During my first winter in Helsinki, when I realized that the snowsuit I’d purchased for Oleh would remain untouched on the shelf, I considered buying sleeping pills on the street. But I didn’t dare. I knew I would take all the pills at once, greedily, like sugar wafers when I was a child. At night I lay awake with the phone next to me, hoping it would ring. Either you or my mother should have sensed my distress. Either you or my mother should have known to call me at that moment when I needed you most, and I was disappointed when you didn’t. The phone lay mute like a stone at the bottom of the sea. I hated it. I couldn’t talk about the situation with anyone. I couldn’t tell a soul because of the strange twilight state I was living in, where one day what had happened felt real and the next it didn’t.
I don’t know how I would have survived if the neighbor who rang my doorbell in the middle of the night hadn’t unwittingly intervened. The noise startled me, and I staggered into the entryway not daring to open the door. At that particular moment, I wasn’t afraid that the predators tracking me had finally caught the scent. I was afraid of something else: the shadows lurking under my bed, the forms flicking just out of sight, the lure of the stairwell. I was sure that the only thing waiting outside would be a railing whispering my name.
The mail slot rattled. I recognized my neighbor’s voice.
“Is everything okay in there?”
Nothing was okay, but why was my neighbor asking? My twilit mind assumed that she must have been woken by the baby’s crying, and I opened the door. As the startled neighbor looked me up and down in my bathrobe, I began thinking of child protection, the police, social services, and all the other officials who could take Olezhko away from me. I forced a smile.
“Just a little crying,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
“But if you need any help…”
The woman sucked in the end of the sentence with an intake of breath, as Finns do, especially women. So the acute danger had passed. Finns didn’t talk that way if they intended to take action. I gave the widest smile I could and wished her good night. After getting rid of the neighbor, I paced in the entryway for a moment, wondering what to do. The woman would return if she heard any bawling or screaming again. Or her husband would. They would talk about me—maybe they had already done so—and they would call social services. My identity would be discovered. Even more frightening was the thought of losing Olezhko.
I couldn’t delay anymore.
With trembling fingers, I typed out a message to my mother. With a whooshing sound, it flew off to the secret phone I had left for her, which Ivan had hidden in my mother’s chest of drawers under my father’s funeral photos. I hadn’t exchanged a single word with my mother since my escape. We had parted on bad terms. That was why I doubted she’d respond, and the ring tone surprised me. I expected to get an earful, but my mother’s voice was as soft and warm as milk. That gave me the courage to tell her about Olezhko, and as soon as I had, our past arguments were forgotten. Mom promised to begin making travel arrangements in the morning. That immediately brought her closer. Soon she would be here, and everything would work out, or at least part of it, at least a small part of it. I didn’t want to end our conversation, afraid that its calming effect would also stop. So I continued asking for news, surprised at how calmly I took it when my mother told me that you had come to visit them after my escape. I hadn’t talked about you with anyone for ages, and I thought the crying would overwhelm me again. However, Mom made everything sound ordinary, as if we were discussing whether there should be more dill in the cucumber salad. As if my mother and I chatted every day about Olezhko and you. As if it was normal that I was living under an assumed name in Helsinki. As if your visit to my mother’s house had been like any potential son-in-law dropping in on his future family. It wasn’t, though. Mom and I were just playing along. Mom claimed that, despite the situation, your behavior had been polite, your search superficial, and that made me feel like you were also pretending with us in this strange game. Apparently, you had come to the countryside alone, apologizing for the disturbance as you asked whether my mother knew what I’d done. Mom had shaken her head, as had my aunt. After pausing briefly, you told them what had happened, searched the house, and checked their phones. Finally, you left your number and told them to be in touch if I gave any sign that I was still alive. I didn’t know whether Mom was telling me an embellished version or the truth. I wanted to believe the latter.
“Do you think he knows everything?” I asked.
“Everything everything? Hard to say.”
I would have liked to ask more, to quiz her about whether you’d seemed more angry or disappointed, whether you were hurt or vindictive, or whether it looked like I had left only a paper cut on your heart that no one would ever notice and you would recover from without any trouble despite the aching. My throat began to constrict, so I decided to change the subject and return to travel arrangements.
“Does Auntie know about the situation?”
“She knows enough. She can help me invent an excuse for my trip. Otherwise the people in the village will wonder.”
“What if Auntie says that you’re traveling to Tallinn to watch your brother’s grandchildren?”
“That’s a good explanation. No one would think twice about me being gone,” she said. “Not that anyone is watching us anymore.”
“Who was watching you?” I asked, startled.
“It lasted a few months. There was this expensive black SUV parked outside all day, every day.”
My mother ended the discussion by asking whether I was remembering to take my vitamins and rest enough, and I found myself saying yes to everything.
Only after Mother arrived did I realize that I must not have told her something important, because she brought gifts—children’s clothing—and I couldn’t immediately remember what I had forgotten to report. But she instantly realized what was going on, and that night I fell asleep in her arms, content that she was with me even though I’d only asked her here because I couldn’t trust myself. Two months had passed since I’d lost my reason for building a life in Finland. One day, I’d been observing local mothers as I cleaned their homes, inspecting their pantries and changing tables, trying to understand their custom of putting their babies to sleep outside in the freezing cold. Everything had been good. But in the morning, everything was different. I found blood on the sheets. The pain didn’t come until later.
But this wasn’t the right moment to reminisce about Oleh. I had new reasons to save my life in Helsinki. I wasn’t on my way to the airport or the harbor because I wanted to see the dog park boy grow up. I had nothing else left. I wouldn’t let Daria take that away from me.