A Nearly Normal Family(21)

“You have confidentiality, right?” she asked again. “Whatever I say, you can’t tell anyone else?”

“That depends on what you’re going to say.”

I asked her to have a seat and offered her orange juice and Ballerina cookies. Before we got to the point, we spent a few moments discussing everything and anything else: how school was going, about friends and handball, and about her dreams. Then she said she’d come about Stella.



* * *



I waited two days, and then I had to bring it up with Ulrika.

“Drugs?”

My wife just stared at me. She appeared to be waiting for me to take it back, say I was only joking.

“That’s what Amina says.”

“And why would Amina tell you something like that?”

She truly did not want to believe it.

“I suppose she’s scared,” I said.

In the days that followed, Ulrika was firing on all cylinders. She contacted the principal and the school nurse, who arranged for drug testing.

“You can’t fucking make me,” Stella said, and tried to break loose outside the clinic.

“Of course we can,” said Ulrika. “You’re not of age.”

People stared in curiosity as Stella continued her noisy protests in the waiting room. I tried to hide my face as best I could, but in the end it was all so awkward that I had to drag Stella into the lab and explain that we couldn’t wait any longer. Ulrika held Stella’s hand tight as the nurse guided the needle into her arm.

A few days later, we got word by phone. There were traces of cannabis in Stella’s blood.

“Why?” Ulrika repeated time and again. “Why?”

She paced tight circles around Stella and me at the kitchen table. Now I was the one who felt like a defense attorney.

“Because nothing ever happens,” said Stella.

This soon became her default response.

“Everything is so boring. Nothing ever happens.”

Ulrika stared at her, quaking, one hand fisted and level with her hip.

“Drugs. Stella! You were doing drugs!”

“It was just weed. I wanted to try it.”

“Try it?”

“It makes things more fun. Just like wine, for you.”

Ulrika banged her fist on the table hard enough to make our glasses jump. Stella rose and unleashed a long string of Bosnian curse words she must have picked up from Dino.

When I got in bed that night, Ulrika had turned her face to the wall.

“Honey,” I said, touching her back gently.

Her only response was a sob.

“It’s going to be okay,” I said. “We’ll fix this. Together we’ll get through this.”

She gazed at the ceiling.

“It’s my fault. I’ve been working too much.”

“It’s no one’s fault,” I said.

“We have to get help. I’ll call the teen psych clinic tomorrow.”

The psych clinic?

“What must people think of us?” I said.

One evening later that week, I spotted Amina as I was on my way home. I recognized her pink jacket with its fluffy white collar and let go of the handlebars to wave, but Amina didn’t respond to my greeting. She slowed down until she was standing still next to a large electrical box, and I realized something must be wrong.

As I approached, the shadows on her face became clearer. I hoped until the last moment that I was mistaken. Amina raised her hand to her cheek in a futile attempt to hide her plight as I braked and leaned forward over the frame of my bike.

“Oh, Amina. What happened?”

She turned her face away.

“Nothing,” she said, striding away from me. “I thought pastors had confidentiality.”



* * *



After two weeks we secured an appointment at the clinic for pediatric and adolescent psychiatry. By then we’d already had a conference at school with teachers and the principal, the counselor, the nurse, and the psychologist. I felt like the biggest parental failure in the world.

The therapist at the clinic had a handlebar mustache so long it curled at the ends. It was hard to look at anything else.

“I like to say that a teenager problem is always a family problem,” he said, bending across the low, round table and making his necklace of black beads dangle.

As soon as either Ulrika or I tried to bring up our opinions on the matter, he cut us off by raising one hand in the air.

“Now let’s not forget about Stella’s perspective. How do you feel?”

Stella stared at her feet.

“Don’t care.”

“Come on, Stella…,” Ulrika and I tried.

“Uppuppupp,” said the counselor. “She has the right to feel however she feels.”

My fingers itched. This wasn’t my little girl, sitting there with her arms crossed and a recalcitrant look on her face. This was some completely different person. I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her.

“Please, Stella,” said Ulrika.

My tone of voice was always harsher.

“Stella!”

But Stella continued to mutter her way through the appointments.

“You don’t understand anyway. There’s no point. I don’t care.”