Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name (14 page)

Anna Kristine went to bed early, turning out the lights as she passed through the hall. It was only ten. I ripped a page out of a blank notebook and searched for a good pen. When I found the right one, I knelt down on the floor in front of the coffee table and started to write a letter to my child. It seemed the thing normal people would do.

“I wanted you to know how happy I was today, the day I found out about you,” I wrote. My hand was shaking. “Being happy reminds you of all the times you haven’t been.” I read over what I’d written. Disgusting. I ripped the letter into shreds. I would not be the kind of mother who tells her child too much.

Henrik had said I could use the phone to call my family. I considered calling Pankaj.
There must be someone else.
I should want to call Pankaj, I told myself, but I couldn’t make myself dial his number. Our number.
There must be someone I’m closer to.

A telephone book for Finnmark, its cover ripped off, sat by the phone. I began flipping through it, at first, absentmindedly;

then I looked for names. I searched for any Blixes that might live in Finnmark, and found none.

I skimmed through the listings in Masi and the nearby town of Kautokeino, where my mother had stayed
.
Any of the names could be my father’s. I imagined my body might spasm in recognition and revolt when I saw his name. It was in my blood, I would know. But as I searched blindly, I grew more frantic. I had nothing to go on. He could be anyone. Everyone.

Empty Chair, Hanging from Tree
‌

I knew the difference between knocks: Anna Kristine patted on my door with the flats of her fingers; Henrik rapped with his knuckles. The two of them were forever entering and exiting my room.

Henrik was at the door. It was late morning.

“You’re looking better,” he said, before really looking at me. “I feel better, much better,” I said.

I considered returning the compliment, but could think of nothing to say. His blond hair looked brighter today, like a halo. He was holding a magazine.

“What’s that?” I said.

“Just came in the mail,” he said. He handed it to me, and I studied the cover. A man holding a reindeer’s face, turning it toward the camera. The reindeer was trying to turn away. The magazine was called
Reindriftsngtt Boazodoallo-Oddasat.

“Magazine for reindeer herders,” Henrik said.

I studied a picture of reindeer being tracked by satellite. Another photo showed protesters outside a London restaurant, carrying signs.
SAVE RUDOLPH
, they said.

“The Sami language looks complicated,” I said.

“It’s not complicated for us,” Henrik said. He was chewing on a toothpick.

I handed the magazine back to him. “I thought I saw a little girl in my room yesterday. I didn’t know if she was real.” I tried to laugh.

“My niece. My sister was visiting from Oslo with her daughter. We didn’t know where she had gone, and then we see that your door was open this much”—he showed a small distance between his large hands—“and then we knew.”

“I’ve only seen you and Anna Kristine for the past few days. I started to forget there were other people here. Or anywhere.” “Sometimes I feel that way when I go out to see my reindeer. I go out there for days, and when I get back I forget how to talk to people.” Henrik paused. “I’m going to check on them

this afternoon.”

“Can I go with you?” I asked.

“It’s a long way. I think my aunt might get upset with me. I will check and see what Nature says.”

Henrik pulled back one of the curtains. “Nature, do you think I can take this sick woman out into the cold?”

He cupped his ear and listened. He nodded as though taking in unsurprising information.

“But Nature,” he said in a pleading voice, “are you sure?

She’s never seen a reindeer herd before.” Again he listened and nodded.

Finally, he turned to me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not going to happen today. Maybe when you get full recovery.”

“I need to get out of here,” I said. The desperation in my voice surprised both of us.

“I can understand,” Henrik said. “But Anna Kristine wants you to stay in Kautokeino for another day so she can make sure you’re healed.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “I just need to get out of this room.” If my mother’s rapist had never been arrested, it was likely he still lived in town. I wasn’t expecting to cry. I didn’t want to cry. “I’m wondering if you can show me around. I just need to see

. . . something different.”
I need to find him.

“Okay,” Henrik said. “Why don’t you come to the bar tonight with me and my friends. Everyone in the town will be there.”

I thanked him.

After he was gone, I saw he had left a handful of toothpicks on the bedside table.

It was eleven p.m. by the time Henrik came to pick me up. I had been waiting for hours.

“Shhh! Anna Kristine is sleeping,” I said before he said anything.

Henrik was with his cousin Isak. Isak had the body of a fourteen-year-old. It appeared he dyed his hair, too, but his was black. I could smell the alcohol on them. It didn’t emanate from their breath as much as their necks.

I grabbed my hat and scarf. “Where have you been?” I said. “Drinking at a friend’s house,” Isak said.

“It’s too expensive to drink at bars here. Everyone drinks at home first,” Henrik said, and added: “You’re mad.”

“I have no reason to be mad,” I said.

“Don’t be mad,” Isak said. “We’re just on Sami time here.

Everyone’s on Sami time. The sun is on Sami time.”

We crossed the street and walked up a hill. My calves were instantly sore—they hadn’t done anything for days. As we approached the bar, I heard laughter, both tinny and low. Through the windows of parked cars, I could see women and men overcrowded into backseats, bottles of wine and beer.

The first room of the bar had a dartboard and a large stage for karaoke. Two women who looked retarded were sitting by a speaker. Jeremy had never been to a bar. Or a party. The big-gest event he’d ever attended was Dad’s funeral. In many ways, I had failed him.

Back-to-back booths lined one long wall of the next room; a bar ran along the other. The bartender was wearing a shirt with a picture of a baby on it. Real stud earrings protruded through the shirt—one through each of the baby’s ears and another through its belly button.

Henrik asked what I wanted to drink. I told him water, and he rolled his eyes. While he waited in line at the bar, Isak and I sat down at a booth. A man wearing a bright green sweatshirt introduced himself. He said his name twice, and when he repeated it a third time, I pretended I finally understood. The man, who looked about forty-five, was a school-bus driver.
Twenty-nine years ago he would have been sixteen. Too young.

I asked him how far his route took him, and he told me the names of towns I had no reason to know.

He wanted to go to America, to Los Angeles. Did I think he could find work?

“Ignore him,” said another man, Per Anders. He invited me to watch his reindeer be taken to the slaughterhouse. “Just the old ones we killing now, this time of year,” he explained. “When they maybe fifteen she start to fall down, and her teeth come out.”

He was tall, and I looked nothing like him. I declined.

More people were arriving. I studied the middle-aged men with darker coloring. I resembled none of them. I resembled all of them.

Henrik came to the table with drinks and a female companion. “This is my cousin Karin,” he said. Karin had round eyes, black as pebbles. They both sat down.

“Hi,” I said. “I was wondering where all the women were.” “There aren’t many women our age here,” she said. “The men become reindeer herders, or they work on the oil rigs over by Tromsø. But most of the women who grow up here go to Oslo. For college. They don’t stay in the family business, because it’s not women’s business. Like my sister. She lives in Oslo now.” She pointed to Oslo on the map of Norway

imprinted on the beer glass. “Big Sami community there.” “Do they stand out down there?” I asked, and then tried to

explain myself. “Does everyone know right away that they’re Sami?”

Karin and Henrik looked at each other as though making sure they had the same answer. They shook their heads and turned back to me.

“Many Sami look like us,” Henrik said, putting his arm around Karin. “But others can be like him.” Henrik lifted his chin toward a tall man at the bar with blond hair and pinkish skin.

“You agree he could be surfer in California?” Karin said.

I nodded.

“Many people can’t tell who’s Sami,” Henrik said. “We can tell, but . . .” He took a sip of beer and didn’t finish his sentence.

Someone turned up the volume on the bar’s TV. A cross-country ski race in Switzerland. A skier from Kautokeino was in third place.

Cheers erupted in the bar, more eyes turned to the TV. “You know why the Sami are such good skiers?” Karin

asked. “Because their legs are like this.” She stood up and, in her dress, exaggerated a bowlegged stance. It was exactly what Kari had demonstrated for me in Helsinki. “There was a study done some years ago, you know. They showed that Sami didn’t get enough D vitamin. Their muscles grow, but not their bone. It’s not so common anymore, but everyone, they used to be like that.”

I looked around the room at the older men. My father would have a bowlegged walk.

Henrik stood by the bar, his arm around a man wearing sus-penders to hold up his ski pants.

“That’s the mayor,” Karin said.

“Really?” I said. He was a small man in his fifties, with ears that cupped forward. “How long has he been mayor?”

“Forever,” Karin said.

I could become friendly with him and go see him at his office the next day—he would be able to help me. Henrik caught me looking at them. He steered the mayor over to the table, and they sat down. The mayor introduced himself. “I’m the mayor,” he said, slurring. His handshake was damp, limp. “Do you want to hear a
yoik
?” he said.

“A joke?” I said.�

He nodded.� “Sure,” I said.�

The mayor began yodeling. The song lasted a minute. � Henrik, Karin, and a couple others clapped or cheered. The mayor took a swig of his beer.

I looked at Karin.

“That was a
yoik
,” she said, pronouncing it
yolk.
“It’s like a chant. Everyone has their own
yoik
that’s particular to them. It’s like, how do I explain? It’s like a man and his shadow.”

“What do people
yoik
about?”

“Something special that happened to them or something that characterizes them. The mayor’s
yoik
is about his walk. He walks like a small bear.”

I turned to the mayor. “Thank you,” I said. “That was lovely.”

“Where are you from?” he said. He was more drunk than I’d realized. He was struggling to keep his chin from his throat.

“New York,” I said.

“Where are you from?” he said, this time addressing my chest.

“I’m going to go soon,” I said to Henrik and Karin. I didn’t know what I was doing in this bar. Dad was dead, my mother had been raped, and the mayor was talking to my breasts. “I need to go.”

“I can take you,” Karin said. “I have my car.”

“Don’t go,” Henrik said. He reached across the table for my hand. He dropped it after a minute and argued with the mayor about who would buy the next round of drinks. They both brought out their wallets and placed them on the table, like poker chips. Seeing men’s wallets made me sad. They were either too thick or too thin, too old or too new. They always looked wrong.

Karin and I made our way out of the bar. A man grabbed her elbow and said something that amused her. Her big teeth looked bigger when she laughed.

We stepped outside. The cold grabbed my nose, pinching it. I asked Karin where I could find out more about the Sami involved in the Alta Dam protests.

“Go to the Sami Parliament,” she said, unlocking her car. “It’s in Karasjok, not so far from here. They have recordings of everything.”

“I passed through Karasjok,” I said, more to myself than to her.

It was colder in Karin’s car than it was outside. She apologized and blew onto the palms of her gloves. I didn’t see how that could help.

“I am happy you’re staying with Anna Kristine,” she said. “So she don’t get lonely. She is very lonely, I think. Her husband, he was buried ten years ago. And her daughter is gone. She marry a man in Spain.”

I nodded.

“And her son, something was wrong with him.” She touched her forehead and looked over at me.

“I didn’t know she had a son.”

“It was very sad,” Karin said. “I think it broke her heart.” We turned onto the road to Anna Kristine’s house.

“My brother was born with Down’s syndrome,” I said. “I don’t know what you call that here.”

Karin shrugged.

We pulled up in front of the house, and I thanked Karin for the ride.

“Maybe you don’t tell Anna Kristine what I told you about her son.”

“I can’t talk to her anyway,” I said.

I rose early. Anna Kristine was already dressed, as usual, in her full Sami outfit. Her hair, which looked white when she wore it down, was now pinned up and gray. Ornate bronze clips replaced the bobby pins she usually used to secure her hat.

For breakfast, we ate hard-boiled eggs and toast with butter and thin strips of white-yellow cheese. At ten thirty, Anna Kristine left the house, and I dressed to go to Karasjok, to the Sami Parliament, to find records of the protesters from Kautokeino, of any arrests that were made. That would give me a list of names to start with. I could go down the list, knocking on doors. I would know him when I saw him.

There was a bus to Karasjok that afternoon, but I didn’t want to wait. I was tired of buses, of the poisonous medita-tions they provoked. I stood on the side of the road, my thumb extended. It was colder today, the wind stronger. I wrapped my scarf up around my nose and pulled my hat down.