Snow Woman Read online

  The women listened quietly, with surprising interest; one of them even took notes. They were exactly the kind of women I’d imagined attended Rosberga Institute courses: average age around thirty-five, casually dressed, and at least half with red-tinted hair. Traditional Finnish Kalevala jewelry hung from almost every ear. Many were wearing the same little Moon Goddess design I wore. I fit in perfectly.

  There were two class members who did stand out though. The younger woman had extremely short hair with purple and black stripes. She wore more makeup than all the other course participants combined and had on a black minidress that barely covered her buttocks and slightly plump curves, a black leather jacket, and high-heeled purple suede boots. Although it seemed obvious she was trying to add years with her makeup, she didn’t appear to be older than twenty. Looking bored, she stared at her dark-purple nails and unconsciously grimaced every time I said the word “police.”

  The other woman was so gaunt she could have been doing hard labor her entire life. Her vaguely blond hair was held back in a tight bun, and her cloudy-gray eyes seemed to stare into the middle distance. It was hard to pin down her age; her grandmotherly brown cardigan and brown checked dress would make anyone look old. She sat stock-still in a little bubble that seemed to separate her from the rest of the world.

  While most of the women in the audience smiled at my stories or occasionally touched their neighbor on the arm or exchanged glances, these two sat alone in the crowded room—one loudly restless and the other in oppressive silence.

  When I finished my presentation and moved on to questions, I wasn’t surprised that the women asked about the increase in sexual harassment on the streets.

  “The police just say we shouldn’t be out alone after dark,” one woman said indignantly. “I don’t know about anybody else, but I have to exercise when I can, which means running when my husband is home and the kids are asleep. I’m not the criminal, so why should I have to time my life according to these dirtbags?”

  “I totally agree, you shouldn’t have to,” I said. “But it also makes sense to avoid unnecessary risks. Where do you run?”

  I knew the feeling that sometimes came over you running alone in the dark. When you started listening for every little rustle, worrying there might be a murderer lurking in the bushes.

  One of the women described getting away from an attacker by biting him, and another related a story about her coworker, who put an abrupt end to a Christmas party when she told the hostess that her husband had been coming on to her. I quickly found myself acting as a sort of therapeutic sounding board for the women’s diverse stories. I couldn’t help feeling irritated. I was there to talk about my work, not play life coach. Apparently Rosberga really was the fortress of man-bashing the media had wrung its hands about.

  When one of the women angrily started describing an incident involving a male police officer, I was relieved to be back on topic. Apparently he’d automatically assumed she was responsible for a collision at an intersection and joked that her husband was going to have a fit when he found out she’d wrecked his car. She’d bought the car with her own money, she added indignantly. At least I could give her some practical advice about dealing with the police. But just as I began outlining some options, the young woman with the striped hair sitting in the back, who’d been focused on her nails throughout the presentation, jumped up.

  “Your problems are fucking pathetic!” she yelled. “Oh, your car got dented. Oh me oh my! Is that why you need emotional self-defense, or don’t you have the guts to talk about your real problems? Huh?”

  She walked quickly up the aisle toward me. Her perfume was musky, and sweat beaded the thick coat of powder on her forehead.

  “I’ve been raped so many times in my life I can’t even count them all. Incest first, of course, and then a pack of other guys. Most of the time I was so drunk I barely even remember it. But I remember the last time. I might be a sex worker, but I’m not a whore. Look down on me if you want to, but I just dance for money—that’s it. A guy in my building came to watch me a bunch of times, and then one night he grabbed me in the basement when I was getting a bag of potatoes out of my storage unit. He thought since I dance naked he could do whatever he wanted to me. He did it right there on the concrete floor. Apparently that was a turn-on for him.”

  Her strangely pale eyes, surrounded by nearly a quarter inch of black eyeliner, stared accusingly at me. The nostrils of her tiny pierced nose trembled like an enraged animal’s.

  “Did you file a police report?” I asked when I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “Of course not! Do you think those pigs would treat me any different than my neighbor did? But I sent the asshole a letter telling him I have HIV.” Then, as if out of some strange social compunction, she added, “I don’t really, unless I got it from him.”

  “What exactly is it you’re hoping to get from this course, Milla?” Elina Rosberg intervened. I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to continue the conversation.

  “What do I want? I don’t have any idea. I keep wondering what the hell I’m doing here.” Milla turned to me again. “But you, are you some kind of feminist cop or something? What would you have said to me if I’d reported him to you? Would you have taken me seriously?”

  “Of course,” I answered.

  “And you wouldn’t have given me some kind of sermon about being a stripper?”

  “We aren’t in the habit of giving sermons on morality in situations like that.” I was trying to be friendly, but it didn’t take. I could feel the antagonism ooze from the girl like smoke from dry ice.

  “But not filing a police report is accepting being a victim!” said a heavy woman sitting in the front row. She had been diligently taking notes throughout my talk. “Your behavior ensured that you and, through you, any woman can be raped because there aren’t any consequences. When did this happen? Maybe you can still file a report.”

  “Not interested,” Milla said. “The creep hasn’t shown his face in the club since.”

  “About the incest . . .” Elina began with the calm, empathetic tone of a person accustomed to dealing with sensitive issues. “Is there anything you’d like to speak with a police officer about? I think it makes sense for us to stick to police issues since we have Sergeant Kallio here tonight.”

  Milla snorted. “That’s all ancient history. Statute of limitations, you know. And there’s no point talking about my issues. Just talk about your car accidents and lost cats or whatever. I’m going for a smoke.” Milla turned on her heel and walked out the door, swaying her hips fetchingly.

  Elina look confused, as though she was surprised the situation had momentarily slipped out of her control. She glanced at the class members and then at me, waiting for someone to say something. Stiffly I started going through the steps of filing a police report. I was off balance too, but not so much from Milla’s behavior as Elina’s. Elina Rosberg was a familiar figure to me. When I was in high school, my younger sister had subscribed to a teen magazine in which Elina wrote a column. While I’d considered myself too old for the magazine in general, I read her column on a regular basis. I liked that she didn’t moralize or belittle the problems teenagers faced. She just answered questions directly. I guess I considered her something of a role model. When I was trying to get into the police academy, I’d hoped I could discharge my duty, especially with female crime victims, by showing the same simple understanding Elina Rosberg did. While my illusions about police work were shattered pretty quickly, I’d always assumed Elina had continued her work with the same competence and enthusiasm she’d conveyed when she was thirty. And in a way, that was what the Rosberga Women’s Institute was all about, allowing her to focus on the cases that interested her most—psychiatric conditions common to women, such as eating disorders.

  No one seemed to want to ask any more questions, and I was already gathering my papers into my
backpack when the gaunt woman with the bun suddenly stood up. She opened her mouth, closed it, and then looked to Elina as if for help. When Elina nodded, she opened her mouth again.

  “Can a person be prevented from seeing her children?” Her voice quivered and cracked like an instrument being played too loud, and her face flushed red. Saying those nine words seemed to have required tremendous effort.

  “What kind of situation are we talking about? It’s hard for me to say anything specific without the details,” I replied.

  Clearly frightened, the woman lowered her head.

  Elina answered for her: “Johanna moved away from her husband and children and filed for divorce. They both want the children, but her ex-husband is preventing Johanna from seeing them.”

  “He certainly doesn’t have any legal right to do that if there isn’t a court order barring you from your children.” I looked at the woman. She cringed at the words “court order.”

  “Why won’t your husband let you see your children?” I asked.

  This time she answered almost defiantly, but her voice broke near the end. “Because I killed our last baby.”

  It was as if the whole audience instantly turned to snow women, cold and frozen. After a quick communal intake of breath, no one moved, but every eye was glued to Johanna. Her face had turned from red back to gray. I also stared at her, taking in her bowed head and the clothing that hung too loosely from her shriveled body. Had she been in prison? Was that why she looked so worn-out? Again Elina’s calm voice broke the silence.

  “I think we’ve had a little misunderstanding. I doubt anyone here considers abortion murder, especially when the pregnancy and birth would have been life threatening for both Johanna and the baby. She already has nine children and nearly died giving birth to her previous one.”

  “Well, couldn’t the doctors tie your tubes or give you an IUD?” yelled the same woman who had accused Milla of making herself a victim.

  “Our church does not approve of birth control. It is contrary to God’s will.” Johanna’s voice repeated the rote phrases without expression.

  “What are you, a Catholic or something?” the same woman barked.

  “Johanna belongs to one of the stricter conservative Laestadian sects,” Elina replied.

  “Does she have a lawyer?” I directed my question to Elina, even though talking around Johanna as if she were some sort of half-wit irritated me.

  Instead of answering my question, Elina turned to the assembled women and said in an authoritative tone, “If no one else has any questions for Sergeant Kallio, let’s thank her for her visit and wrap things up. This was a very interesting lecture.”

  Elina began to applaud, and the rest of the bewildered group joined in weakly. We watched the women trickle out, and then Elina turned to me. “We still need to address your honorarium. And if you have time, I’d like you to talk to Johanna a little more.”

  I did have time, and I was curious to hear Johanna’s story. With the others gone, Johanna walked toward my table. As Elina turned to close the door, Johanna raised her eyes to me for the first time. In them was a contagious anxiety so powerful I had to fight not to avert my own gaze.

  “How old are your children?” I asked lamely when I couldn’t come up with anything else. I wasn’t good at things like this. How was I supposed to understand a woman longing for her children when I’d only just begun to even consider having my own sometime in the distant future?

  “Johannes, my oldest, is fourteen, and the youngest, Maria, is one and a half.” Johanna’s voice grew more confident when she talked about her children. This was clearly her territory.

  “Maria . . . just like me. And my husband’s middle name is Johannes,” I said with a smile, desperately trying to lighten the mood. “Why does your husband want to prevent you from seeing your children? Just because of the abortion? Or because you left him?”

  “For us, a husband’s word is law and procreation is a gift from God.” Johanna’s voice contained not the slightest hint of irony. “If God wants me to die giving birth, that is his will.”

  “But you have nine children you’d be leaving behind! How could any God want that?” I was too furious at her answer to maintain my professionalism. Johanna turned her face away, and Elina strode over as if to protect her.

  I took a deep breath. Wasn’t I ever going to learn to control myself? “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t question your church doctrines. Let’s focus on practicalities. Is your husband physically preventing you from seeing your children?”

  “Johanna lives in a small northern Ostrobothnian village where seventy percent of the people are Laestadians, including the doctor and all the police except for one,” Elina answered for Johanna. She explained that the children weren’t allowed to talk to their mother on the phone and that her husband had confiscated Johanna’s letters before ordering the post office not to deliver them anymore. When Johanna last tried to see the children in person, the father called the police, who escorted Johanna out of town.

  I had to count to ten more than once, and even then I still felt like kicking something. The whole thing just sounded so incredible. How could something like this happen in modern-day Finland? There had been Laestadians and Jehovah’s Witnesses where I grew up too, but the most noticeable difference between them and the other kids was that they couldn’t participate in any music programs, not even marching along with a tambourine, and they couldn’t watch educational shows on the school TV. They did grow up to have their own huge packs of kids, but I’d never heard of any of them dying giving birth.

  “Those police officers broke the law unless you were behaving violently. You should call the one who isn’t a member of the church and negotiate with him. I’d also contact the county police. What’s your husband’s name and occupation?”

  “Leevi Säntti. He’s a minister,” Johanna replied, and I almost started laughing. It sounded so unbelievable.

  “So he’s some sort of town bigwig?”

  “Our church’s lay pastor.”

  “He’s a pretty famous preacher, actually,” Elina added, and both of them looked at me expectantly.

  I wasn’t quite sure what they wanted from me. I asked again whether Johanna had a lawyer, and the answer was also complicated. The town’s legal aid counsel was a Laestadian, and Johanna didn’t have the money to hire anyone else.

  I kicked myself in the mental shins to prevent myself from promising her anything. In addition to my police qualifications, I had gone to law school and worked in a law firm for almost a year before it went belly up. Sometimes I got the itch to practice my other profession, but when was I going to find time for that? My desk was already piled high with unsolved cases. And even though Johanna did live far away from Espoo, I wasn’t completely sure of the ethical dimensions of this case. Maybe a policewoman shouldn’t do legal gigs on the side.

  “I know someone who might be able to help,” I finally said. Leena was a friend from law school who sometimes volunteered on the Feminist Association’s legal hotline. “I’ll give you the number. You should call her. And I can check with the county police. I may know someone there. Have you officially filed for divorce?”

  “Not yet,” Johanna whispered.

  “As far as I can tell, you aren’t insane or an alcoholic. And you haven’t been with any other men yet, right?”

  Johanna shook her head quickly, as if appalled by my question.

  “It would be really strange if the court gave the children to your husband.” I tried to sound comforting, although I knew a lot depended on the judge. Just then my beeper went off.

  “I’m sorry, I need to use my phone. I’m on call.”

  “The kitchen is quiet, and Aira can handle the paperwork there too. I don’t imagine you could stay for dinner?”

  “I don’t think so. But keep me up to date about this situation,” I said as
I scribbled Leena’s phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to Johanna.

  Aira was busy cooking in the kitchen. Based on the smell, she was making some sort of vegetable casserole. I filled out my pay slip as I punched in the phone number for the station. When Ström picked up, he growled that a woman had stabbed her husband in Suvela. For some reason he thought that was right up my alley. I promised to head straight there.

  I didn’t speak to Elina or Johanna again before leaving. Walking to my car, I saw the group of women through a window chattering happily around a long, candlelit table. Elina was just sitting down at the head, and Aira was carrying in baskets of bread. Johanna was nowhere to be seen.

  Just as I was turning the key in the ignition, the front door of the house opened. Milla’s purple-striped head was briefly framed in the light from the hall, then the door closed, and after a few seconds I saw the glow of a cigarette. I drove toward the gate, which opened automatically and then closed silently behind me, leaving Rosberga trapped within its walls, far removed from the rest of the world.

  2

  I stared out my office window at the Turku Highway, where cars glided by at long intervals despite it being a weekday afternoon. An inexplicable fatigue had me in its grip. My head kept nodding and the sofa on the other side of the room seemed to mock me.

  Maybe it was because of Christmas. It was December 27, the day after Boxing Day. Antti and I had spent the holidays mostly lounging around reading in our new home in Henttaa, a neighborhood near Espoo Central Park. Working between Christmas and New Year’s had seemed like a good idea. It gave us a good excuse not to travel to Antti’s parents’ place in Inkoo or to my parents’ in Northern Karelia. But now I wished I’d taken a few more days off so I could keep sitting in front of the fireplace, Einstein curled in my lap, reading Agatha Christie’s A Holiday for Murder and eating chocolate.