Milk Teeth

by Helene Bukowski

  She tried to grab the potato, gripping my leg with her other hand, but I kicked her away, went to the window, opened it, and threw the potato into the front garden.

  “Are you crazy?”

  She crawled across the floor, knocking over one of the glasses while doing so. Water gushed over the carpet. I imagined kicking her head and cracked my knuckles.

  “Skalde?”

  Meisis was standing in the doorway, holding a rabbit in her arms.

  “Didn’t I tell you to stay in the attic?”

  Meisis shrugged her shoulders. “It was so hot up there.”

  I turned away and tried to breathe calmly.

  “What’s wrong?” Meisis asked, standing close to me.

  “If I tell you to stay in the attic, you must do it, understand? No matter how long it lasts, and no matter how hot it gets.”

  Meisis nodded, the rabbit now tightly pressed to her chest.

  Edith laughed. “Sounds familiar.”

  I ignored her. “What’s wrong with the rabbit?”

  “It’s not moving anymore,” she said.

  “Show me.”

  She hesitated and threw a look at Edith.

  “Give it to me now.”

  I grabbed the rabbit and examined it. The eyes were gummy with pus. It wasn’t breathing.

  “What did you do to it?” I asked.

  “Nothing, it was already like that when I took it out of the hutch.”

  “It’s dead,” I said, “now all we can do is eat it.”

  Meisis nodded.

  I walked off and took the rabbit into the kitchen.

  Later, I threw another look into the living room. Edith hadn’t moved. I closed the door and went to Meisis in the kitchen, where I wiped the blood from the wax tablecloth and began to roast the rabbit.

  IT SEEMS AS IF THE WALLS OF THE HOUSE ARE MADE OF PAPER, THEY ARE MUCH TOO DELICATE, AS IF THEY COULD BE FOLDED TOGETHER, BURNED DOWN, REDUCED TO ASHES IN JUST A FEW SIMPLE STEPS.

  25.

  The sun stood crimson over the pine forest. In its light, the garden appeared as if lacquered. The child was still sleeping. Edith had been lying in the bathtub since yesterday evening. I stood in the kitchen and could hear her moving in the water above me.

  I took the butcher knife from the dresser. I washed it thoroughly, readied the grindstone, and began sharpening it. The even motion soothed me.

  I concentrated on the task until I could make out the soft sound of an approaching car. Tires crunched in the sand, the engine fell silent. I put the grindstone to one side, grabbed the knife, and crept to the front door. I held the knife so tightly, my fingernails bore into my palm. There was a knock.

  “Anybody there?”

  More knocking. I hid the knife behind me in my belt and opened the door a crack. On the lower steps stood Pesolt. He ran his hand through his shoulder-length blond hair and wiped his palms on his stained tracksuit. I looked past him at his car. The number plate was missing. The headlights were smashed. There was a deep dent in the passenger-side door. But the seats were empty.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “Someone moved in?”

  “Who says?”

  “Wolf and Levke saw a child standing in your front garden.”

  I acted surprised. “A child?”

  I could see from Pesolt’s face that he didn’t buy it.

  “You believe something those wasters told you?”

  He climbed a step higher. “Then let me in.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “It wasn’t a question.”

  I felt a draft of air behind me. I turned around. Edith was standing in the dark hallway. She was only wearing her rabbit fur coat. Her wet hair dripped onto the flagstones.

  “You will leave my plot right now,” she said, standing next to me.

  Pesolt grinned. “You mean Nuuel’s plot?”

  Edith raised her chin. “Do we really want to talk about our dead?”

  For a moment I thought he was going to lose his cool, but his features relaxed. “You’re really not making this easy,” he said, turning around.

  He slowly went back to his car. He opened the door but turned toward us one more time.

  “We can’t just do whatever we want around here,” he said, as if it was a good thing.

  I bit my lip.

  “We know that,” Edith replied.

  Pesolt nodded and got into his car. He revved the engine, accelerated, and turned onto the road.

  Edith pushed me into the house, closed the door, and turned the key. I was about to say something, but she shook her head and went upstairs without saying another word.

  I kept Meisis in the house all day. We closed all the curtains and went up to the attic. I lay down on the floorboards, exhausted, and watched her while she slid the snail shells she’d found in the garden back and forth across the wood. There were hardly any living ones left. Only the empty houses remained.

  “Am I going to have to leave?” Meisis asked, picking up the smallest snail shell and holding it in the narrow shaft of sunlight falling in through the curtains.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “You didn’t tell the man outside the truth,” she said.

  “You could hear us?”

  “Will he come back?” Meisis asked, putting the snail shell with the others.

  “Maybe.”

  “And then?”

  I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  26.

  My sleep was so light that I kept waking with a start. The forest stood darkly outside. No moon in sight.

  I could hear Edith walking below through the house, and a couple of times I had the feeling she was standing directly beneath the hatch leading to the attic.

  At daybreak, I couldn’t take it anymore. I got up, got dressed, and went downstairs. The tiredness made me fuzzy. I came across Edith in the hallway.

  “Didn’t you sleep?” she asked me, burying her hands in the pockets of her coat.

  “Barely,” I replied.

  Once in the kitchen, I made coffee. I hadn’t touched the tin in years. I had wanted to save it for a moment when I would really need it. I poured some in a cup for myself, filled a second, and set it in front of Edith, who had sat down at the table.

  “You should never have taken in the child,” she said.

  I said nothing.

  “Do you realize what you’ve started?”

  “If I hadn’t taken her in, who would have?”

  “They would have made it disappear. We wouldn’t have known anything about it,” Edith said.

  “You see.”

  “Yes, but now we’re in danger too.”

  “Nuuel took you in.”

  At the name of my father, Edith winced.

  “There was resistance then too, but he wasn’t afraid.”

  “Of course he was afraid.”

  “If he was still alive, he would have taken in Meisis.”

  Edith was silent.

  “Don’t you believe it could be different this time? Everyone’s tired.”

  “In this regard they will never change.”

  “What makes you so sure of it?”

  “You didn’t experience what it was like. They would have rather let their apples rot on the compost than give me one.”

  “That was over twenty years ago.”

  “You heard Pesolt yesterday.”

  I took a sip from my cup.

  “Right now, we’re being closely monitored,” she said.

  “I won’t send the child away.”

  “Then you have to be ready to live with the consequences.”

  When I think back on that conversation in the kitchen, it seems as if it was the first time we had spoken to each other normally in years. We didn’t accuse each other of anything, just discussed the facts. We weren’t in agreement, and yet we hadn’t argued.

  HOW LONG CAN I STAND UPRI
GHT WHEN HOLDING UP MY OWN BODY BRINGS ME TO MY KNEES TWICE AS HARD.

  27.

  The dogs were restless that morning already. Time and time again they would get up, trot aimlessly through the house, lie down in other places, twitch in their sleep, and jump up at the slightest sound. They must have had a premonition.

  People neared the house from the back, came from the forest and stood at the border of our plot, in the middle of the day. Two women, three men. I didn’t know all their names; their farms were far away. But I knew that they all had a lot of land, I could tell from their bulky gold rings set with amber and wild boar teeth, their clothes made from bright linen. Pesolt was also among them. He stayed in the background for the moment.

  The child was crouching near the pool in the shade of a sheet I’d stretched between two trees. When she noticed the group, she hid the building blocks in the grass.

  “So it’s true,” said one of the women. She had a severe face. It didn’t fit with her graceful body. She nodded to the others, and they came closer. I put myself between them and Meisis.

  “Liar,” Pesolt said to me.

  “How did you get into the territory?” the woman asked, but Meisis didn’t respond.

  She turned to me impatiently. “Does it understand?”

  I nodded. She repeated her question. Meisis’s face remained expressionless.

  “Kindly answer us,” the woman said, indicating to me with a movement of her head that I should step aside. I stayed where I was.

  “It’s only a child,” I said. “What are you all afraid of?”

  “It’s not wanted here,” the woman with the stern face said.

  “It won’t bother any of you, you won’t even notice it’s here.”

  “That’s not the point. It doesn’t belong here. The hair alone …” The man pointed to Meisis as if she were an animal.

  “But where’s she meant to go?” I asked, grabbing Meisis’s hand. She leaned against me sleepily.

  “Back where it came from,” Pesolt said.

  A vehicle sounded its horn. I spun around. A Jeep came to a stop next to the house. The door burst open, and Gösta climbed out. She came striding toward us in mud-smeared rubber boots.

  “What’s all this?” she asked, standing next to me.

  “They’ve taken in a child that’s not from here,” the man said.

  Pesolt cleared his throat. “It won’t tell us where it came from.”

  Gösta grasped her long gray hair, twisted it into a knot, and pinned it up. In that moment, her gaunt body lost all its fragility. She looked as solid as wood.

  “Since when have you been afraid of a child?” she asked.

  “But its hair,” the woman protested.

  “She looks like a changeling,” the man concurred.

  Gösta laughed. “Aren’t we all a bit too old for this?”

  “We can’t make any exceptions,” Pesolt said.

  “I will vouch for this child,” Gösta said. “Nothing will happen. And if it does, I’ll see that it disappears. And Skalde along with it.” She pointed to me.

  “You must swear it,” the woman said, “on Len and on the territory.”

  Gösta nodded and raised her hand. Pesolt bit his lip.

  “Was that everything?” Gösta dropped her hand. “Then we can bring this meeting to an end.”

  For a moment no one moved. They relaxed only when Pesolt gave them the sign and they fought their way back into the forest.

  Gösta turned to me, tiredness written on her face. I put out my arm, so she could support herself against me, but instead she spat on the ground at my feet.

  “I can do it myself,” she snapped at me, and hobbled back to her car. Meisis and I followed her. At the car door Gösta said, “You can thank Len. If it was up to me, I would have just handed over the child. I won’t help you a second time, understand? I want my peace.”

  “I know,” I said quickly.

  She nodded and threw a glance at Meisis. “That’s what you’re risking everything for?” Shaking her head, she climbed into the Jeep.

  As she drove off, Meisis took my hand. “Why are they scared of me?” she asked.

  “Because you’re not like them,” I replied.

  I DREAMED OF INVISIBLE DOGS WHOSE BARKS FADED AWAY INTO THE FOREST. MY HANDS WERE BALLED INTO FISTS, BUT I KNEW THAT I COULDN’T OPEN THEM BECAUSE BETWEEN MY FINGERS I HELD FLUTTERING INSECTS THAT WANTED TO FLY AWAY.

  28.

  Kurt and I had been sitting at the edge of the pool. I was smoking my first cigarette when he told me the story of my parents. Perhaps he sensed that Edith concealed everything from me.

  Edith first arrived in the territory after the concrete bridge was blown up. She was suddenly standing in the fog in broad daylight in the middle of the road that led to the river. Her rose-colored silk dress was completely wet through. A swimsuit shimmered through the fabric. She had a silver roller suitcase with her.

  She refused to say how she had made it across the river, even though Pesolt and Gösta interrogated her the whole night long.

  Her suitcase was filled with more clothes and her mother-of-pearl jewelry. Aside from that she had five lipsticks in different shades of red and a brush with a handle made of driftwood.

  They told her that she wasn’t allowed to stay in the territory, there was no place for her here.

  “How can I go back when the place I came from no longer exists?” Edith asked with an expressionless face, but nobody cared.

  They gave her three days, then she would have to leave the territory again.

  For two whole days Edith walked around aimlessly and spent the nights beneath the humming electricity pylons.

  On the third day Edith found the pool in Nuuel’s garden, knocked on his door, and he let her in the house as if they had known each other for years.

  It soon got out where Edith was hiding. People came to Nuuel’s house and told Edith to show herself, but Nuuel didn’t open up. They decided to come back the next day. If necessary, they would gain entry by force.

  That night, the dogs disappeared from the farms. They reappeared on Nuuel’s plot and guarded the house. They obeyed Edith and ate from her hand. No one came.

  Nuuel asked people to tolerate Edith. She was only one woman—what were they afraid of? He promised them that they would get their dogs back. After the others had conferred for a long time, they finally yielded.

  “As long as she blends in and behaves discreetly, we will allow for her to live in your house.”

  Edith released the dogs, and the people left the plot. They avoided Nuuel’s house from then on and stopped greeting them.

  The accident happened a year later.

  Nuuel often went along the river to skim stones. What he was doing there that day, when hardly anything could be seen through the fog, no one could explain.

  They found him that evening floating facedown in the water. Of course, it was Edith who was made responsible for his death. They showed up at the house with his bloated corpse, laid Nuuel’s drowned body on the doormat, and knocked.

  They didn’t know that Edith was pregnant. They saw only when she opened the door. Their plan to shoot her on the spot was abandoned. They still had a scrap of humanity, after all.

  They left Edith the dead body and drove off. She had to dig the grave all by herself. At dawn, Kurt came and brought her a lilac bush; they planted it beside it.

  “And then?” I asked Kurt, running the back of my hand over my dry lips.

  “And then? And then nothing. She stayed here in the house.”

  Kurt put out his cigarette and flicked it into the pool.

  “And then you were born.”

  “YOUR MOTHER CAME OUT OF THE WATER—DO YOU SLEEP IN A PUDDLE TOO?” THE OTHER CHILDREN ASKED ME, LAUGHING.

  29.

  “Was someone here?” Edith wanted to know that evening. She had just come out of the bath and met me on the landing. Her feet left wet imprints on the floor. She stood before me
somewhat lost and pinched her face where her skin had started to peel. She pulled off a loose flake and rolled it between her fingers into a little ball.

  “Pesolt came with a couple of others. They know now that the child lives here,” I said.

  Edith didn’t say anything.

  “They wanted it gone,” I added.

  “You’re not really surprised, are you?”

  I shrugged.

  “And now?” she asked.

  “Gösta came and convinced them to hold off.”

  Edith’s body stiffened. She lowered her hand. “Gösta was there too?”

  “She came later.”

  “Naturally. The noble Gösta. Helped you out again, has she?”

  I screwed up my eyes. “Yes, she did. There was no one else there.”

  “You do know that in the end it won’t make any difference. Even Gösta can’t change that the child isn’t from here. Sooner or later they will find a reason for why it has to leave.”

  I stood close to Edith. “If none of it matters, why didn’t you just give the child to Pesolt, when you had the chance?”

  Edith didn’t reply straightaway. “You know I can still do that.” Her gaze was cold.

  “You wouldn’t.”

  She grinned. “Don’t you believe me?”

  I moved back. Edith now stood as straight as a pole and looked anything but lost. “If you want to put your life in jeopardy, then go ahead, but keep me out of it,” she said.

  “But you have no life. Look at yourself. You haven’t left the plot for years. Do you want to just keep going? Do you call this having a life?”

  Edith’s face remained unmoving. “The only thing I’m asking is that you don’t get me mixed up in it, is that understood?”

  “You’ve made yourself very clear. I’ve never been able to rely on you for anything.” My voice cracked, and I had to turn away.

  “Go on, cry, I’m sure Gösta will come and comfort you.”

  Edith said something else, but I didn’t hear it as I’d climbed up into the attic and slammed the hatch down after me.

  30.

  I stood with Meisis behind the shed, showing her how to cut the stinging nettles without injuring herself, when Edith stepped out the back door. She had brushed her hair up into two thick plaits, had put on dark lipstick, and was wearing a blue silk dress under her rabbit fur coat. She approached us with purpose.