Rememberment, Chapter XV: Sharks' Prey

Up until the fourth grade I was pretty much a model student. My grades had been high across the board, I was respectful towards my teachers and never skipped classes. But that started to slowly change - I spent more and more of my time just daydreaming and drawing during class. My classmates often bought my drawings from me, paying with erasers that smelled like candy. Those were all the rage at the time and I soon had quite the collection of them.

I was often feeling down. I thought winter was pretty boring and I hated the winter sports at school, especially skating. After school I would often just lay in bed with our cat (we got a new one - her name was Misse and I loved her more than any of our previous pets) until Mom told me to get up and do my homework.

We had some problems with the house. Our water came from our own well and some of the pipes were rusty. We often got brown water from the tap and showering gave our hair a subtle red tint. Our peat-powered heating system also sometimes acted up, and it was Esa who then went and cleaned it. I was always laughing at him when he came back from that job as he was covered in ash and peat dust from head to toe.

My health wasn't too great. I was always pale as a ghost, and whenever I was taken to a nurse they wanted a blood sample from me. My sinuses continued to keep the doctors busy, as every time I had a flu they got infected. And then I caught chicken pox. I had such a high fever that I had hallucinations. Once I suddenly saw water rise around me, with sharks circling around my bed. Mom heard my screams and came to me, somehow just ignoring the water and the sharks. It must have been a few weeks before Christmas, because I remember still having scabs around my body from the vesicles when we were rehearsing for our school Christmas play.

Mom was often very tired from all her work, and we didn't visit our family friends quite so often anymore. Dad got a new apparatus to medicate his failing lungs - I remember it being red and looking a bit like a pistol, with a small container at the bottom holding some kind of medicine. The pistol-thingy was connected to a small compressor which was pretty loud. I still vividly remember the noise it made when Dad was using it - it sounded exactly like Darth Vader's breathing.

A lot of his time was spent resting in bed, but when he was feeling a little stronger he sat at the kitchen table making woodcrafts. He also spent a lot of time just reading the Bible and listening to gospel music, sometimes even playing a little with his mandolin.

The rest of the family didn't share his passion with religion which frustrated him. He wanted me to team up with him as a true follower of Jesus, so that I could help him save the rest of the family from Hell. He also started taking me to the adult meetings in the Free Church, where there was a lot of singing and preaching and shouting hallelujah. Towards the end a bag was passed around for people to drop some money in. 

They also sold tapes of gospel music near the church exit; the singers were the two church preachers. Mom said the head preacher used to be something of a pop singer before. She didn't like the man, saying that he was just like one of those door-to-door salesmen who conned people by selling them overpriced junk.

One time I heard Mom yelling to my dad so loud that I didn't dare to even breathe. She was crying and threatening to leave him dwelling in his own shit. I was terrified. I later learned that she had been secretly putting money aside in order to buy a new laundry machine, but then Dad had found her stash and given all the money to the Free Church as "tithes".

She didn't leave us though, not that time and not later either.