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The coffeehouse is busy with people enjoying their Frappuccinos and green herb teas. Asking my ex and Anna to meet with me had felt awkward, more than anything else. Sigmund had gladly accepted my request to have a meeting with the Child Protective Service lady. He didn’t seem too worried when he heard about the gray-clothed lady stopping by my apartment. But Sigmund doesn’t know the whole story. He’s fair and a good person, but telling him to lie would not fly. Talking with Anna and the ex needs to be a separate thing, a separate problem I need to solve on my own. And it has to happen first, before the lady comes and asks questions at Sigmund’s office.
Checking the time on my watch for the fifteenth time in the last five minutes, I wonder why the couple I wait for is so late. Neither of them, especially Anna, is the kind of person who would keep company waiting without letting them know they’d be delayed. Anna must have not saved my new phone number in her phone, or maybe they had second thoughts about meeting me. I cross my legs under the coffee table and try to look as relaxed as possible. My blue silky shirt makes me feel like I sit in the crowd half naked, and the people in the coffeehouse try their best to ignore my inappropriate choice of clothing. Wearing the stylish, classy shirt should help me feel more confident, but instead it has me swarming in my own skin.
Being nervous is understandable this time, even if I’m meeting people I already know. Meeting new people always makes me stutter and blush, which makes the first impression of me to be an insecure teenage girl. Meeting familiar people doesn’t have the same effect, unless I’m about to ask them to trick a government agency and lie to the authorities.
A woman with a baby carriage parks at a table next to me and looks around like she lost something.
“Excuse me, miss? Could you look over my baby for two seconds? He’s asleep and I will just run to the counter to get a coffee and come right back.”
The mother smiles at me and, without waiting for a response, quickly struts away from the tables. The pulse on my temple starts bouncing. With my mouth slightly open and whole body frozen, I stare at the carriage. What am I supposed to do? My left hand reaches over and grabs ahold of the carriage edge, like it’s about to fall over, or an evil baby-stealing stranger lurks around the corner, ready to snap the baby the second I let go of the baby’s safety nest.
It’s a terrible feeling, being in charge of a human life. There’s about a million things that may go wrong while the baby’s mother waits in line for her steaming cup of cappuccino. The baby could turn over onto its chubby little belly, without me noticing, and suffocate to its death. One of the town drunkies might visit the coffeehouse, eating and drinking other people’s leftovers off the tables, accidently tripping and falling on the baby carriage, crushing the tiny sleeping human with their body weight. The coffeehouse’s architect may have made a mistake with his calculations, and the roof could fall down, not giving me enough time to plunge over and protect the baby and save his life. Or even worse... the baby could wake up and start crying.
My left hand turns slightly blue; that’s how hard I hold onto the precious carriage trusted with my ungainly hands. Is this how I’d soon feel, for the rest of my life? My blackouts and panic attacks start to feel like child’s play. What’s the worst thing those things could do? They could make me lose my mind, or commit suicide. But neither depression nor panic attacks could ever put an innocent life at risk.
“Thank you so much. I brought you a chocolate chip cookie for your troubles.”
The baby’s mother looks at my pale face, and her eyes glance over to my left hand, still holding onto the carriage with a death grip.
“Miss, you can let go now. I’ll just move him over here next to me,” the woman says and laughs a little. Staring at my left hand, I hope that my fingers soon receive the message to let go. “You’re not comfortable with babies, are you? I’m so sorry to have assumed you were. Thanks again for watching over him.”
“No... no problem. Glad to help,” I reply, slowly removing my left hand from the carriage, one finger at a time. The mother laughs happily and gently pushes the carriage, moving it to the other side of her table.
“It’s okay, miss. Babies are not for everybody.”
Gasping for air, I quickly pull my old Nokia out of my coat pocket and pretend to answer an incoming phone call.
“Hi. No, it’s not a bad time. Tell me what happened,” I say and keep the mute phone on my ear, pretending to listen to an imaginary friend’s long story. Staring at a painting of two young children crossing a rickety bridge, I try to keep the Ujjayi breathing as silent as possible. The yoga breathing makes a funny windpipe sound when done correctly. Hoping I wouldn’t seem any more like the town crazy, I keep the volume to a minimum, but am able to calm my wildly beating heart.
“So sorry we are late. I guess we now share your car battery curse. Henri had to stop a truck driver to come and jumpstart our car. The BMW died at a highway rest stop of all places!” Anna’s voice sounds like it’s coming from underwater. I snap out of my Ujjayi bubble and stare at Anna’s strikingly beautiful blue eyes.
“Who’s Henri?” I ask, my brain fried with pictures of dying babies, collapsing bridges and third chakras. It seems impossible to snap out of my extremely frightening fantasy world. Anna laughs a little, stares at me, and tries to figure out if I’ve simply made a terribly bad joke, or if I was going through a sudden stroke. Like an answer to my unexpected question, my ex, Henri, appears in the coffeehouse’s front door and looks around, trying to find familiar faces. Anna waves at him, and as an answer he points his leather wallet at the coffee pot.
“You want me to do what?” Henri’s voice is annoyed and slightly amused. I have just finished telling Anna and him everything that’s been going on, from the day my father died to the day Child Protective Services paid me a visit at my bleach-scented apartment.
“I know it’s a lot to ask, Henri—”
“A lot to ask? Asking for a kidney donation is a lot to ask. Lying to a government agent is asking me to volunteer for jail time!”
Anna holds her coffee cup between her palms and concentrates on its empty bottom. Her beautiful face frowns as she remains deep in thought. She hasn’t said a word during my long story filled with infidelity, getting fired and struggling through psychotherapy. Finally, Anna sighs and looks at her boyfriend pleadingly.
“Henri, at least consider this. It wouldn’t change anything for us. It would change everything for her,” Anna says calmly.
The expression on Henri’s face changes, and he looks like we have both just slapped him around the ears.
“Oh my fucking god! You agree with this lunatic?”
Now it’s my turn to feel like I have taken a punch in the face. For years my biggest fear has been to lose my mind. To learn that I am schizophrenic. A lunatic. Henri’s words get my heart racing, and as an automatic reflex, the windpipe sound appears in my throat. It goes without saying that the Ujjayi breathing makes me seem even more like an insane person, but the alternative is to attack Henri in the middle of a crowded coffeehouse, most likely strangling him to death. I wonder if the prison allows mothers bringing unborn babies in, if the mother is sentenced for life.
“And what now? You’re pretending to be a wind tunnel? A choo choo train?” Henri scoffs and looks at Anna. “Anna, you can’t seriously think it’s a great idea for someone like her to have a child. She obviously has issues. I mean, she’s seeing a shrink, for fuck’s sake!”
“Henri,” Anna says, and her body becomes alert, like she can sense Henri is about to be strangled to death.
“Don’t Henri me, Anna. Fuck this shit. I’m out of here,” he says, and tosses the BMW keys on the coffee table. The chair makes a screeching sound when he jumps up and storms out of the coffeeshop. The mother with the baby, the one I earlier protected with my life, stares in our direction and gives us a judgmental look. Henri’s yelling has woken up the baby and he is crying in his carriage. The crowded coffeehouse seems too silent, and I realize people are desperately trying not to stare at us. Some are whispering and peeking in our general direction, turning their eyes away immediately when I look back at them. Henri’s temper tantrum doesn’t seem to have shaken Anna a bit. She calmly places the empty coffee cup to her lips, and tilting her head back, lets the last few drops of cold cappuccino land on her tongue.
“Well, I’m getting a refill. Do you want one?”
Harri has demanded to come with me to Sigmund’s office. We park my car in my usual spot, about a five-minute walk away from the therapy center. The sun makes Harri strip off his black hoodie and we walk slow, enjoying the summer warmth on our pale skin.
“Fuck Henri. Is the government bitch asking for an I.D.? I’m a great actor, you know! I can play a video-gaming selfish jackass for half an hour with ease!” Harri says.
I smile at my friend and shrug my shoulders.
“Maybe we could be prison buddies, you and I?” I say jokingly.
“We’d fucking run the place. We could start a badass gang called “Devine Bitches” or “HC Ladies.”
“Start a business selling cigarettes Jan would smuggle in for us.”
“I’d go to the gym every freaking morning. I’d be ripped by the time we got out,” Harri says, and doesn’t even try to hide the spark in his eyes when he imagines his new, bodybuilder-like body.
“No no, you forgot, I’m serving life. I strangled Henri to death.”
“Ah, shit. My fraud sentence will end way before your murdering ass is out. But hey, you know what they say... sixty-eight percent of prisoners get arrested within three years after their release. I’ll be back in no time.”
We open the front door to Sigmund’s office and I see a familiar gray suit jacket hanging from the waiting room coat rack. The gray lady has already arrived. I quickly wonder if Sigmund would serve us tea again this time.
“That fucking fish tank makes me want to pee,” Harri says and gives the aquarium a loathing look. I chuckle at my pissed-off friend, and for a second, I forget to be nervous about meeting up with the authorities. Sigmund’s door is shut and I’m unsure if I’m supposed to knock on the door or sit in the waiting room and wait. This problem of hovering between the office door and the sinking waiting room couch seems to have become a regular problem of mine.
“The toilet is down the hall. The couch is here. Your call, chuckle nuts.”
Harri gives me a halfhearted smirk but sits down next to me on the big brown leather couch. His left foot taps on the wooden floor and I stare at the fish.
“I fucking hate fish,” Harri mumbles.
Sigmund’s office door opens, startling both of us. A familiar bald head peeks into the waiting room but instead of inviting me in, Sigmund takes the few steps that separate us and stretches his long hand toward Harri.
“You must be Harri. Nice to finally meet you.”
“He should be your next patient, nice and full of issues,” I say, but both men ignore my comment. They shake hands and Harri’s face softens as he forgets the fish and their tank for a moment. I climb up off the couch, straightening my slightly saggy green dress Harri picked out for me at the local flea market. The leather shoes with low heels belong to my mother. I have gone over to her house to borrow some accessories two nights ago. We chatted for a few minutes until my mother got tired and needed to get back to her never-ending rest. At least she’s eating better, and the caretaker said she has started to read a novel that one of the nice neighbors had brought over one morning. It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s a good sign my mother is taking the first steps to fight her depression and show interest toward life again.
“Nice to see you again, miss,” the gray lady says and smiles at me. We shake hands and I take a seat next to Sigmund. This new seating order feels so funny, it confuses my nervous brain. I have always sat opposite to Sigmund, never by his side. Maybe the sneaky old therapist knew I’d be nervous and wanted to show me that we belonged to the same team? That he’s on my side?
“Okay, let’s begin. I only have a few questions and they are all addressed to you, Mister Ecklund.”
Hearing Sigmund’s last name changes the atmosphere from slightly nervous to extremely formal and nerve-racking in a split second. My throat itches, making me swallow loudly, so I wouldn’t start my lunatic breathing in the middle of our meeting, which is set to evaluate the state of my mental health.
“Is your patient showing signs of violence, physical or mental?” the gray lady begins reading the form on her lap. I look at Sigmund, who calmly stares back at the lady. He looks so relaxed one might think he has taken something stronger than tea before our arrival.
“No, ma’am.”
Sigmund is loyal to his short answers, and I’m thankful that I’m allowed to remain quiet. This setting reminds me of the time I got myself in trouble at pre-school, trying to defend a girl from her bullies, ending up punching one of the boys in the nose. The principal called my father and demanded him to scold me at home. My dad defended me over the phone and got into a huge argument with the principal. The phone call ended with my dad hanging up on him. I had been eavesdropping from the living room doorway, and as my dad walked by, he gently tousled my fine blonde curls, giving me an assuring smile. How I wished Dad were here today, defending me, telling the gray lady that his daughter is not insane, maybe just a bit “special.”
“Is she a danger to herself, physically or mentally?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Has she participated in all of the psychotherapy sessions that were prescribed by the county’s municipal doctor?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Has your patient ever made a statement of harming her unborn child, or her own body during the pregnancy?”
My whole face flushes bright red, and I feel a warm sensation in my underpants as I wet myself a little. How did the lady know about my comment? The one where I wanted to cut myself open and remove the uninvited guest from my uterus? It had been a joke, at least half a joke. Sigmund must know this.
“I wouldn’t call it a statement, ma’am. My patient has a dark sense of humor. She would make an excellent author, ma’am.”
Sigmund trying to lighten up the conversation makes my heart bounce out of my chest. Sigmund’s dodging the lady’s unexpected question, determined not to lie, but trying to make the truth sound less harmful than it is. The gray lady looks up from her papers, glances at me and then settles her friendly eyes back on Sigmund.
“What was the statement or joke, Mister Ecklund?”
Sigmund takes off his glasses and rubs the spot between his closed eyes. He must get terrible headaches after listening to people whine and cry about their sad little lives day after day.
Suddenly I feel a strong urge to jump up and hug my old, patient therapist. Sigmund has never judged me, never given up on me, although I’ve been snarky, rude and disrespectful when the two of us started working together.
He takes a deep breath, looks at the gray lady and then his eyes find mine. He gives me a sad smile before replying.
“Something about cutting herself open and removing the fetus, ma’am.”
“Get off that shelf, Nina! And no running inside the store!”
The supermarket is full of wildly running and screaming kids and their exhausted parents. Four in the afternoon on a Friday must be the worst time to get the grocery shopping done. This should not be new information to me; I had worked in this joint for over a year.
“Put that candy back, Nina! No! We’re not buying that!”
Nina’s screaming hurts my ears, and I toss my summer coat’s hood on to muffle some of the ear-ripping sound. The grocery cart makes a screeching sound when I come to a full stop in front of a little girl, wildly kicking and screaming, lying on the market floor. I nearly crushed Nina’s wildly kicking and bouncing body with my cart. She never notices me, but keeps wiggling in the middle of the candy aisle.
“Now look what you’ve done. Nina, you’re blocking the way! Get up!”
The more Nina’s mother yells at the girl, the louder her temper tantrum seems to get. The little girl’s face is red from screaming, and she holds onto a candy bar that has a lion’s face on its side.
“Get up and put the candy back!”
Nina starts to lose her voice, but even her raspy, most likely painful, throat is not enough for her to obey her mother’s orders. The mother looks desperate, sweat forming on her forehead. She looks over at me and silently forms the words “I am so sorry.”
The aisleway is now blocked with huffing and scoffing people lined behind them, ready with their groceries, trying to get to the cashier lines.
“Kids these days. That’s what happens when they have no rules whatsoever. Bad parenting makes shitty children,” an old lady mumbles to her husband who doesn’t bother replying to his wife. Her mumbling is loud enough for Nina’s mother to hear, and her cheeks flush bright red. Walking over to her child she rips her off the floor, begging her to get up. Nina fights back and rolls on the floor to lie sideways, making it impossible for anyone to pass her on the long and narrow candy aisle.
I put my cart aside and take a few steps over to Nina and her mother. Without saying a word, I land on all fours, and then lie on my back next to the screaming child and start kicking.
I scream as long as my cigarette-ruined lungs can bear. The whole store goes silent, including the five-year-old next to me.
They all stare at me. Nina quickly gets up off the floor, like it’s suddenly burning her buttocks. The kid tosses the lion candy bar at me, runs to her mother and hides behind her back. I lie on the floor a little longer, but place my body in a way people can pass me and finally continue their journey to the cashiers, who all stare in our general direction. Nina’s mother walks over to me and offers her hand. I grab the helping hand and get up from the sandy and slightly muddy floor—it rained earlier in the afternoon.
“Thank you so much... I... you....” the mother struggles for words.
“No problem. People tell me I act like a five-year-old all the time, so might as well put my talent to good use,” I joke and wipe off most of the sand from my old Levi jeans.
“You will make a great mother,” Nina’s mother says and smiles at me.
The comment startles me and freezes my brain. How did she know? Am I showing? When I finally snap out of my surprise, Nina and her mother already walk toward the cashier, hand in hand, without candy bars or tears.
“You can keep that candy bar as a thank you.” The voice belongs to my previous supervisor, Jake, who has apparently seen the whole episode of temper tantrums. He looks at me with an amused expression on his face, grinning and showing his cigarette-stained teeth.
“That’s okay, Jake. I try to eat healthy these days. Chocolate is not on the list.”
Jake’s eyeballing my shopping cart filled with vegetables, fruit, a big stack of ground beef and ten pouches of French onion soup.
“Good for you! You look better. I mean, you look healthy and well. It’s like you’re glowing.”
“Ah, well, don’t know about that,” I mumble and look away from Jake’s burning gaze.
“Good to see you,” Jake says and walks away from me, moving backward and still grinning.
“Oh, yeah, and by the way,” Jake yells from a distance, “we have a part-time position open at the moment. Let me know if you’re interested!”
“They’ll send you a notification? A notification?” Harri’s face turns red and Jan softly lands his hand on his furious boyfriend. The three of us sit on old wooden oat barrels in the barn grain room. The phone call I just received was from Child Protective Services, telling me that they have submitted my “case” and would let me know their decision by mail in a week or two.
“Calm down, Harri. Let her talk,” Jan says.
Harri gives him the hairy eye but doesn’t continue ranting. He jumps down from the barrel and walks in circles.
“What exactly are we looking at here? They will let you know if you’re allowed to give birth to your own baby? I don’t quite follow,” Jan continues, his eyes filled with sympathy. He sincerely tries to understand my situation.
“Apparently, they can take the baby away from me if they find me to be unfit as a mother.”
Harri stops in the middle of his circle, looks at us with anger in his eyes, opens his mouth but no words come out. He shuts his mouth and opens it again, looking like a dying fish taking its last breath. Because words have obviously failed him for good, he shuts his mouth one more time and continues furiously fast walking around the small grain room.
“So you would give birth and someone from the Service would come and collect the baby from the hospital?” Jan says, now looking purely apologetic because of his very personal and private questions.
“Yes, sir. They can’t force me to have an abortion, but they can deny me the right to be my child’s legal guardian.”
Harri storms out of the grain room as soon as I mention the word abortion. Jan jumps off his grain barrel and is about to follow Harri to the barnyard.
“Let him be, Jan. He just needs to smoke a few and cool down.”
“Has he always been this dramatic?” Jan asks and a hint of humor returns into his worried eyes.
“Sir, yes, sir. Since the day he was born. His mother once told me they had the hardest time finding a babysitter for Harri. Most of the sitters would quit after a day or two, and the rest Harri would systematically smoke out with his pranks and temper tantrums.”
“Oh my god! I can’t even imagine dealing with a ten-year-old Harri!” Jan laughs and his eyes fill with happy tears when he continues hysterically to howl and shriek.
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it! Did you know his mother had to put him in a dog harness so she could keep up with him when they went grocery shopping?”
Jan’s hysteric laughter makes me giggle, and soon I howl along, holding onto my stomach that has started to ache, first because of the nerve-racking phone call, and now because of my friend’s hysteria attack. When’s the last time I laughed so hard my eyes filled with tears?
We pack all of Jan’s riding gear in my Opel’s trunk, and I enter Jan’s home address on my GPS. There’s nothing worse in this world than people giving me directions while I drive. Nothing really gets me going more than “Oh, you were supposed to take that exit!” or “Go west and take the third road on your left and continue south.” I haven’t driven Jan home before, and don’t want to take the risk of ruining our fairly new friendship. Harri climbs into the back seat and seems to be in a better mood. Jan sits next to me and we slowly drive out of the barnyard.
“Do you like working here, Jan?” I ask, making Harri perk up in the back seat. He’s always eager to learn more details about his newish boyfriend.
“Funny you should ask. The old man, Mike, who owns the facility called me today, asking if I wanted to buy it!”
“No shit? And are you going to?”
“I’m thinking about it. After five years of running the place, I pretty much know everything there is to know. And I have the down payment saved up. I was going to buy a condo from the harbor with it.”
“Is the job something you see yourself doing for rest of your life? Or do you hate it?”
Jan laughs at my question.
“Why would anyone stay at their job for five years if they hated it?” he asks, amused.
“For money, Jan. It’s nice to eat every once and awhile. I stayed in my bread stacking job at the supermarket for a year, hating every second of it,” I say. “Oh, and guess what, Harri? Jake offered me my old job back today!” I laugh a little.
“Fuck Jake. I’ll hire you myself before I let you go and work for that knob again,” Harri says with annoyance in his voice. He’s right. Jake had let me go for the wrong reasons, and during a time when I desperately needed to work and stay in a routine. My drinking had gotten way out of hand after I was let go.
“Hire me to do what, Harri? Faint whenever I see you take blood samples from old ladies?”
Harri worked at the town hospital as the head laboratory nurse.
“Good point, Ding Dong. There’s not much you can do, really. Have you ever thought of—”
“Say ‘becoming a hairdresser’ and I will drive this car into a tree,” I say, remembering my father’s suggestion when I couldn’t decide which school I’d apply to. There’s nothing wrong with being a hairdresser. It just simply does not fit my personality or interests in any way. But it didn’t stop my dad—and half of his relatives—from being sure it was my true calling in life.
“You are pretty good with horses, though,” Jan says.
“I can’t ride as well as your fine ass, but I guess I’m okay handling them,” I reply.
“And you love spending time at the barn?” Jan continues.
“Sure do. I could easily move into one of your empty stalls and live there for the rest of my life, if I was allowed to,” I say, and laugh a little.
“Good. Because if I’m going to buy this facility, I’ll need to hire a live-in barn manager.”
