Milk Teeth

by Helene Bukowski

  “I’m scared,” she said, stopping.

  “What of?” Edith said.

  “It feels weird.”

  “You have to go to the middle,” Edith said, but Meisis stayed where she was. I grinned. Edith turned to me.

  “What if you go in too?” Her voice was suddenly very soft. I didn’t know when she last asked me to do something.

  “Fine,” I said, getting out of my trousers and T-shirt and into the pool. When I reached Meisis, she clung on to me. In the water she was even lighter than before. I looked at Edith. “And now?”

  “You have to move like a frog, have you forgotten?” She showed us.

  “You have to stand here in the pool,” I said, but went farther in with Meisis, the bottom of the pool dropped away.

  The water came up to my shoulders.

  “Dive under?” I asked quietly.

  She nodded.

  “Three, two, one.”

  I pulled our weight underwater and breathed out. Air bubbles rose to the surface. I fought against the buoyancy. How long does it take for someone to drown?

  Meisis’s grip became tighter. Her fingernails cut into my skin. My chest tightened. The only thing I could hear was my own heartbeat.

  Meisis tried to go back to the surface, but I wouldn’t let her go. Staying underwater suddenly seemed completely logical to me. I closed my eyes. Hands grabbed us and pulled us up. Meisis wheezed. Her eyes were red. Edith released her from my arms and lifted her out of the pool. Water dripped from her fur. Meisis cowered shaking in the grass.

  I bit my lower lip so hard I tasted blood and climbed out of the pool.

  “What were you thinking?” Edith asked me.

  “I must have forgotten how to swim.”

  Meisis looked between us back and forth. Water beaded in her hair.

  “I’ve changed my mind, I don’t want to learn anymore,” she said, standing up and walking into the house. The dogs followed her, as if they had to protect Meisis from us.

  THE WATER IN THE POOL REFLECTS THE SKY.

  THE SURFACE LOOKS STABLE, BUT I STILL LOST MY GRIP.

  52.

  I sat on the edge of the bath while Meisis stood on the footstool in front of the washbasin brushing her teeth. I didn’t let her out of my sight while she did so, and when she had finished and was about to walk past me out of the bathroom, I grabbed on to her and gripped her chin.

  “Have you checked your teeth?” I asked.

  Meisis shook her head. I pushed her back to the washbasin and put her back on the stool. She leaned so far forward that her nose almost touched the mirror and she felt every tooth, but none of them wobbled. She dropped her hands and vacantly looked herself in the eyes. She suddenly seemed much older. I had to look away.

  I opened the window in her room. Meisis rolled into a ball on the bed. I sat down next to her. Light fell into the room from the corridor, but her face lay in shadow.

  She reached for my hand.

  “Will it hurt when I lose my teeth?” she asked.

  “When it’s time, they come out just as easily as the bones come out of the rabbit after we’ve been boiling it all day,” I answered.

  “But the rabbit is dead when that happens.”

  “You have nothing to be scared of.”

  “Why does Edith still have her milk teeth?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What will happen if mine don’t fall out?”

  I put the covers over Meisis. “Sleep now, it’s late.”

  “Can you stay with me tonight?”

  I nodded and fetched my blanket from the attic.

  Meisis’s uneasy sleep rubbed off on me. I felt the cool wall behind me. I tried to keep my eyes closed, but I couldn’t. Meisis sat up in bed. She felt around for me.

  “Go back to sleep,” I said, trying to push her back down onto the mattress, but Meisis shook her head.

  “I’m too hot,” she whispered.

  I passed her the water bottle from the night table. With only half-open eyes, she unscrewed the lid and drank in large, hurried gulps.

  “I dreamed that Edith disappeared,” she said. “We looked everywhere, but we didn’t even find her coat.”

  “Edith isn’t going to disappear,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “She’s sleeping on the sofa like she always does.”

  “Can you go check?”

  “That really isn’t necessary.”

  “Please.”

  I got up with a groan and felt around in the dark for the door.

  “Try to go back to sleep.”

  In the corridor, the light flickered. I walked barefoot across the floorboards.

  The living room was deserted. In the place where Edith always lay, there was a hollow in the sofa. In the kitchen there was a half-empty glass of water on the table.

  I went back upstairs and paused at the window. Three dead flies on the sill. Their armor-like black bodies were withered up. I was tempted to squash them with my thumbnail. Instead I looked outside where the pickup was sitting in the light of the moon. Inside it, I saw Edith. I turned on my heel.

  Outside, the air was as sticky as it was inside. I slowly walked down the sand path to the pickup.

  Edith was sitting and staring behind the steering wheel, her hands in her lap. I opened the door and shuffled into the passenger seat. A quiet crackling was coming from the speakers of the car radio.

  “Meisis is looking for you,” I said.

  Edith turned her head. She had painted her lips so dark, they looked black.

  “I wanted to listen to music, but the stupid thing is broken,” she said. She hit the radio with her palm.

  “It’s late, you should go to sleep,” I said, but she didn’t respond.

  “We could get away from here. You, the child, and me,” she said instead.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “It’s not safe here anymore.”

  “I won’t leave here, and neither will the child.”

  “Did you know that the other side of the river is no different from this one?” she asked, gripping the wheel.

  “I’m not interested in the other side,” I said. Edith blinked.

  “Even the dogs are smarter than you,” she said.

  I felt the need to run and hide, but my body didn’t obey me. Instead I just sat there.

  Edith cleared her throat. “I’m going to lie down,” she said, and climbed out of the pickup.

  I still couldn’t move. The crackling from the car speakers swelled; it screwed painfully into my ear canal.

  Maybe this was the moment I realized I hadn’t had things under control for a long time.

  53.

  THE GREAT DANES DISAPPEARED ON THE DAY WE THOUGHT THERE WAS GOING TO BE A STORM. AROUND MIDDAY THE SKY TOOK ON AN ALMOST BLACK HUE. THE STICKY AIR CRACKLED WITH ELECTRICITY.

  Nothing stirred. Meisis and I paced back and forth in the garden and waited for the rain. The dogs had come outside with us, but I barely paid any attention to them, I never did. I didn’t feel responsible. When we went back into the house, I didn’t notice that the dogs hadn’t followed us in.

  There wasn’t a storm. The sky simply cleared again.

  Edith was the first to notice their absence.

  “We’re going to go look for them right now,” she said, sounding strangely calm.

  All three of us walked through the forest together. Edith whistled inaudibly, so high that it hurt my ears. Meisis looked in every bush. I checked the meadows with binoculars, but we didn’t find the dogs.

  “Maybe they’ve been back home for a while already,” I said to try to comfort Edith.

  We made our way home. When we had almost reached the plot, I noticed that Meisis was no longer walking behind us. I stood there and called her name, but I could only hear the echo of my own voice.

  “She was still there a moment ago,” Edith said, wiping her sweaty hair out of her face.

  I looked arou
nd frantically. Nothing moved in the forest. I wanted to go back along the route that we had just taken, but Edith held my arm tightly.

  “She’ll show up in a minute,” she said.

  We waited, but nothing happened. I was seized by panic. I was already imagining how Eggert had waylaid Meisis and was now pressing his hand over her mouth. At that moment Meisis’s red hair appeared between the trees. She walked slowly, all the while looking left and right.

  “You can’t scare us like that,” I shouted, and grabbed her by the shoulders.

  She looked at me, surprised.

  “Never do that again.” I pulled her toward me.

  “What were you thinking?” Edith asked.

  “I wanted to make sure that we hadn’t missed anywhere,” Meisis said.

  “But we already looked there,” I said.

  Meisis didn’t say anything.

  After I had brought her to bed that evening, I went to see Edith in the living room. She was lying on the sofa and reading.

  “Do you think Meisis had something to do with the dogs disappearing?” I asked.

  She put down the book and looked at me. “Is that what you think?”

  I balled my hands up into fists and stared at my knuckles.

  “No, why would she?” I asked, but I didn’t sound as decisive as I would have liked.

  “She’s just a child. You shouldn’t let yourself get upset so easily,” Edith said, reopening the book.

  54.

  The supplies depleted. Meisis was always hungry. Sometimes I would find her between mealtimes in the pantry, a rusk or a piece of dried fruit in her hand. She was never satisfied by what I gave her. I counted the tin cans, the potatoes, over and over again; cooked thinner soups. There were still the rabbits at least. Apart from Len and Gösta, no one wanted to exchange things with me anymore. They wouldn’t even open the door when I stood outside with canisters of mulch. As long as Meisis still had her milk teeth, no one trusted me. And I couldn’t do anything about it.

  55.

  Ever since the dogs had gone missing, Meisis didn’t want to sleep alone in her room anymore, which is why I moved in with her completely.

  One night, we were woken by dogs barking. It sounded like they were under our window. Meisis hid under the covers. I threw open the window in the hope of seeing the dogs in the garden, but nothing was there, and the barking had fallen silent.

  When I opened my eyes in the morning, Edith was sitting on the floor next to the sofa. I sat bolt upright, startled. Meisis was sleeping peacefully. “It wasn’t the dogs,” Edith said. “Just some other dogs.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “You saw them?” I asked.

  Edith nodded. “They still listen to me.”

  “It’s not a good idea for you to start luring the dogs here again. Pesolt is waiting for any excuse to get us.”

  Edith glared at me angrily. “I have to find the dogs. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  There was nothing I could say.

  56.

  Levaii arrived on our plot as the sun was at its peak.

  Meisis had curled up to nap in the bathroom; I had laid out her covers on the cold tiles. Edith was sleeping in a ball on the sofa, the sheet like a shroud over her face.

  I was standing in the pantry, inspecting the supplies. Meisis and I brought back anything edible we found on our walks, but it was not enough. Even finding grass for the rabbits was becoming more and more difficult because of the extreme humidity.

  I heard the muffled sound of a bicycle bell from outside.

  Levaii let her bike fall in the sand out front and came up to the house out of breath. Her gray T-shirt was drenched in sweat.

  “What do you want?” I called from the door.

  “Can I come in?”

  I shook my head. “Best you didn’t.”

  Levaii puffed a strand of hair out of her face and dropped her arms to her sides. “I have to get out of the sun, otherwise I’ll get heatstroke.”

  “Let’s go into the garden. There’s shade there,” I said, leading her around the house.

  Levaii stopped next to the pump and operated the lever. She lowered her head and let the water run over the back of her neck and her hands and she gulped some down.

  “Do you get the feeling it’s getting hotter every day?” she asked, blinking up at me.

  “It can’t keep going on like this,” I replied, mentally noting that I sounded like Gösta.

  We sat under the plum tree. Yawning, Levaii leaned against the trunk. I took a cigarette out of the breast pocket of my shirt, stuck it between my lips, and lit it up.

  “So, what’s this about?” I asked, inhaling the smoke.

  “My father wants to make you an offer that you, as he said, ‘cannot refuse.’”

  “What kind of offer?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me. You have to come to our barn tomorrow night.”

  She looked transfixed at my cigarette, but I acted as if I didn’t notice.

  “Has it got something to do with your sisters?”

  Levaii shrugged her shoulders. “Probably. He doesn’t talk about anything else. He even keeps saying their names in his sleep.”

  “Do you think the child is responsible for their disappearance?” I asked.

  Levaii didn’t say anything, then she said, “I’m not sure.”

  I lowered the hand holding the cigarette.

  “They said some strange things,” she added.

  “What kind of things?”

  “That blowing up the bridge was the wrong thing to do. They said that they’d go crazy, just like Ove, because they can only go around in circles here.”

  She picked up a leaf that was lying on the ground next to her and shredded it between her fingers.

  “I always thought it was just a turn of phrase,” she said.

  “And Eggert?”

  Levaii waved her hand. “He’s fully convinced that the child’s behind it. Let’s stop talking about it, I’ve told you what I was supposed to pass on.” She stood up. I got up too.

  “Are you sure you want to ride back in this heat?”

  “I don’t have any other choice, or are you going to let me in the house now after all?” Levaii grinned.

  I didn’t return the smile and said, “Tell Eggert that I’ll be there tomorrow.”

  57.

  Meisis and I were awoken in the night by the bright light of a flashlight shining into the room from outside. I lay on my back and didn’t move. Meisis felt for my hand and held it so tightly it hurt. The light began to flicker, then went out, only to once more wander across the bedcovers. Sleeping was out of the question.

  It was only when I leaned out the window and yelled that it remained dark.

  58.

  Eggert’s barn stood brightly lit in the night. It sat behind the pasture where he used to keep his cows until they all died on him. The light fell on the scorched lawn through the open door. I went inside. It smelled of straw and animals. Sweat collected on my top lip. The heat was now oppressive at night too. Eggert was standing in the middle of the barn. The light of the halogen lamp reflected off his bald head. He had unbuttoned his shirt. For the first time I saw the tattoos on his chest. Listed below one another were the seven names of his daughters, Levaii’s last.

  He greeted me with a nod and indicated that I should sit opposite him on a folding chair. I reluctantly complied with his request.

  “I want to make you an offer,” he said.

  “Levaii told me. What’s the offer?”

  “You’ll get something from me, but to get it you have to hand over the brat to me.”

  I leaned back in the chair. “I wouldn’t hand over Meisis for anything in the world,” I said.

  “Listen to what I have to say to you first.”

  I crossed my arms across my chest. Eggert looked at me intensely.

  “You know about my petrol supply. If you give me the child now, I’ll share it with you.”

  I laughed.
>
  “But that’s not all. I’ll turn over half of my supply to you. And on top of that I’ll protect you.”

  “Protect me from what?”

  “Pesolt. You don’t really think he’ll just leave you in peace when the child’s eliminated, do you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You haven’t kept to the rules. He’ll never be able to look the other way, but I’ll make sure that he leaves you and Edith in peace.”

  “And for that I should give you Meisis?”

  Eggert nodded. I leaned forward.

  “Listen, Eggert, Meisis is not responsible for the disappearance of your daughters. She won’t be able to bring them back to you.”

  Eggert laughed. “Let me worry about that.”

  “And what if they left here of their own free will?” I said, and for a moment my voice seemed to hang in the air.

  “What did you say?”

  “The river—” I began, but Eggert interrupted me.

  “The bridge is destroyed, the river can’t be crossed.”

  “Maybe they swam? Edith thinks—”

  “Are you completely nuts? No one here can swim. And why would they even try? We’ve got everything here. We’re on the right side.” Eggert’s voice cracked.

  I bit my lip. “The child is innocent. She can’t bring your daughters back.”

  Eggert looked around filled with hate. “You’ll regret this.”

  I stood up. Eggert stepped toward me and put his face very close to mine.

  “My daughters are no traitors, understand?” he said.

  I nodded, but I made it clear to him with the look in my eyes that I believed something different. Before things got dangerous, I turned around and walked out of the barn, into the dark night.

  WHICH BONDS WOULD REMAIN IF I WERE TO FORGET AN EMBER IN THE STRAW? THE FLAMES WOULD BE SEEN FOR MILES AROUND.

  59.

  The following day, Eggert brought the dead dogs to our house.

  From the window halfway up the stairs, I watched how he parked his Range Rover on the sand path, got out, and opened the trunk. In a workmanlike way, he heaved first one and then the other dog out and laid them in front of our door. Whistling, he closed the trunk.