Kuopio, Finland, one week before Christmas, 1964

My mother is standing with her back to my bedroom door. I think it’s her, think she’s herself. She’s drinking a glass of water in her old quilted purple housecoat and slippers; I don’t know if that’s a good sign or a bad one. She hears me coming, anti-sounds combining to form the creak of a floorboard hidden under the bottle-green cork matting, giving me away—of course it does: cork, bottle—as I come into the kitchen slowly.

And my mother, my still beautiful mother turns, her profile weighed with weariness. Yes, Ethel has dragged her around, dragged her down, all night, I can see it. That state of her I think of as Ethel is back, glittering around my mother’s being, and there’s a faint scent of yesterday in the air, the smell of all a person’s saturated bluster condensed, days and nights of it, muddled mornings and evenings all cooked down until the bluster and destruction is so thick you can taste it in your mouth.

I submit to it, my nose and upper lip quivering. Don’t whine, don’t gripe, don’t shoot your mouth off. I can’t even imagine griping. I go and put my shoes on, look in my shoulder bag—pencil bag, coin purse, the book of poems I bought yesterday for ten marks. Never alone with a book in your hand, my mother says, but I don’t hear my mother now because Ethel’s hoarse, tired voice, which still has a trace of my mother in it, says,

“Stop at Tatra and tell them I’m sick.”

Oh no, not me, don’t make me do it, boohoo, the little bunny inside me says. But the hand is already on my floppy ears, and it’s not there to give me a pat, so I keep my mouth closed tight, keep a straight face—a Cold, Hard person, that’s what I am when Ethel is here—and the Cold, Hard person says (in anti-sound, of course), Run your own errands, and I’ll run mine.

I’m careful not to let any sound come out, though, not even a snort, because two anti-sounds make a sound in the real world, as I’ve said before. But repetition, it seems, is the mother of all learning. All the important things have been told to me so many times now that I can’t fail to know and remember them.

The silence is Ethelian. I don’t look up, take my coat from the rack in roaring, tenacious silence, my jaw clenched so tight you can see it, but there’s sound coming from somewhere around my ears, my traitorous, cringing bunny ears—the sound of a slippery, noncommittal Mmmm.

“Wait—stop at the pharmacy on your lunch break,” says Mother Ethel.

Ethel walks out of the kitchen. It’s 6:48; I have to go, won’t hear her now if I shut the door behind me—6:50, so I’ll just make it to work on time. She doesn’t come out of her room, but the bunny is still under the spell of the invisible hands and I feel hot, wearing the sweater my father left behind, and his duffel coat with the sleeves rolled up, and I just roll them down, quick, breezy, and say,

“I’ve gotta go.”

And when I don’t hear anything from Mom or Ethel, I open the inner door and the cold of the entryway hits me in the face—better that than Ethel’s open hand—and I push the door shut behind me, the bunny absolutely terrified, and I tell it, That’s enough, and suddenly I know it’s true.

That’s enough. Enough staring through the bars of the cage with red eyes, enough pleading for mercy with my fluffy tail wagging, enough turning my ears to catch every sound, eating grass, slowly dying.

I rush out through the gate and a gust of air rushes out with me as I dash to the corner. Rules are what keep a child safe. I look left and right, the snow crystals swirling in the beams of the streetlights—no cars; I run across the street, my heart thumping, thup thup, childish to run away, a grown person with a job, always having to be responsible, always careful about cleanliness and nutrition, never talking back even when I’m wrongly treated, always cheery and quick to know what is expected of me, never causing anyone any trouble. That’s what’s expected of an employee. Or a child in a family, I think fitfully but clearly as I walk faster, not sure what time it is because I left the house wrong, on a random strike of the clock, with the friction of something left half-finished in my mind.

It doesn’t help to look at my watch; I can’t make it out, and it isn’t going to straighten out the morning’s mess. Maybe nothing can. I just keep thup thupping ahead like dogs are chasing me, past the import grocer, and I see some strange creature slowly walking ahead of me, someone I recognize even from here, clomping along the icy street in old-lady boots, ankle boots with low heels and thick stockings, probably wool, under her dress, and a black fur hat covering her hair as she walks steadily on, unmistakable even from behind as our neighbor Anna Tuomi, already an old person, over fifty, but still my workmate today, and tomorrow. I’ve always made it to work before her even though we leave from the same building, through the same gate.

I slow abruptly as I come up beside her, passing the gigantic packages of coffee in the grocery window, the girl from California who shoves her grapes at us from the fronts of the boxes of raisins, and Anna Tuomi, looking like she hasn’t slept, nods and says good morning, the steam of her breath floating into the air, and I nod, letting out steam of my own. We walk at the speed of her matronly boots, my watch ticking on my wrist, my desperation growing, gonnabelategonnabelate, but I ask,

“How’s Hilla?”

Because Hilla is the best neighbor in our building, she’s one year old and is always delighted to see me, and Anna Tuomi says that Hilla is at her other grandma’s house for a couple of days.

My rabbit ears hear that Anna Tuomi sounds worried, or tired, and I don’t know what to do, struggle with a burning urge to keep moving, but I adjust my steps to the rhythm of her mincy wincy old lady boots, the ice-crusted asphalt crunching under my feet, unable to think of anything to say. She’s carrying two bags, which is a good opening, and I say,

“Can I help you carry something?”

Because a good young person always helps older people, speaks only when spoken to, and when she does it’s in an even, pleasing tone, knows her place and stays in her room, but never closes the door, let alone slams it. I’m not a good young person, but my neighbor doesn’t know that and says,

“That’s very sweet of you.”

And I take one of the bags from her, which is surprisingly heavy, and she says it’s full of newspapers. She’s bringing them to the Paradise Lily, because the flowers are selling so fast that there isn’t enough paper to wrap them in and she promised to bring as much from home as she could get her hands on.

I peek into the bag. Copies of Kansan Uutiset, the title in big letters across the brow of each. Right. Linnea‘s going to be thrilled to wrap her fancy bouquets in these socialist rags. Wasted work, perhaps, but there’s no need for me to give an opinion about it because a good young person never judges the decisions of those older and wiser than herself and doesn’t shoot her mouth off all the time about whatever’s in her head.

I shut my mouth and my head, my shoes scrunching, already at the corner of the market square now, and glance at the clock on the town hall. Not yet seven, so it seems old lady steps are quick enough. I’ll give my life over to Anna Tuomi. Kansan Uutiset. The masthead flutters from the bag Anna Tuomi is carrying, and as we cross the square from corner to corner on the hypotenuse, like a school geometry problem, the short sides of the triangles disappearing into December dark and swirling, deep-frozen snow, the newsstand granny wrapped in a thousand shawls is opening her stall at the corner of the town hall. Maybe I’ll become a newsgirl, maybe when the shawl granny keels over from the cold I’ll take over the newsstand. On Saturdays Dad and I used to buy a paper there, and a pasty from the market, the news granny always bristly but chatty. Surely I could do that, maybe put a heater in the stall. Dad used to read the non-socialist papers on Saturdays, too, said we needed to know. But there is no we anymore, just my mother and me. And Ethel, don’t forget.

Anna Tuomi’s husband Lassi is a communist, everybody knows that. Why is that something people know, as if he had a big mark on his face, or a sixth finger? He’s on a trip to Leningrad, and there’s nothing remarkable in that. But the fact that my boss Linnea Juurinen’s husband Santeri, the summer uncle of my childhood, went with him is so electrifying, such a wrong piece in the mosaic of the first days of Christmas, that not a word is said about it.

We mince wince mince our way to the street opposite, where a plump white sign says Flowers and I carry the Kansan Uutisets across the street, as does Anna Tuomi, in quite the triumphal procession, breaking free of the hypotenuse on this morning that’s one long escape and walking through the arch into the small courtyard, where the light in the corner is out again and there isn’t even the glow of snowdrifts in the dark because there aren’t any snowdrifts, just the light from the tip of the crescent moon peeking above the black rooftop. And I think of scissors and construction paper, of the little school I used to go to where we sang and read and made things from paper and I thought that what I learned there would be enough, but it wasn’t. I was just popping in for those lined-paper days only to turn around and leave again, to go where the rules of geometry don’t hold and wake up suddenly in my life, walking out of the dream of those airless classrooms into courtyards and stairways and windy streets.

I open the door for Anna Tuomi and we step into the back room of the Paradise Lily. A dense green fragrance immediately surrounds us, the warmth of movement and moisture. Linnea looks at us over her spectacles. She’s very nearly seventy, wearing her striped work coat, always the striped one. She’s gone in her Bedford to get some moss from the storehouse and has already put it out to thaw. I went with her last autumn to gather the moss in the woods. My nose is on alert and my bunnity bunnity ears think she’s angry, I don’t know why—what can I have done, thup thup, I just got here—but she says “Good morning” and “Come in, you two.”

And I can’t find any derision in her words, no hidden, soul-sinking cut, no matter how I try, and although my eyes dart at her several times as I change my shoes and tidy my horrible mop of hair, there is no sign of threat, no hint that the scene could rapidly turn dangerous. So I settle into the day and start to adjust myself to this other group of people—though it never quite works, I’m a triangle when I should slip into soft, cell-like shapes, but I do my best—and Linnea says that I should have a glass of tea with her and Anna while they plan and go through the tasks of the day, and I sit down like a girl struck by mercy and take the offered tea and drink it quietly while they talk about everything that needs to be seen to, needs to be put together and delivered, and soon I’ve almost forgotten completely that I’m on the lam and probably already a wanted woman. Oh, I know it, the whole time, but I’m good at living with that gnawing awareness, at walking a good long way with a stone in my shoe, for the rest of my life if need be, if I can just for now, right now, have a little bit of peace where I am.

Thup thup thup. I couldn’t get my heart to calm down that morning no matter how much I breathed and built a day out of the pieces I had to work with. There wasn’t the usual calm at the Paradise Lily, either; there was something in the air besides just the sweet reek of funeral flowers.

I carefully washed the tea glasses, dried them, and put them in the cupboard. Anna Tuomi was working quietly, folded into herself, her calm hands tucking moss around lilies of the valley arranged in their baskets. We had dug the frozen bulbs up in November and put them in a cold room to force them to bud, and now they stood leafless in their pots, green stems and white blossoms, miraculous. I stacked the newspapers on the counter and Linnea came up beside me to open the cash register.

I smoothed an open newspaper with the palm of my hand, my fingers smudged gray by the newsprint; there was a picture of the Communist MP Hertta Kuusinen taking the stage at the Kultuuritalo, wearing a space helmet on her head. I glanced at Linnea—perhaps this page wasn’t appropriate for wrapping a bouquet, thup thup. Everything made me nervous. I couldn’t calm down, kept my eyes cast downward at the page, Hertta Kuusinen in black and white, standing in front of the assembly and saying, “There is no doubt that there is among our young people Finland’s own Valentina Tereshkova. I congratulate her and all those who will one day reach for new worlds.”

Linnea stood beside me. The small, narrow shop was filled with bowls, vases, flower pots, greenery, tall lilies, small lilies of the valley, scissors, knives, birch bast, lichen, all of it stacked in strict arrangement, a place for everything and everything in its place, they always said, and as we stood there at the counter and Linnea read the newspaper over my shoulder I thought that the Paradise Lily was just like a space capsule ought to be, or a sailing ship on the high seas—everything had to be organized or you might go tumbling through space, out of control, or be shipwrecked and sink to the bottom of the sea.

But it wasn’t as orderly as all that. As I stood there, Linnea was too close to me; she smelled of herbs, of lemon, and I tensed, bunnity bunnity, knew she wasn’t going to grab me, wasn’t going to yell at me even if she was unhappy with the newspapers or annoyed at me or upset about her husband going traveling on a whim, about her lonely responsibility, I knew that Santeri’s trip was the reason for the strained, difficult atmosphere, but I didn’t really know, not in the part of me that trembled in its rabbit cage.

My armpits prickled; they had learned how to crack the code of Linnea’s breathing, whether she was in a good mood or a bad mood, but I didn’t know the escape route. Such a nervous wreck, can’t handle being around people. The faint herbal scent radiated from Linnea’s coat, her hand resting flower-stained on the edge of the counter. “Huh,” she said finally, and picked up the page in front of me, folded it, and said again, “Huh!” and took it with her into the back room.

Was that all? Or was it just a moment’s respite for my nerves before an explosion of fury?

This is how they’re writing about the new woman, not just abroad but in Helsinki, too, Linnea said, and Anna Tuomi, who was with her in the back, made a noise of agreement.

And it was left at that. Nothing more said about it, although I was interested, and their silence felt heavy, felt like the moment to speak, no little pitchers with big ears. But I wasn’t yet part of the group here; quite the opposite. They told me to take the flower arrangement to the home of the bereaved and I nodded and started getting ready to go. Bereaved. A fine word. It rang out stark and tasted of peppermint and eucalyptus, like the hard candies that old people eat. I sucked on it as I stepped out into the wind, and before I had set off, Linnea pulled my hood up over my cap and patted me on the shoulder too, and said, “Be careful, it’s slippery.” She didn’t say don’t break the flower arrangement, she said don’t break yourself.

And I set off with those words, that protection, with the word bereaved sliding around in my mouth, sucking on it, intent on it the way old people are when they’re at the theater, earnestly opening their boxes of candy and sliding the too-big sweets into their mouths. My house is a home of the bereaved, I think, the house and everything around it is eaten up with grief, full up with sadness, both of us saturated with it, my mother and I. And Ethel, she especially is fed up, with both of us; she intends to break me and destroy my mother.

And as I go down the street, half running to the home of the bereaved, to the row of low buildings that stand guard along the edge of town where the lowland abruptly changes to lake, as I rush into the sunrise, into the wind that brushes the snowless ground and the docks where the lighthearted boats of summer have disappeared, the mint and eucalyptus suddenly disappear from my mouth, just like the safe, herbal smell of Linnea’s coat that vanished into the wind when I stepped out the back door. Linnea once said to me, In the old days people put herbs between the pages of their hymnals and smelled them during the church service to keep from falling asleep. And when I asked if that was a memory from her childhood she just laughed and said No, sweet child. I grew up in Helsinki without a single herb growing at my gate, unless you count the mayweed growing up between the paving stones.

I ring the bell at the home of the bereaved. Brrriing. I wait, think my is nose running, snort the snot back in, my hands busy holding the flowers so I can’t wipe it, can’t even lower the hood of my coat, probably look like an idiot; the door opens, I curtsey and say Delivery from the Paradise Lily.

“Oh, oh,” the woman says. “Oh.”

And she starts to cry. She is one of the bereaved. If I had a church herb with me I would sniff it. The tears surprise me, I even feel a lump in my throat, but I lower my hood, search my pocket for a handkerchief, wipe my nose, shift my weight, swallow tears, and the bereaved woman says, “Wait a moment—I’ll get my purse.” And she comes back and gives me a tip. In Helsinki they call it a rickshaw, Leo told me when he got back from his trip there, the fugitive returned with that one word he’d learned—rickshaw—brought back like a souvenir.

I take off a mitten and the woman sighs a deep, trembling sigh and presses a coin into my hand. She’s not sighing over the loss of the coin, I understand that, though I understand very little about people and even what I do understand I get a little wrong. I thank her, offer my condolences, the door closes, and I go through a gate that’s bent and coming loose on one side and I walk out to the street.

I walk back to the market square with the money in my hand, the tears of the lady at the home of the bereaved walking with me, freezing on my mittens—no, that’s not tears, it’s snot—my head sweaty as I walk hard against the wind again, wishing it would decide which way to blow and not come around every corner so you can never get any shelter from it.

When I get back to the shop new jobs have arrived, baskets wrapped in Kansan Uutiset and other newspapers, wrapped in who knows what promising future of flying through space, some girl the first Finn to do something and all things possible—that’s what those flower baskets and triumphant laurels and grieving bouquets promise, but I’m a dropout, on the streets while others sit in sleepy, airless classrooms scratching pens against paper. I trek streets that run the length and breadth of city, plot coordinates, scan and study every location where life can be found, navigating the space of parks and squares, climbing echoing staircases, each step on the stairs carrying me ever higher.

And just before lunch I pass near my own house, which I would also call a home of the bereaved, would like to openly call it that, but no one knows about our grief, it’s hidden in the vault of my mouth like a too-large candy, acidic and bitterish and so large that I can’t form the words, and I walk past the house and see the gate that leads to the street and a beloved figure comes through the gate wearing a light overcoat and no hat, just a red scarf wrapped around her hair, the overcoat collar open.

My mother, looking tired. The wind stirs bits of frost from the roof, and they drift onto her scarf and the hair that escapes from beneath it.

I stop. Thup thup.

I dodge. Why couldn’t I do that small thing for her? Not even do that little. How tired she is. She’s giving her all to barely keep bread in our mouths.

To barely keep us in this town, keep us from flying away with the wind. She’s trying. But everything she tries to build Ethel tears down again. Ethel will not leave us in peace—not me, not my mother. When I did my homework, Ethel would peep in at the door and say, Well, well well!

How I pity my mother. I’d like to go to her and take her hand.

But I don’t. I don’t move. Spit collects in my mouth, words rise up . . . No. No words rise up. Just spit. I roll the lump of grief around in my mouth as my mother walks to the phone booth. I had hoped she would get it together. After all, she isn’t sick. I didn’t want to lie anymore, not even for her sake. She picks up the receiver and I watch her wait for the coin to drop into the belly of the telephone and I hope no one will answer and she’ll have to tell Ethel, Not today. Today I’m going to work. But then my heart rattles like the coin in the bowels of the phone, my dirty brass rattling heart that has passed through many hands. My mother is speaking into the heavy black receiver.

I turn away, knowing that nothing I do can change what’s going to happen, knowing that there is no hope, that Ethel will win, now and always.

And yet.

I eat the grief like shoes eat up asphalt, like fingers eat dirty coins, like the wind eats the boulders down to dust. I eat the grief on an empty stomach and it makes me lightheaded but I still keep loving and keep hoping that the fed-upness will go away, that the self-consuming will stop, that better, easier days will come.