerttu's home is a place where fervent pronouncements are made with big words like religion and fatherland, but Kerttu hides a whole great world in her dreams, unknown countries like exotic jewels.
I met her in the registration line for German class.
Don't you feel like we ought to cause some kind of scandal? she whispered to me, smiling. Take off our shirts, run across the lobby? I'll give you one mark, all my coffee breaks at the university, and my heart, if you'll do it with me.
We didn't take off our shirts, or even our socks, but we did spend all our coffee breaks together after that.
We've lived together in these rooms for two years and I've acquired Kerttu's habits and beliefs. She sleeps till noon one day and gets up at six the next. Sometimes she'll live for a week on risotto. Sometimes she eats in restaurants on a gentleman's tab, flashing her stocking seams on the way to the ladies' room. Afterward she tells me derisive stories about these men. It's all part of her secret plan, she says.
In these first years, Kerttu changes her style from seamed stockings and short skirts to jeans and black turtlenecks. Later she'll find new stylesâshe's a chameleon. At the end of the decade she'll be wearing a headband, halter tops, and white peasant blouses that lace up the front.
In the summers she goes wherever she wants to, works as an au pair for some people she knows in America, stays in Copenhagen with a girl named Ingrid who lets her sleep on the sofa. She'll come back from these trips with books and compacts and hats and words that I've never heard of,
45
s that she plays in the living room so loudly that the paint shakes off the ceiling in the apartment downstairs. We'll listen sometimes to a hoarse-voiced woman, sometimes to blaring music with a name that's just been invented, the kind my mother calls pounding. Not yet time for Indian ragasâthat comes a few years later. Kerttu hasn't yet tossed her halter tops in the corner, though by the end of the next decade she'll proudly wear nothing but a T-shirt and jeans, her breasts under her shirt like defiant apples.
But in
1964
everything is just beginning. Kerttu still wears her hair up in a beehive sometimes and coats it with hairspray from an aerosol canâa habit she will later come to disdain.
Kerttu is looking for something, she doesn't know what. She's restless and moody and overflowing and happy and she's decided that I belong with her in everything she does.
She takes exams on five books at a time in political science, history, philosophyâsometimes books with ancient covers. She swears that one day she'll shake the dust of this country off her feet and head out into the wide world.
But now, in May of
1964
, she has sprayed hair and coal-black eyes, here on Liisankatu, and she's looking at me eagerly.
“You'll finally get away from Vieno. What kind of job did you get? Journalist? Interpreter? Or are you going to be a secretary somewhere? It's not the best job, but secretaries have good opportunities for promotions.”
“No,” I say. “I'm going to be a nanny for a family.”
Kerttu's expression freezes, disappointment creeping into her face. She had imagined something else.
“You don't even like to cook.”
“I'm learning to like it.”
“Why?” Kerttu asks. “Why in the world would you?”
I hear my explanation: “Be serious. You know I need the money. You know I hate working at the hat counter.”
I haven't asked my parents for money once since I moved to Helsinki. They wouldn't have had it anyway. In fact they've got used to getting letters once a week with a couple of bills in them from my wages.
“It's just a job,” I say. “I'm going to take care of the child while the wife is traveling for work.”
“Are you going to do the cleaning and the shopping?”
“Yes, I'll do the cleaning and shopping.”
“See?” Kerttu says knowingly, popping a piece of bread in her mouth as if the gesture severs her from the conformity of this world. “You're going to be a maid.”
“No. This is a real thing. It's a family. They said they wanted me to be like a member of the family.”
Kerttu laughs bitterly. Defiance rises in me.
“They said I could have a room to use.”
“Are you going to move?” Her eyes darken.
I soften, go to her and hug her. “No. No, I'm not. I'll just be spending the night there when she's traveling. It's easier that way.”
“What does she do?”
“She's a psychologist. A doctor. She studies children.”
Kerttu's expression brightens a bit. “What about her husband?”
“Actually,” I say slowly, “I think he's a little bit famous. He's an artist.”
I tell her his name. She's silent for a moment.
“Good,” she says. “I know him. He's chummy with poets and people like that. He might be a man of substance. Good company, I mean. Or he might be a louse.”
“He didn't seem like a louse.”
Kerttu sighs, smiles. “All right. You have my permission. As long as you don't end up being a servant for the rest of your life.”
I STILL HAVE
to call my mother and father. My mother doesn't say she's disappointed, although I can hear that she is. She'd hoped for better for her daughter. Instead she talks about the television my father's bought. He got excited about the idea of a television when Mäntyranta won the gold medal in skiing. Before that he was against the contraption.
“What are you watching?”
“The test pattern,” my mother says. “Isn't that exciting?” She's quiet for a moment. “So you probably won't be coming home for the summer.”
“We'll see.”
My father says what I was afraid he'd say: “You could have done that.”
“Done what?”
He snarls the rest of the sentence out: “You could have done that here. Cook, boil porridge, watch the neighbors' kids.”
I don't care what he says, because I want to build my own world, by myself.
I
N JUNE, A
day before Elsa's trip, I carry two suitcases over the threshold. Elsa is alone, the man has taken the little girl to the park.
She shows me my room. It's small but pretty. There's a view of the yard from the windowâI can see a horse chestnut tree, already withering in the summer days, and two young apple trees. It's a lucky beginning. There's some kind of luck in it, though I don't yet know what kind.
Elsa packs her things in her room, taking clothes out of the closet, folding dresses and jackets into a large suitcase.
She pats me approvingly as she passes. She's giving me permission. I'm not a servant here, I can come into her bedroom.
“What are you going to do while you're there?” I ask, emboldened by her familiarity. “What do you study?”
She says simply: “We study children. We're developing a new form of therapy, a kind of play therapy.”
While she's away she's going to spend her days at a clinic where the air is filled with cries for help, hurt feelings, requests to be picked up, rages freshly created. But above all the clinic's air will be filled with hopeâElsa's sure of thisâthe inexhaustible hope that every child carries inside. Room after room of children playing in a circle, children taking naps, sitting in the laps of mothers at a loss for what to do. Some children happily absorbed in dolls and puzzles, others gazing glumly at the brick walls of the building. Elsa will pick up a crying child, rock the child for a while, write down observations. She can't bear to leave a child unconsoled. There's no demand for explanations from Elsa's lapâit's broad, accepting, unquestioning.
“Look,” Elsa says suddenly, grabbing a dress that's hanging in the closet. “I've been trying to think who this would fit. It's gotten too tight for me.” She lifts the dress, examines it critically, peers at me. “Do you want to try it on?”
The dress is a pretty one, ordered from a seamstress. It's a little old-fashioned, but grown-up, the kind of dress that you need wisdom and experience to wear. I want to try it on. I want its gentleness, its dignity.
Elsa watches me undress. There's still a sisterly quality between us, a mutual approval, perhaps a hint of guidance.
She zips me up, opens the closet door to show me the mirror. The dress is a little too bigâthe bust is an empty dome.
“Look, it almost fits you,” Elsa says smiling. “It's just a little loose. You can take it to a seamstress, have the seams taken in a few centimeters.”
IN THE EVENING
I try on the dress again in my room. I put it on carefully, stepping into it like a mold. It's a little too big, I don't completely fill it.
I look at myself in the narrow closet mirror.
I look like a copy, a slightly absurd imitation. Something needs to be done. I'd have to be something more, but I don't know how. The horse chestnut tree in the yard looks sinister in the dark as the lights go out. I lie awake for a long time and try to listen for noises. If the man and his wife are doing anythingâand why shouldn't they, this is their night to say good-byeâthey're doing it silently.
“SO,” ELSA SAYS.
She drinks her coffee standing up. Then she gives me a look as if to say, are you ready? It's seven o'clock, bright sunrise.
We ricochet around the kitchen awkwardly, uncertain as rolled dice. The little girl gets worked up. She knows that something new is about to happen. She runs from one room to the next, climbs from my lap to Elsa's, from Elsa's to her father's.
He's quiet, avoiding my gaze. Later I learn that it's a habit he picked up as a boy when there was more than one woman present, a habit he hasn't shaken. When his mother would invite friends over, he would sit at the table with the women, see their bosoms heaving, those breathtaking mounds, and turn his face to the window.
A stolen glimpse, as if through the crack of a door: light flooding through the window, covering everything in a bright haze, but the women continue their murmuring talk, the light dances in their hair and on the pearl buttons of their sweaters. Their breasts are sublime and their smiles hold unspoken secrets.
He decides to go to his friend Lauri's house tonight. Maybe he'll call up his whole gang of buddies and they can go out somewhere for the evening. He doesn't intend to spend silent hours in these rooms with me. He'll give the child a good night kiss and walk out the door. That's what they're paying me for. To sleep in these rooms, so he can go where he wants.
When the front door is opened, the little girl bursts into tears. She knows that her mother is leaving. She runs to the living room and hides under the coffee table.
“Oh, little one,” Elsa says, standing in the doorway. She goes into the living room with her coat on, shoes on her feet, takes the girl in her arms one more time, rocks her quietly, and whispers something in her ear not meant for anyone else to hear.
I wonder how I'll ever be able to bend like that, to give the kind of consolation that Elsa knows how to give. Uncertainty squeezes me as small as a fist.
The girl finally agrees to come out from under the table. She has her rag doll with her. She walks to the door, humble, with the doll, which is as big as she is, in her arms.
Elsa embraces the little girl for a long time in the street, in front of the car, as the suitcases are put in the trunk. She's not sure for a moment whether to hug me or shake my hand. She decides on the hug.
“You can take my daughter,” she says.
I take the little girl in my arms, she presses her head against my shoulder, squeezing the doll under her arm, no longer looking at her mother.
The man glances at me. I nod. They can go. Elsa smiles a little before opening the car door. When they've left, the girl asks me to put her down. I strike a mild-mannered pose. I'm on my own now.
“So.” The word echoes through the street, making me feel again like an imitation. “What would you like to do? We can do anything you like.”
“Let's go to the park,” the girl says.
That doesn't sound hard. We can go to the park and look at the fountain. Or maybe I'll take her to the seashore, show her the ships. We can buy some ice cream, ride the tram. We can name the trees that we see, dig in the ground with a stick, maybe see a worm, give it a name, tooâPekka, perhapsâand hope out loud that it finds whatever happiness can befall a worm.
“Molla's coming, too,” she says.
“Good,” I say. “Molla's coming.”
Only now do I really look at the girl. It's been a long time since I looked at a child so closely. Pure is the word that first comes to mind, but not in the sense of being free of dirtâit's something else, something fresh. Her eyelashes are surprisingly long, her eyelids plump, her nose looks soft, rising from her face like a ripe berry. She already has distinctive expressions, but sorrow hasn't yet found its way onto her face, I can see that. Seeing it is unlike any other seeingâseeing something that doesn't yet exist, but that you know is coming.
I'll be the one to draw sorrow on the little girl's face. I don't know this yet, and I don't yet know that she'll survive. I won't survive as well. She's the one who will draw sorrow on me. She's the one whose disappearance from my life will leave me limp, so that I lie on the floor for days without moving, unable to get up.
WE WALK TO
a busier street and I'm flooded with a whole slew of threats. Maybe she'll get scared on the tram and start to yell. Maybe we'll be run over by a street sweeper or a car. Maybe she'll get lost and I'll end up shouting her name till I'm hoarse.
Suddenly she's mute.
I can't look at her, don't speak to her. How does it feel to have her see me whole?
She doesn't see me. She's two and a half years oldâshe doesn't see anything about me except that I'm an adult, a virtual stranger, a woman whose uncertainty is growing second by second.
I want to protect her from every possible loss. I notice myself thinking that we can never cross this intersection, that it would be better to run to the arch of a building entrance or a bomb shelter, to hunker there for the rest of our lives or at least until her father comes home, thinking that I have no intention of putting the little girl in any danger, of shattering her face into unrecognizability.
The girl interrupts my growing dread by taking hold of my hand.
Her hand is amazingly soft, it feels springy and plump. Her grasp is light. I had already forgotten this trust, which all children share, because they don't know any different, the belief they have from birth that everything will be all right. At some point in their lives it's lost in a moment, inevitably. If they're lucky, it comes back again. Someone comes and takes them in their arms, wrapped in a blanket, in a bedroom, or reaches an arm under a table, and they relearn what was inevitably lost when they lost their childhood.
But the little girl hasn't lost anything yet. She's saying to me, with her whole being, that I can protect her. She's not afraid of the trams clattering by, or the cars or the people or seagulls or falling trees or death, because she believes that I know how to protect her.
And as the seconds stretch out and the cars drive by and she doesn't let go of my hand, I begin to believe her. It's so simple. Her faith gives me faith. I squeeze her hand and don't intend to let go. I won't.
“Mommy says to look both ways when you cross the street.”
“Aha. Well, Mommy is right.”
I see a glimpse of her soft neck, pale, white, a bare spot between her coat and the downy fringe of her hair. I want to put my hand over it, to protect it. It's saying in all its dim luster that nothing bad can happen as long as it's not afraid to be so naked and vulnerable.
“You can buy me some ice cream,” the little girl says.
“Maybe I will,” I answer, and now I'm not afraid of anything, either.
