A Nearly Normal Family(107)

“Did you tell Stella what had happened?”

Amina sighed.

“I told her that Chris had kissed me. I honestly regretted it, I felt totally worthless, and then we agreed that Chris was a pig and we would never see him again.”

“Did you stick to that agreement?” the prosecutor asks.

Amina turns to look at Stella.

“No,” she says. “I didn’t.”





98


I expect it’s easiest to hang your concerns on something concrete. When you can’t find the root of the problem, when whatever is making you itch and chafe can’t be seen, it’s extremely convenient to be able to focus on something tangible.

Is that why people turn to God? A world that’s impossible to understand demands explanations one can comprehend. An image of a man, an absolute ruler.

For a long time, my and Adam’s view of the world revolved around a child who never arrived. The egg that would not be fertilized became the emblem of our stalled life, which would never transform into the life we had imagined. As the distance between us widened, I experienced a desire for spiritual closeness I didn’t recognize. It was at its worst when I had just concluded a case. It was as if a vacuum opened up inside me, a bottomless loneliness. I would sit on a plane, heading home to my family in Lund, feeling my insides come crashing down.

It’s a dreadful experience, being unable to identify with your own child. I often felt powerless and resigned about my attempts to reach Stella.

“She’s like you,” Adam said after a fight that lasted a whole evening.

“What the hell do you mean?”

It started when we learned from Stella’s teacher that she was bullying a few girls in her class. When we confronted her, Stella threw a tantrum and hurled a glass of milk at Adam. She refused to discuss the situation at school. We wanted to know how she was truly feeling, but she went berserk all over the kitchen and Adam had to pin her arms behind her back until she was hanging over the floor like a wrung-out rag of screaming and tears.

Two days later, Amina was standing in our entryway in her handball shoes and knee socks, a burgundy backpack on her shoulders. As Stella slipped away to gather what she needed for practice, Amina looked at me with a grave expression that made her seem much older.

“It’s really not Stella’s fault,” she said.

I looked at her, puzzled.

“What’s going on at school, I mean. They provoke Stella. They know exactly what to say to get her to flip out. Then they tattle to the teacher.”

A mountain of shame rose in my chest.

“It’s the other girls who are the mean ones,” Amina said.

Her brown eyes looked almost black in the dim light of the entryway.

I thought of what Adam had said. She’s like you.



* * *



The summer Stella would turn fourteen, we traveled to a handball tournament in Denmark. The girls and the coaches had lodgings in a school, while Alexandra and I shared a hotel room.

One evening we went out to a smoky bar and people bought drinks for us. Alexandra got way too drunk and threw up outside the hotel. After I’d forced a shower on her, she lay down on a chaise in the hotel room and cried over how worthless her life was. She wailed about Dino, who only cared about handball and refused to lift a finger at home. But she also complained about Amina, who never had time for anything besides schoolwork and her goddamn handball practice. I didn’t say anything, of course, but a thorny irritation began to grow inside me. I personally never had the privilege of feeling that my parents were completely satisfied with me. There was always an even higher grade, someone else who did better, someone smarter and more attractive.

A few weeks later, on a sunny morning, Amina came to our house. For once I was managing to relax—I was in the yard with a coffee and a novel.

“Stella’s not home,” I explained. “She went to Landskrona. I thought you were going too.”

Amina didn’t respond. She stood there in her shorts and tank top, under the cherry tree, gazing at me with a grim expression.

“Is something wrong?” I asked, putting down my book.

She gestured as if to say she wasn’t quite sure.

“Do you have a minute?” she asked.

“Of course!”

Once I’d brought out soda and a cinnamon roll, she began to appear more comfortable.

“I feel like the worst friend in the world right now.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

She squinted across the yard and told me in a restrained voice that she had put this off until the last moment. She really didn’t want to be a bad friend, but fear had taken over. She was worried about Stella.

“Those guys she’s with in Landskrona. They’re not good people. They get up to a bunch of bad stuff. Smoking and drinking.”

“Alcohol? You’re only fourteen.”

“I know.”

“I’m glad you told me, Amina.”

She bent forward.

“You promise not to say anything to Stella, right? If she finds out I … You have to promise me!”

I promised.

I wasn’t really thinking about Stella very much at that moment, however strange that may sound. I was mostly thinking of Amina. I admired her courage, her natural instinct to do the right thing.