Майя Лунде - The End of the Ocean

But something yanked me awake, almost immediately. Sounds pulled me to the surface. I fought back, wanting to remain down there. But the sounds grew louder, turning into screams.

I sat up in bed. Lou was still breathing calmly. Children can sleep through everything.

I pulled the sheet over her, stood up and went outside.

Caleb was standing there, as vigilant as a bird. His arms were crossed over his chest.

“It’s him again,” he said. “That bastard from the north. Christian and Martin couldn’t stay away.”

A loud bang and somebody yelling, followed by ominous howls. And then Caleb also set off at a run.

“Wait,” I said.

But he ran to join the mob.

I stayed behind by the entrance to the hall. I wanted to run after him.

But Lou was lying in there, alone. I couldn’t abandon her again. Couldn’t explain more bruises, blood and Band-Aids to her.

And what if she woke up, what if she came out?

The intensity of the racket increased, the screams grew louder. More people came running. I tried not to listen.

Tried not to hear the swearing. The threats. Tents being knocked over. Clothing being torn, loud crashes from things being broken.

But it was my people who were being threatened.

Caleb, Martin, Christian.

My muscles tensed. My heart pounded.

I had to protect them. Be one of them. I owed them that.

We’d already been in a fight together, it was my duty to do my part.

I was about to start running.

But then Marguerite was there. She arrived rapidly, short of breath. Appeared by my side.

She laid her hand on my arm, again she laid her hand on my arm.

At first I thought she was going to restrain me. But then I realized that she was afraid.

“They’re in my hall,” she said. “I can’t… I couldn’t stay there.”

I took her hand in mine and pulled her along with me.

It had been so long since I had held hands with anyone except Lou. Marguerite’s hand was so big. Even though she was thin, it filled my hand completely.

We stopped just inside the door to the hallway. She was breathing more easily, but didn’t let go of me.

Without another thought I pulled her inside with me. Into our cubicle. Where Lou was fast asleep.

We sat down on my bed.

She lay down.

I lay down with her.

She had this thinness about her, also when I was lying close to her.

I was lying close to her.

There’s something wrong, I thought.

There’s something wrong with me, if I can do this.

If I can lie here and feel her, feel the differences between her and Anna.

All the ways they are different, all the ways they are similar. There is something wrong with me.

I have to stop now.

I kept going.

It was like the fight.

I stopped thinking.

Thought about everything.

Skin under my hands. Another body against my own.

I didn’t want it to stop.

Didn’t want anything else except that it would stop.

That somebody would stop it for me.

We didn’t make a sound. Lou was sleeping. They were still at it out there, but it was far away, the din rose and fell.

They made sounds for us. Their sounds became ours.

Her body was taut and thin, only her abdomen was different, scarred. There were marks from her navel to her pubic bone, where the skin had been stretched.

Somebody had been inside her, somebody she no longer had with her.

I ran my fingers over the stretch marks, wanting to ask but unable to do so.

Hoped she could say something.

I stroked the stretch marks. And that was the only time she took my hand away.

Do you remember, Magnus, when you found out that I was pregnant?

We were in Bergen again, living our lives as usual, the weeks slid by. It was summertime, we were getting up early, working nine-to-five and talking about how we were looking forward to the autumn and student life. At the same time, plans were being made back home in Ringfjorden. I spoke with Daddy almost every day, it’s getting there, he said; it was growing, two national organizations had become involved, and this time we would mobilize. People were on their way from Bergen, from Oslo. All over the country nature conservationists were talking about Ringfjorden.

I had just come home from my summer job in a cafeteria the first time I noticed it. I was on my way up the stairs and suddenly felt a heaviness in my breasts. With every single step I took I could feel them, the tenderness, like I was about to get my period, but more extreme, and how long had it been since my last period, four weeks—no, five. I should have had my period the week before.

I let myself into the bedsit, which was silent and dark. I didn’t turn on the light but went straight into the bathroom without taking off my shoes.

It was only then that I turned on a light.

I stood in front of the mirror, pulled up my sweater, my undershirt.

This heaviness, discomfort, I had never felt this way before, as if my breasts needed support. I would have to start wearing a bra—no, I couldn’t, nobody wore a bra unless they had to, only old ladies and housewives.

I looked the same as always, everything was the same as always, but nonetheless, something was different, and while I stood there in the cold glare of the bathroom light, with my sweater pulled up under my arms, I felt the other symptoms, too, those I knew would come, which I had already been afflicted with for a few days without really paying attention to them: fatigue, my mouth watering, the stirrings of nausea.

I stood in front of the mirror with the sweater, an apple-green wool sweater, pulled up under my arms. I held it up, my arms were two pointy angles in the mirror, like wings, and suddenly I knew that I was pregnant and there was such a lightness in me—my arms were wings, I could fly, but I didn’t know if I dared.

We met at my place that evening, I asked him to come. I wanted to be here, in my nondescript bedsit, not in his apartment.

He noticed that I was quiet, and I told him almost immediately.

“I think I’m pregnant.”

He was so thrilled that at first he couldn’t speak. Then he asked if I was sure.

“Sure?” I said. “How do you define sure?”

He laughed. He had to stand up, jumped up and down on the floor in front of me, then he hauled me up from the bed I was sitting on, hugged me so tightly that my feet were lifted off the floor, he carried me, but then he stopped himself.

“Sorry, I didn’t think about the one inside there.”

“If there is someone in there.”

“If? But don’t you know?”

“Yes, I think so. My period has always arrived like clockwork.”

“There’s someone in there.”

Then he placed his hand on my abdomen.

“Just a lump of cells,” I said.

“No. A child. Our child. Do you think it’s a boy or a girl?”

“I’m not thinking much of anything yet.”

“Signe!”

He laughed again—a loud, strange and very happy laughter. Then he leaned forward, kissed me and pulled me towards the bed.

Afterwards we lay side by side in silence. He stroked my forehead and cheeks.

“Signe. I think you should give her a call.”

I turned towards him. “Who?”

“You know who.”

“Now?”

“Daughters need their mothers. Especially when they become mothers themselves.”

“I’m not thinking about how I’m about to become a mother yet.”

“But you are.”

“It’s too early to think that.”

“Call her.”

“All I need is to be free of my childhood.”

I pressed my nose against his arm.

“Acting as if it doesn’t exist,” he said, “isn’t the same as being free of it.”