Mari

TINKA HAS GOT fake IDs from somewhere. According to the card, Mari is twenty-one years old. Tinka is twenty-two.

They start getting ready for graduation night at five, in Mari’s room. Tinka is putting streaks in her hair and looking at a map of Helsinki while the color takes hold, planning their route: Iso Roobertinkatu, Fredrikinkatu, Uudenmaankatu, Erottaja, Kamppi.

“It’d be best to pick up some men right away so they can pay for us the rest of the night,” Tinka muses. “Maybe suck them off in the bathroom, so they’ll be obliged to pay.”

“No,” Mari says. “My mom can give us some money. I, for one, am not gonna suck anybody off.”

Tinka looks at Mari from under her hair-color foils, amused. “Listen, that’s how things work in the real world,” she says, doodling hearts on the map with a pink felt pen. “A girl has to be ready to make sacrifices.”

“No,” Mari answers, her voice drawing a decisive line. “I want to make my own rules.”

Tinka’s expression changes from knowing to pitying. Mari knows what that look means. Big sister instructing the ignorant child.

“Oh, you,” Tinka says, puckering up her mouth. “You’ll be Miss Virgin for the rest of your life, that way.” She laughs and colors the nail on her left big toe pink.

Mari looks at Tinka in confusion and realizes she never bought her story of wild sex in the rec room, not for a minute.

“But I …” Mari stammers, trying to get control of the situation.

“Oh, honey — did you think I believed that? I saw that the two of you were in there together for about five minutes. But we can fix that tonight. Even for you!”

Mari looks at the floor, embarrassed. Stupid. A pitiful, inexperienced little girl. And that’s when she decides: it’s going to happen tonight.

Tinka gets up and goes into the bathroom to rinse the dye out of her hair. Mari steps in front of the mirror, looks at her reflection, and considers a plan of action. Virginity, and how to escape it. There are two things that worry her: kissing and blow jobs. Her kissing skills were judged to be negligible as early as seventh grade: a boy from the class above her, a school party, a first kiss in the fluorescent reality of the girls’ toilet. The kiss — her tongue groping clumsily along a row of teeth — then a peevish suggestion: “Don’t poke with your tongue like that, it makes me feel like I’m gonna puke.” Ever since then Mari has had the gnawing conviction that she is completely inept at matters involving the tongue. This certainty hangs over her head like a flashing neon sign: Cow tongue. Suffocatrix. This certainty stands between her and her becoming a woman. And now she’s certain of something else: she doesn’t know how to suck a man off like a woman should.

“I wish I had a drink already,” Tinka says impatiently. “Is there anything in the liquor cabinet here?”

“Yeah, but I’ve never taken anything out of it. I know my mom would notice.”

“She won’t notice,” Tinka says, tossing her head. “Take something that’s clear and replace it with water.”

Tinka hops to her feet and is already out the door. Mari follows behind her, obedient. When they get to the living room, Tinka heads for the glass-doored cabinet.

“What should we have?” she says in a high, excited voice as she opens it.

Mari glances at the door. Her mother might come in at any moment. Tinka ignores her warnings, opening bottles and smelling their contents. She takes a big swig from a bottle of vodka. The taste makes her nose wrinkle. “Ugh. Awful. But it’ll do.” She takes out her pink water bottle and fills it up. Vodka spills on the table next to Mari’s confirmation portrait. Tinka bends over and licks it up.

“Hurry up,” Mari urges. “My mom’ll kill me if she —”

“Calm down. We’re fine — and your mom is quite easy to get around. I’ve chatted to her. She likes me.”

“Huh? When did you talk to her?”

“On the phone. I called and she answered. I said I was your ‘girlfriend’. I know how adults think. You have to talk to them a certain way. Believe me, your mom likes me.”

“Uh, I’m sure she does.”

They still have to sneak into the kitchen and fill the vodka bottle with water to cover their tracks. Tinka goes first, holding the bottle, and Mari tiptoes behind her. Tinka’s already in the kitchen when Mari hears the key turning in the front door. Mom.

“What are you standing there for?” her mother asks in surprise, putting her shopping bags down on the floor.

“I’m not, I mean …”

Mari can hear Tinka clattering in the kitchen and realizes that Tinka hasn’t heard her mother come in. She can picture the chain of events if her mother sees the bottle: first a deep silence, then a sit-down at the table, more deep silence, heavy, accusing. An interrogation and a lecture on alcohol. And polite disapproval directed at Tinka, the instigator, the little pusher who lured Mari into ruination.

Mari’s mother takes off her shoes and picks up her shopping. Mari panics. She can’t let her mother go into the kitchen.

“What’s the matter?” her mother asks. “Don’t just stand there. How about some tea?” She walks past her and opens the kitchen door, in spite of Mari’s vague attempt to stop her.

Mari lets out a yelp at the desperate moment of discovery — her mother opens the door and stands on the threshold looking at Tinka. But then Mari sees that the bottle’s gone, that Tinka is smiling a triumphant, sunny smile, self-assured, like she owns the world, with the pink water bottle full of vodka in her hand.

“Oh!” Mari’s mother says, surprised. “Are you Tinka?”

“Yeah. Hi,” Tinka says, shaking hands politely.

Mari watches, mesmerized, as Tinka displays her mastery of yet another game. Her mother is sold immediately.

“It’s nice that Mari’s got a new friend. You’re a very nice girl, Tinka,” she says, putting the teakettle on the stove. Tinka winks at Mari over her mother’s shoulder and, to Mari’s horror, takes a swallow from her water bottle.

As they have tea, Tinka wraps Mari’s mother around her little finger, smiling and talking about her plans for the future. Mari’s mom nods approvingly. Tinka takes occasional sips of vodka from the plastic bottle and says with clear eyes that girls have to make sure they stay hydrated.

“It’s good for your hair and skin,” she says, flashing Mari a conspiratorial grin. Mari looks down at the table, silently munching the scones her mother bought and slurping her tea.

Result of this tea party: no catastrophe, no alcohol lecture, no arrests. Instead, her mother hands her forty euros with a smile.

“You can spend it at McDonald’s or something,” she says happily.

“Yeah. We’re going to a movie first, then to Mickey D’s,” Tinka says, beaming.

Her expression doesn’t falter.

AT THE BUS STOP, Tinka stands so close to Mari that she can feel the damp warmth of her breath. Even now, with the vodka fumes, Tinka smells like roses and fall apples as she takes a tube of strawberry lip gloss out of her backpack and glosses her lips.

“Now I’m gonna teach you how to sweep a man off his feet with a kiss,” she whispers, pressing up against Mari.

“What? What are you doing?”

Tinka smiles and takes Mari’s face between her hands. Her eyes turn serious; she strokes Mari’s face with gentle fingers. Mari feels her heart thudding, striking at emptiness.

“You’re so pretty,” Tinka whispers. “Don’t let anybody tell you you’re not.”

Mari tries to smile, but the smile gets stuck somewhere in the back of her throat. The realization that something new is happening has the smile in its grip and won’t let it go. Mari looks at Tinka and tries to figure out just what that something is. Tinka just looks back at her, serious, not speaking. Tinka smooths her lips with her finger and then spreads the lip gloss on Mari’s lips, which are stiff from the autumn wind. Mari opens her mouth to say something but Tinka presses a finger against her lips.

“Shh,” she says, bringing her face right up to Mari’s face and just breathing there, like she’s found her place in the world.

Tinka closes her eyes, and Mari does the same.

“Nice and slow now,” Tinka whispers, and carefully touches her lips to Mari’s.

The kiss is slow, light, and soft, the kind that makes your knees weak and changes the rhythm of your breathing, the kind that makes the world more beautiful. Tinka flicks her tongue against Mari’s tongue and then presses lightly against it. It feels slippery and exciting and Mari sinks deep into the feeling of the kiss. The stiff grass crackles under their feet and the world rotates; the world has become a great spiral of sounds and colors with these two mouths in the middle of it, pressing against each other as if everything were clear since the beginning of time, as if there had never been anything else but the arch of stars in this October night sky and the never-ending swirl of this kiss.

When it’s all over, Tinka pulls away from her as if nothing happened, bends over her bag, and takes out the pink water bottle. She swallows the vodka with gusto, like a man, and offers it to Mari. Mari takes a wary sip. Tinka grins.

“This isn’t any lesbo shit. It’s just something a woman needs to know how to do.” She spits on the ground to back up her words.

Mari nods solemnly.

IT ISN’T THAT EASY using the fake IDs. They try three bars before one lets them in. As soon as they get inside, Tinka sizes up the offerings.

“Look at that guy. He’s got a gleam in his eye,” she whispers in Mari’s ear, cocking her head toward a light-haired man. “Hey, he’s coming this way! Smile, now. Let’s snag him!”

The man approaches them the way Mari’s seen men do in movies. Midnight, the smoke, the noise, the bar full of people. She wonders what he’ll say first. Do you come here often? she thinks, and decides that if he says that, she’ll pretend she didn’t hear him. The man comes closer and she notices that he’s actually a boy. Just a boy. Mari puts on a smile. She can see that he knows, they both know, the whole thing is understood: no commitments, no phone numbers, no promises. Maybe not even names. Tinka flicks her fiery hair and flashes her magic gaze.

“You have nice eyes,” the boy says to Mari.

To Mari’s surprise and Tinka’s bafflement, he pays no attention at all to Tinka, just looks straight into Mari’s eyes.

He offers to buy her a drink. Tinka demands a cosmopolitan and he brings a drink for both of them.

“What would you think if we both picked you up, the pair of us?” Tinka asks defiantly.

The boy smiles, amused, and turns back to Mari. “Is your friend always so direct, or just tonight?”

Mari smiles. Tinka snorts in disgust and gets up from the table, leaving Mari and the boy alone. Mari turns her head and tries to keep Tinka in her field of vision among the crowd, but the boy turns Mari’s face back himself.

“Don’t worry about her. I’m sure a person as blunt as she is can manage on her own.”

“Yeah.”

“But what about you? Who are you?”

“Uh, Mari. Just me, I mean. I’m just me.”

The boy smiles and leans toward her. She can smell the alcohol on his breath and it occurs to her that she doesn’t want to kiss him the way Tinka has taught her.

“I think you should come home with me tonight,” the boy whispers.

Mari smiles. This game is working. It’s progressing just like it’s supposed to. And Mari knows how the game ends, she knows it with certainty: it’s going to happen tonight.

They get up from the table and he puts his arm around her shoulders. They walk toward the cloakroom and Mari sees Tinka one last time. She’s watching them from far away, through the smoke, the cosmopolitan still in her hand, and her eyes look glassy, serious. For a fleeting second Mari sees sadness in her eyes, but then someone comes between them, and Tinka’s eyes disappear from view. Mari turns and walks out the door.

ON THE WAY HOME, on the way to a stranger’s home, Mari listens to the boy talking. He talks the whole way. There are silent spaces to fill; the truth can’t be given any chance to intrude. This must be what people talk about. Work or school, anything at all. Mari listens. The boy confesses in a quiet voice that sometimes he feels really low. Really low, Mari thinks. Me too.

And once they’ve closed the door behind them, he comes close to her — a hard erection, hoarse breathing. Mari’s heart is throbbing. He kisses her. He tastes like cigarettes and beer, she thinks. There’s something meaty about the combination of flavors, something that brings to mind some kind of Karelian stew she was forced to eat in kindergarten. She starts to feel vaguely nauseated. The boy takes off his pants. The tip of his penis pokes out of his underwear, moist and shining, and Mari finds herself thinking how much it looks like the ones men have in porn movies. Just a little smaller, and with more hair around it. Are they all the same, then?

Mari settles onto the bed and lies down. She takes off her underwear and lets him come to her. He fucks in an inexperienced, careless way, going too deep, and Mari thinks that maybe she ought to rock along with him. The pain changes at a certain point from stabbing to white, floating, dim, as she rocks along with him. At the moment of discharge, a viscous yelp, Mari’s gaze falls on the lamp on the night table and it occurs to her that there’s a lamp like that at her grandma’s house, pieces of colored glass soldered together with metal. The lamp and the curtains must have been chosen by his mother, she thinks, or maybe his girlfriend.

The boy turns his back to her and falls asleep. Mari lays awake. She looks at the red numbers on the digital alarm clock. Three twelve. Three thirteen. Three fourteen. His breathing deepens, turns snuffly. Three twenty-one.

When you sleep next to a stranger, you may accidentally get too close. People are at their most helpless when they’re asleep — vulnerable, childlike. Sleep removes all the masks, and all that remain are intimate gestures: the clicking sound of a tongue, a sigh, a muffled rustle. The one who’s awake in this sudden intimacy, the one who witnesses all the stranger’s movements of his extremities as he sleeps, the changes in the rhythm of his breathing, is the one with the power. And that power doesn’t feel good. It feels alarming, bizarre — dangerous, in fact. It’s like suddenly becoming initiated into secrets that you’d prefer not to know about.

Mari watches the boy as he sighs, scratches his leg, moves his head on his pillow. Three forty. Only an hour until the newspaper carriers are out. She feels a throbbing pain between her legs. The musty smell of the condom still lingers in the air. The boy starts to snore. Through the window, Mari sees that it’s started to snow outside. One more hour and she can leave, walk out the door and through the falling snow, leaving tracks in the new, cottony-light drifts.

But she doesn’t wait until the morning. She goes out into the snow in the middle of the night. It’s hard to walk, it hurts between her legs, she’s bleeding.

She’s overcome with unexpected amusement. So that’s what it’s like? Not exactly what she expected. Not at all what she expected, in fact. Not particularly enjoyable, or even entertaining. But definitely new, certainly strange. New and strange. Adult.

MARI GETS HOME, goes into the bathroom, lets the blood flow, takes out the razor she uses to shave her legs, breaks off the blade guard, and cuts slashes in her thigh. One, two three.

She can hear herself moan. It comes so easily, so unforced. A moan with a strange tone in it. It’s more real than any of the half-forced sounds she’s just been letting out, in a strange bed with a strange boy. The blood rinses away, down the drain with the water. Water pulse-blood cunt-blood, all mixed together. Mari lets the blood flow. Just lets it flow.

*

THE NEXT MORNING in the kitchen, as her mother is pouring her ever-present herbal tea, Mari makes a fateful mistake: she reaches for a roll from the basket, leans carelessly on the table, and presses her pajama-covered thigh against the table’s edge. Her pajama-covered thigh and five layers of bandages. The bandages that cover her three lovely cuts. The wounds gape open, flowing like the very life of the one who cut them.

But this is a mistake. A mistake with consequences: as the thigh presses against the table, Mari gasps in pain, sinks back into her chair. Her mother’s expression becomes alert.

“What? What’s wrong? Are you sick?” she says.

“Oh, my back’s just sore,” Mari mumbles, surreptitiously putting her hand over her thigh.

That’s when her hand feels something damp and she realizes with horror what’s happened: the blood has soaked through. She tries desperately to spread her hand to cover the flood. But it doesn’t work: her mother’s eyes fix on her hand, and her flannel pajamas with the jumping lambs on them gradually turn from white to bright red as the fresh blood soaks through.

“What’s happened to you? My God, what the hell happened to you?” her mother says, angry, horrified.

“Get off it, Mom. I’m sure it’s just, you know, my period,” Mari sputters, turning her face away. “Don’t look. Don’t look, Mom.” She can’t cry, not now, not right now.

“Mari. Look at me and tell me. What’s going on? What the hell is going on?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Did someone hurt you?”

The question is a sob. For the first time, Mari is able to grasp her mother’s fear: the fear is the sob reaching through the air between them. Her mother asks again.

“Did someone do something bad to you?”

And then the next, inevitable question:

“Or did you do it yourself?”

“Fuck off,” Mari groans, and gets up from the table.

Her mother grabs the sleeve of her sweater and holds on tight, not letting her go. Mari wrenches herself away. That’s a mistake, too, she realizes. The sweater slips down and shows her upper arm, the wounds piercing her baby-white skin like a row of exclamation marks. The sweater hangs in her mother’s hands for a moment and her face is frozen, gaping, the sweater falling in a strangled clump on the floor, the plastic buttons clanking against the wood, and Mari can’t stop looking at her eyes: an empty look, completely expressionless.

“What exactly is this?”

Her mother’s voice has shrunk to a whisper. Something inside Mari shifts, something closes up, turns her expression to glass. She sees herself just looking at her mother, motionless, speechless. Her mother takes her by both shoulders and shakes her. Mari stands there, like she’s turned to stone.

Something outside her, a distant voice, registers the brittle emotion that the moment brings, etches it on her memory. So now you’re caught, and you don’t feel anything. Maybe a little bit happy, a little bubble of joy under the surface, because you’ve been up to something secret, something of your very own. It’s like a pleasant little game, like a didactic play in grade school about what happens when daughters keep secrets from their mothers. Mari feels the blood flowing from the wounds on her thigh and down her leg and dripping silently onto the floor. If the blood has time to soak into the wood, into its porous cracks, it will be stuck there and never come clean, no matter what soap you use. Human blood is like that — it leaves a stain.

Mari’s mother slaps her cheek with an open hand.

Mari pulls away and repositions herself, steps from outside back into her own space. She sees her mother flinch at what she’s just done. She’s never hit Mari before. The blow was light, to wake her up, just a slap, and it didn’t leave any perceptible trace except a little warmth on the curve of her cheek. But something else has shifted, something that doesn’t reach the level of perception. Something in motion that can’t be stopped now.

Her mother is shocked at what she’s done.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she says.

Her voice is mechanical, toneless.

“What exactly happened? What happened really?” she whispers.

She slumps into a chair, lifts her teacup to her lips with a trembling hand as if it can wipe her hand’s crime away, obliterate it. The teacup won’t stay in her grasp; it falls back into its saucer with a clatter and breaks into shards. Tea splashes on the table.

Her mother’s question slices through the air, which has turned heavy, impossible to breathe. The question rises to the peak of the roof and hangs there, waiting for an answer.

What exactly happened? What happened really?

No answer comes, and Mari turns, walks out of the kitchen, climbs the stairs, and closes her bedroom door behind her.

A dense silence falls around her.

Two minutes pass. Mari watches the door. Her mother will follow her, of course. She sits on the bed, presses her hand against her thigh, prays for the bleeding to stop.

Her mother pushes the door open. Mari turns slowly to look at her. Her mother glances around the room. She needs evidence, incriminating evidence, anything to lay Mari’s secret life bare, to make it clear. She could hug Mari. She could do that so easily, take a few steps toward her, take her in her arms. Mari might even let her do it. But right now all Mari’s mother has is this desire to know.

She starts randomly, rummaging through Mari’s things in sheer panic. The desk drawers, the clothes closet, the back of the bookshelf. Finally she comes to the dresser, the one that has the knife and bandages in the top drawer, all of Mari’s hidden equipment for making her existence easier, clearer.

Mari thinks about this equipment. The horror at the thought of its discovery is a distant lurch inside her. And, as if she can read Mari’s mind, her mother opens the top drawer, stares at its contents, and takes out the knife. Mari doesn’t try to stop her. It doesn’t matter — her secret’s out, completely out. She makes a note of her own dull reaction. Of how meaningless it all is, how trivial. A feeling of panic bounces dully behind her indifference. Soon it will spill out, at any moment, slowed down, like shouts at an accident.

Her mother’s reaction is slowed, too.

A second passes, then another. She doesn’t say anything, just holds the knife in her hand, the blood dried to a sticky stain on its blade.

A number of empty, unconvincing explanations zip through Mari’s mind, none of them good enough to say out loud.

“What are you doing to yourself?” her mother finally says.

The question is a desperate whisper. Mari can see that as much as her mother fears someone doing something to hurt her, someone else, some stranger harming her, she is just as fearful of the alternative: that Mari did this to herself.

She strides a few steps to where Mari is sitting, takes hold of her arm.

“Damn it, tell me. You’re going to explain this to me.”

Her mother pulls her up and hustles her out of the room, rushing behind her down the stairs. For the first time Mari thinks that the game has gone too far. Up to now it’s just been a game. She had thought she might be that kind of girl, the kind filled with longing, the kind who draws herself into the moment in little, sharp cuts. She liked the game. She enjoyed it. But now her mother is angry. Now it’s gone too far.

Mari’s mother takes her to the kitchen, sits her down at the table. She gets antiseptic and sterile swabs from the first aid kit, makes Mari sit where she is, orders her to take off her stained pajama pants, and cleans the wounds on her thigh. She bandages them again and looks up at Mari. Fear huddles behind her anger. The look demands an explanation.

“Spit it out, damn it. You’re going to tell me exactly what’s going on. Are you using drugs?”

“No!”

“You’ve lost weight, too. Have you been eating properly? Have you been throwing up?”

“What? No. Honest, I don’t throw up.” Mari is in a trance.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you eat a proper meal,” her mother says, not taking her eyes off her.

“Fucking hell,” Mari says, turning her face to the window.

Her mother goes to the fridge and gets out the butter and cheese. She takes a roll from the bread box, splits it in two with a furious slice of the knife, and butters both halves angrily. She slices cheese on top and slaps the sandwich down in front of Mari.

“Eat it. I want to see you eat it, right here in front of me.”

Mari looks at her mother in disbelief. She’s serious. Mari carefully picks up the sandwich and bites off a piece. Her mother tells her to hold out her arm and starts cleaning the cuts on it.

Mari eats, her arm stinging, the sharp jab of the antiseptic sinking through her skin into her flesh, and her mother watches her eat, like a hawk. Mari’s mouth twists into a sob. She swallows the dry sandwich. She just has to eat it.

She begs for mercy with her eyes. Her mother’s mouth is a tight line. She’s still holding the wad of cotton in her hand. The only gesture that softens the edge of her control is a hint of a tremble in her right thumb and forefinger.

“I’m going to keep an eye on you,” she says. Her voice is shaking. “This kind of thing cannot happen. You are my daughter. You can’t hide things like this from me.”

“Can I go now? Let me go now,” Mari whispers, her voice strangled.

Her mother nods and looks away. Mari can almost see a flicker of regret in her face, around her mouth. It might be fear. Maybe it’s fear. But Mari refuses to believe it. All she sees is this: the power that briefly slipped out of her mother’s grasp has stabilized again, returned to where it belongs.