Somewhere Else

Chapter 12: Try (i)

"Oh, Emi," Mama sighs, and I know from the yearning in her voice that if I were right there with her, she would have gathered me into her arms for a long hug. I close my eyes and imagine her smoothing a hand over my hair as she hushes me like I'm her baby again.

"I feel so stupid, Mama." My words are all jumbled up, but I push them out in hopes of expelling the surge of emotion welling up inside me. "I've been feeling so stupid in Finland. I don't understand anything. And I thought Aksel would always support me, help me. But he..."

Yes.

I'm suddenly, intensely sure that I will be having nightmares about this word in the months to come.

I whisper, "He hates me now."

"Oh, sweetheart." Mama sighs again, this time sounding close to tears herself. "He doesn't hate you."

I sniffle. "That's what Tatiana says, too. But... he wants me to leave. He doesn't want me in Finland anymore."

The original go back to your own country. Maybe he now feels the way people who are so staunchly against immigration do. You don't belong here – go back.

And maybe, after all the unappreciative hatred I've spewed about Finland, its language and its culture, I deserve it.

"Tatiana is a wise girl," Mama says. "Aksel is hurting, just like you are. You need to figure out what you want, Emi, without feeling like you're being forced into it. And he needs time to get over the stress than being supportive has put on him."

I start to protest, but Mama speaks over me. "It is hard, you know, supporting someone like this. He's taking it personally when you get homesick or frustrated with Finnish things – and I don't blame him. Your father was the same way, when I went through my own adjustment period here."

"In Hamburg?" This is news to me, even though it makes sense. I had just never thought of Hamburg as being somewhere to adjust to. It's simply... the way things are meant to be. But I recognise that Mama probably feels the same for Hamburg that I feel for Helsinki. And, all of the sudden, I sympathise with how difficult that transition must have been for her, all those years ago.

At least now, I have a smartphone, the Internet, and messaging apps to communicate with friends and family back in Hamburg. Back in Mama's time, she hadn't had that. And she had moved way further than I had. I had just gone across the Baltic Sea. Mama had moved across continents.

"Yes, in Hamburg," Mama confirms, even though my question was more of an exclamation of surprise than a query for an answer.

"I never knew," I say. "Why didn't you ever tell me?"

"You never asked."

While I mull over this simple yet telling answer, Mama's laughter cuts across the silence.

"You've never thought of Hamburg that way, I know. For you, it's where you were born. It's home. But for me... Nothing in Hamburg was natural to me. I had to get used to it, the way you're getting used to the way things work in Helsinki now."

"Yeah," I say. "It's funny to remember that you weren't from Hamburg, that you had to get used to living in Germany. It's so..." I trail off, casting around for a description, and have to settle on, "weird."

"Life in Singapore was very different." Is that the slightest hint of wistfulness I detect in Mama's voice as she talks about her homeland? "Before I met your father, I'd never thought of leaving. We met in Singapore – have I told you this?"

"Yes," I say, dredging up the hazy memories of the times Mama told me about how she and Papa had met. "He was working there at the time."

She laughs. "Yes, he was. It was funny, really. We worked together and I was meant to introduce him to my friend, but..."