The Lily Pond (8 page)

“No!” Stephie shouts. “No, I don’t see at all! Get out of here! Now!”

She lies down on her stomach, burying her face in the pillow.

Stephie avoids Sven the whole week. She gets up earlier than usual, wolfs down her breakfast, and has already left the kitchen by the time Sven comes in. She spends the afternoons doing her homework in the school library or sitting on her bench by the lily pond. When she comes home, she sneaks quietly into her room and closes the door. On Saturday, a week after the dinner party, she’s finally going out to
the island. Straight from school she’ll take the tram and then the ferry. She packed her bag on Friday evening and brought it with her. There isn’t much in it but dirty laundry and a gift, a box of chalk she bought for Nellie.

When she walks out onto the schoolyard, she stops in surprise. Sven is straddling his bike on the other side of the fence, the brim of his school cap gleaming in the sun.

“Stephanie,” he calls.

Harriet and Lilian, walking behind Stephie, crane to see who’s calling her name. Stephie feels their curious gazes at her back as she walks to the gate.

“I thought I’d ride you to the ferry,” says Sven. “Don’t be angry anymore, Stephanie.”

How can she be angry when he’s looking her straight in the eye, his expression serious, but with the hint of a smile underneath it?

“I’m not angry,” she says. “But we’d better hurry. The boat leaves in twenty minutes.”

Sven puts her suitcase in his clamp and settles Stephie on the handlebars in front of him, his arms around her. Stephie can feel the eyes of every single person in the schoolyard glued to the scene.

“Bye, Stephie,” shouts May. “See you Monday!”

The bike rolls smoothly away from the school across Götaplatsen and along the avenue, merging with the stream of traffic heading for the center of town. Stephie is so close to Sven she feels the warmth of his body on her back. Sven is whistling as he bikes, one of his swing tunes.

The ride to the pier is much too short. Sven slows to a stop and lets her off. He puts the kickstand down and carries her suitcase to the pier.

“See you tomorrow evening,” he says. “Give my regards to the Janssons and say I hope they’ll want us as tenants again next summer.”

Stephie stands on deck until Sven is out of sight. Once they are out on the river, the wind feels colder. The leaves on the trees are beginning to turn yellow. It’s fall, her second fall in Sweden. She goes into the passenger area, opens a book, and sits reading until they approach the island. Then she goes out on deck and looks eagerly to see whether anybody has come to meet her.

Everything looks as it always does: the breakwater, the pier, the little jetties, the fishing boats, the boathouses. Aunt Märta is waiting by one of them with her bicycle. Stephie gets off the boat when it docks and joins her.

“Evert hopes to be back tomorrow,” Aunt Märta begins, “so you ought to get some time together.”

Now, just like the first time Stephie arrived on the island, Aunt Märta gives her a ride on the back of her bicycle, and Stephie holds her suitcase on her lap. She wonders what Aunt Märta would say if she knew this was Stephie’s second ride of the day on someone’s bicycle.

The other on the bicycle of a boy, no less. A boy she loves.

It’s not the kind of thing she’d ever talk to Aunt Märta about.

They stop at Auntie Alma’s on their way home. Nellie runs outside, throwing her arms around Stephie.

“Why didn’t you come last week?” she laments. “I’ve missed you.”

Stephie rummages through her bag until she finds the wrapped box of chalk, and gives it to Nellie. It’s a birthday present, her eighth birthday being just a few days off. Auntie Alma puts the gift away until then.

“I know Nellie. She won’t be able to resist opening it otherwise,” Auntie Alma says, smiling. They sit down to coffee for the grown-ups and berry juice for the children, and a while later Stephie and Aunt Märta continue their bike ride toward the white house on the west side of the island—the house at the end of the world, as Stephie called it when she first arrived.

Stephie takes a tour around the outside before going in. The dinghy is at the jetty, and the sheets hanging on the clothesline smell freshly laundered.

One of the first things Aunt Märta asks Stephie when they sit down to dinner is whether she has been to the Pentecostal church in Göteborg.

Stephie shakes her head.

“It wouldn’t do you any harm to go now and then,” Aunt Märta says dryly.

“We have so much homework,” Stephie replies. “And if
I don’t take my schoolwork seriously, my scholarship might not be renewed.”

“Of course you must be attentive to your schoolwork. But your soul also has its needs,” says Aunt Märta. “I worry about you. The city is full of temptations.”

Stephie knows what Aunt Märta means when she uses the word “temptations”: movie theaters and dance halls, lipstick and hair permanents. And boys.

“I study all the time,” she repeats. “There’s no time to even think about anything else.”

“Fine,” says Aunt Märta. “You’re a good girl. You’ll not let us down, I know.”

Tonight Stephie goes up once more to the narrow bed in the room under the eaves. Her old teddy bear is waiting at the foot of the bed. His pitch-black eyes gleam lovingly in the dark.

mornings on the island used to mean Sunday school at the Pentecostal church. But now, when Stephie is there only to visit, she needn’t go. Instead, she takes her bicycle and pedals off to Vera’s.

Vera and her mother live in a little house at the far end of the huddle of homes around the harbor area. The house was once white but is now so dirty and abraded it looks gray. Some roof tiles are missing, and the door creaks loudly when Vera opens it to let Stephie in.

Vera’s father drowned before she was born, a few weeks before he and Vera’s mother were to be married. Vera is therefore an out-of-wedlock child, and when Aunt Märta says those words, she makes it sound like a terrible thing to
be. Still, Aunt Märta likes Vera and doesn’t object to her and Stephie’s being friends.

Vera’s mother pops her head out through the kitchen door to say hello. She’s quite young—in fact, even younger than Stephie’s own mother—but she looks weary and worn. Her hair, as red as Vera’s, is disheveled, and she’s missing two of her top front teeth.

“Come,” Vera says, pulling Stephie up the steps to the attic. During the warmer months Vera has a room of her own in the unheated attic. In the winter she and her mother share a bedroom.

The attic is dark and musty-smelling. All kinds of indeterminable objects have been crammed in along the walls under the sloping roof; old blankets and rags hang over the rough ceiling beams. Stephie finds Vera’s attic a little spooky; she wouldn’t want to be up here on her own at night, and certainly not to sleep.

Vera opens the low door to her room and ushers Stephie in. It’s big enough only for a bed and a box for Vera’s clothes. She used to do her homework in the kitchen. This year, of course, Vera doesn’t have any homework. She stopped school after sixth grade, like most of the other children on the island, and as Stephie would have had to do if it hadn’t been for the doctor’s wife and the scholarship.

She must try to remember that she’s indebted to Mrs. Söderberg. She also owes a debt of gratitude to the people who award scholarships to “gifted girls of little means,” as
well as to the Swedish relief committee, which made it possible for her to come to Sweden in the first place.

Aunt Märta and Uncle Evert are different. They don’t expect her to be grateful to them for having taken her in, and for that very reason, she is extremely grateful.

Vera and Stephie sit side by side on Vera’s bed.

“What’s it like,” Vera asks, “in the city?”

Stephie describes the Söderbergs’ big apartment while Vera listens, gaping.

“That’s how I’m going to live when I grow up,” she says.

Stephie has her dream of becoming a doctor. Vera’s dream is to marry a wealthy man and live in the city, with loads of money, beautiful clothes, and housemaids.

When Stephie tells Vera about Alice, who lives in a huge brick mansion on the far side of the lily pond, Vera sighs deeply.

“Is the pond part of their yard?” she asks.

“No,” Stephie tells her. “It’s in a park.”

“I want a mansion with a lily pond of my own in the yard,” Vera says.

Stephie wishes she could tell Vera that wealthy, pretty Alice doesn’t seem to be very happy, while May from Mayhill is a cheerful girl, curious about everything. But she isn’t able to find words that will make Vera understand.

“Good grief,” she says instead. “What is a lily pond compared with having the whole sea outside your window?”

“Still, you don’t miss being here, do you?” Vera asks. “Now that you have what you’d hoped for?”

“But I do. Sometimes. I miss Nellie. And you.”

“Just as much as you miss being at home?”

Stephie answers after some consideration. Being at home would mean being with people she’s known all her life, being able to speak her own language and not having to fear that people will misunderstand. Being at home means being in the place where she can be entirely herself.