The Fire Witness

44

That morning, Flora woke up before her alarm clock went off. Hans-Gunnar needed breakfast in bed at eight fifteen sharp. Once he got up, Flora aired out his room and made his bed, while Ewa sat in a chair, dressed in yellow sweatpants and a skin-colored bra, keeping an eye on Flora. She got up to check that the sheet was completely smooth and that the corners were tucked in precisely. The crocheted bedcover needed to hang evenly on each side of the bed. Flora had to remake the bed before it passed Ewa’s inspection.

Now it’s lunchtime. Flora returns home with groceries as well as cigarettes for Hans-Gunnar. She hands him the change and waits while he examines the receipt.

“Goddamn, that cheese was expensive,” he says.

“You told me to be sure to buy cheddar,” Flora says.

“Not if it’s this damned expensive. You should realize you need to buy a different kind if this one is too expensive.”

“I’m sorry. I thought-”

Flora is stopped by a powerful blow to the side of her head. She’s knocked to her knees and her ear begins to ring. Her cheek is burning. Hans-Gunner stands over her, staring, until she gets up.

“You said cheddar,” Ewa says from the sofa. “You said cheddar or nothing, so it’s not her fault.”

Hans-Gunnar mutters that they’re both idiots and goes out onto the balcony to smoke. Flora puts away the groceries, then goes into the maid’s room and sits on the bed. She touches her cheek and thinks that she’s tired of Hans-Gunnar’s punches. There are days when he hits her more than once. She can tell when he’s working up a head of steam because he keeps looking at her, and normally he ignores her. The worst thing is not the blows but the way he looks at her and breathes afterward.

He never hit her when she was a child. In those days, he worked and was almost never home. She remembers once his showing her different countries on the globe he kept in his bedroom.

She can hear Ewa and Hans-Gunnar leave the apartment. Flora looks over at the glass horse-and-carriage on her dresser. It was a gift from one of her teachers. In one of the dresser drawers there’s an old toy from her childhood, a bright blue Smurf with blond hair and high-heeled shoes. In the middle drawer is a pile of pressed handkerchiefs. Flora gets up and opens the drawer, shifts the handkerchiefs, and takes out an elegant green dress, which she bought at the beginning of the summer at the Salvation Army store. She never wears it except in her room, but she likes to try it on whenever Ewa and Hans-Gunnar are out.

She’s buttoning it up when she hears voices coming from the kitchen. The radio is on. She walks out to turn it off and notices that Ewa and Hans-Gunnar snacked on cake before they left. There are crumbs on the floor by the pantry. They’ve left a glass of strawberry juice on the counter by the sink. It’s half full. The bottle is still out as well.

Flora gets a dishrag, washes the glass, then wipes up the crumbs from the floor.

There’s a news report on the radio about a murder in northern Sweden. A young girl has been found dead in a youth home for girls.

Flora rinses out the dishrag and hangs it on the faucet.

The police are refusing to comment, but a reporter has tracked down a few of the girls who’d been living at the home and the girls are being interviewed live.

“I wanted to see what was going on, so I pushed ahead of the other girls,” says one girl. “I couldn’t see much because the others pulled me away from the door. I screamed for a bit, but then I realized it didn’t matter much.”

Flora picks up the bottle of strawberry juice and heads to the refrigerator.

“Can you tell us what you saw?”

“Yes, I saw Miranda and she was lying on the bed, like this, just like this, see?”

Flora stops to listen.

“Her eyes were closed?” asks the reporter.

“No, no, like this, with her hands in front of her face-”

“You’re such a fucking liar,” another girl’s voice breaks in.

Flora hears a crash. She glances down and sees she’s dropped the bottle. Her feet are wet. Her stomach suddenly flips and she barely makes it to the toilet before she throws up.