Bitter Bitch

by Maria Sveland

  I was deeply disappointed, because the trip was not the enjoyment for which I had hoped. By the last day I was walking on pins and needles. The public transport workers were striking so we walked around the whole day, kilometre after kilometre, from the student quarter to Montmartre and back.

  Our plane was leaving at eight in the evening and we came back to the hotel around five to get our luggage and call a taxi. The man at reception just laughed. Taxi? There was a strike after all, and not a single taxi was available at such short notice. If we were really lucky we might be able to fnd one on the street, but he seriously doubted it, and there were enormous traffic jams across Paris because of the strike.

  ‘You’re going to miss your plane,’ he told us. The cigarette smoke filling the lobby stung my eyes and constricted my chest. Suddenly it was difficult to breathe and I got tunnel vision. The man at the desk said that he would book a room for an additional night, just in case.

  ‘Come on Sanna, let’s go outside and try and get a taxi!’ I said, and we took our luggage and started walking.

  The boulevards were packed, with cars creeping forward, and my tunnel vision became even worse. Finally I saw a small gap in the traffic all the way at the end of the tunnel. I knew that I would not survive one more night without Sigge. Missing the plane was quite simply a physical impossibility. It just could not happen. Suddenly a taxi came creeping along in the lane next to the footpath. I rushed over and pulled open the door. Three men were sitting in the back seat smoking and laughing at the surprised expression on my face. My tunnel vision meant I could not tell which taxis were free and which were not.

  After several more minutes I managed to wave down a taxi, and I checked first to make sure it was free. Just as the car swung in in front of us, two young French women managed to rush up and pull open the door before us. They could not know that a new mother was standing there, half out of her mind, only two metres away. With wide open eyes and clenched fists I walked up to the women and the taxi, completely prepared to attack.

  In stumbling school-girl French I explained that we had a flight we simply could not miss. The French women pretended not to understand a word, and pursed their lips and rolled their eyes. The taxi driver sat quietly and seemed to be pondering which of us he would choose. Apparently nuance and politeness would not help here. I might as well use a sledgehammer.

  ‘C’est une situation du cris!’ I said as tears ran down my cheeks.

  I think I wanted to say that it was a crisis but I could not remember the word for crisis in French. Cris however means scream. This is a screaming situation, which in a way it was. And apparently it made an impression on the taxi driver who started dismissing the women in hot-tempered French. They swore and made foul gestures at our wonderful taxi driver whom I felt as though I would love for ever. He had saved my life!

  Another tremulous thirty minutes in the back seat remained while we snaked our way through the traffic jam. I gripped Sanna’s hand the whole time. She tried to calm me down and repeatedly said that we would not miss our flight, but it was not until we got out on the motorway and the traffic disappeared that I really started to believe we would make it.

  When I got home that night I lay down next to Sigge in our bed and looked at him. His little mouth, which was smiling in his sleep, his small breaths through his nose. After a while he woke up and saw my eyes and smiled. I stroked his hair and cheek and kissed him on the ear. Beloved, beloved little child! He soon fell back asleep between me and Johan, yet I lay awake for a long time and cried about being so confused, that I was doing everything wrong, that nothing turned out the way I wanted it to, that everything hurt so damn much all the time.

  In hindsight I can understand why I was forced to go to Paris, even if it is pitiful that I was compelled to carry on proving things like that to myself; that I did not have the peace simply to be. But I became bitter bitchy and conspiratorial when I thought about Johan being gone five days a week for two months when Sigge was only three months old. And of course he longed to be home, but not in that desperate, tunnel vision way I had in Paris.

  There are obviously differences between me and Johan, and I think about why that is. I know that Johan loves Sigge more than anything else, but it seems as though, unlike me, he can love without guilt. As if motherhood is so horribly weighed down with duty and the sublimation of all personal needs that it will always clash with the tiniest exertion of freedom.

  It makes me jealous; I want to love without guilt in the way that men do. Yes, I want to have my cake and eat it too. I want to be able to work, party, travel, be alone once in a while and be a mother to a beloved child. Admittedly, the self-sacrificing mother lives on inside many of us as a contradictory and hated ideal image, but she lives in stiff competition with a lot of other ideals. Thank goodness! She even has to struggle in order to survive there inside of us, because the women’s movement has slowly but surely made it possible for my generation of women to choose something more than just being a mother. Some of us do not even want to be mothers.

  PRAYING TO GOD (1983)

  There is a ping-pong table behind the hotel where we run around and around, only stopping to drink Fanta or eat some dill crisps that Mum has set out for us. The grown-ups are sitting at a table a little way off, sipping on drinks. I hear Dad getting noisy and Mum is quiet. Their friends Lars and Ann-Marie are laughing about something and then I hear Mum laugh as well, a short little laugh. I continue running, hitting the ping-pong ball every time it comes my way. I am good at knockout ping-pong. We played it during every break in the school gym all spring long.

  We have been swimming all day, far out into the sea, which is shallow a long way out. We swim over deep chasms and up on sandbanks that are suddenly there, making us touch the bottom. Dad told us that underwater currents can form and pull you down into the deep. On the way back to land I am scared as we swim over the deep parts, but nothing happens and afterwards it is nice to lie in the sun and warm up.

  We are staying in a house next to the hotel with blue-striped wallpaper and wicker chairs; pictures of the sea and seagulls hang on the walls. A tall, skinny man is staying in the room next to ours. We were sitting in the common area outside our room when he came out of his and went down the stairs. Then he switched the light in the hall on and off at least ten times before he finally went out the door.

  ‘It’s called an obsession,’ says Dad, and explains that some people who are mentally ill get the idea that they are going to die if they do not turn the light on and off a certain number of times before they go out. I think about the fact that I force myself to take four steps on the stairs before the door at school closes. If I can manage that, then I know that my heart will not stop beating that night. But now I think I am going to stop. I do not want to be sick like that man, tall and skinny and alone.

  Suddenly Mum is standing at the ping-pong table with the baby buggy in which my little brother is sleeping.

  ‘Come on, it’s time to go to our room!’ she says in a harsh voice. I can see Dad still sitting at the table with their friends.

  ‘Isn’t Dad coming?’ I ask.

  ‘No, he’s coming later,’ she says, and hurries us up.

  Dad does not look at us when we leave and I know that they have had a fight. When we get to our house it is plunged in darkness and I hope the crazy man is not standing somewhere in the dark outside our room. It is just us and him in the whole house. I am scared but I finally fall asleep after Mum shows me that she has locked the door.

  I wake to the sound of Mum and Dad’s bed creaking, a rhythmic thumping. After a few seconds I hear Mum say, ‘If you don’t stop I’m going to scream for help!’ I lie on my camp bed thinking that the only other person in the whole house is the crazy man. I lie perfectly still and do not know what I am sup posed to do. Now my heart really is going to stop beating. I feel it in my whole body, but just as I am placing my hand over my chest to check, my sister throws herself out of bed. She turns on the lig
ht and says, ‘What are you doing?’ with a loud, angry voice.

  I see Dad roll off Mum and get up and put on his underpants. He has a hard time balancing but manages to get dressed. He does not make a sound and neither does Mum. He takes the car keys and his wallet and puts them in his pocket too. Just as he is about to walk out the door he catches sight of my sister’s pink wallet, pours out her money and puts it in his pocket.

  ‘That’s my money!’ Kajsa screams and starts crying. ‘Mum, he’s taking my money!’ When Dad has left, Mum says that she will get more money tomorrow.

  ‘You have to try and sleep now!’ says Mum.

  The next morning I hear Mum trying to explain to Ann-Marie that Dad disappeared during the night.

  ‘He was so nasty,’ Mum says. ‘He just took the car and left.’

  Ann-Marie asks her something and Mum replies, ‘I don’t know. But he was so nasty to me!’

  She does not say anything else and Ann-Marie does not ask. We eat breakfast and I see the tall, skinny man sitting alone at a table further away. Maybe he heard? We pack our things and go to the train station. Lars and Ann-Marie and their kids are already at the beach so they cannot come with us and say goodbye. All of us are embarrassed, I think, but maybe Ann-Marie did not understand what it meant, the part about Dad being so nasty to Mum.

  Dad always pays for everything and Mum always has to ask him for money, then he gets out his wad of bills and gives her some. But last night I saw him take his thick, black wallet with him. I saw him take Kajsa’s money too.

  ‘Do we have enough money for the train tickets?’ I ask Mum at the station.

  ‘Yes, you don’t have to worry!’ she says and buys sweets for me and Kajsa.

  We travel for several quiet hours through summery Sweden, filled with yellow fields and thick forests. I am sweating but I do not get sick like I always do in the car.

  ‘Are you going to get a divorce now?’ I ask Mum.

  ‘No, we aren’t,’ Mum says, but I do not believe her.

  When we get home Dad is sitting in the back yard, smoking. I am relieved that he has not wrecked the car during the night and died, but I do not say hello and I refuse to look him in the eye.

  I walk to the park to see if any of my friends are there. On summer evenings everyone who is at home plays cops and robbers. It is the best game I know, but there are not any friends playing outside tonight. Everyone is away on holiday, just like we were.

  After a while I go home. I can tell that Mum and Dad are happy again. Mum is making rhubarb fool and setting out sandwiches for dinner as though nothing happened. I see her in the kitchen, back to me, and I do not understand her. I do not know her.

  I still have not said one word to Dad and I do not say anything now either. He tries to make eye contact but I turn away from him and go to bed. For the first time in my life I wish they would get a divorce. But they do not.

  At night I pray to God, asking for all kinds of things, things I want to have, things I want to have happen. It feels good knowing that he is up there watching and listening to me.

  ‘The best way to honour God is to sing for him,’ says our Christian primary school teacher. I immediately join the Christian choir at the free church close to where we live. Several of my classmates are also members and every Wednesday evening we sing in God’s honour.

  ‘It’s pronounced AAAAAva, not EEEEva. You can call me Äva,’ explains the choir director. She is big and fat and speaks with a Värmland accent. I love singing all the hymns and I sing in a high-pitched voice. I like my voice, but sometimes Äva tells me not to sing so loud.

  ‘You’re drowning everyone else out, Sara!’ Then I sing a bit more softly.

  This is the day

  This is the day

  The Lord has made

  The Lord has made

  Let us rejoice and be glad in it

  Let us rejoice and be glad in it

  We thank the Lord, yes we thank the Lord

  I do so want to become Christian. At church there is a fellowship I watch with a hunger inside, I can almost feel it. Everyone in the choir except me has parents who are members of the congregation. But each night I hope and pray to God that Mum and Dad will become Christians and join the church, that they will stop fighting and be nice.

  Dear God, I pray, make Mum and Dad come and see me sing in the choir. But they do not come, and every Sunday during the service Äva lets everyone else sing a solo except for me. Finally I ask if I will get to sing a solo one day.

  ‘Yes, maybe one day. There’s nothing wrong with your voice Sara, but the others have parents in the church who want to see their children sing. Do you understand that it’s important for them to get to sing, when their parents are here to listen?’

  I understand, but everything has started to hurt. There is a burning sensation in my eyes and my tights are making me itch. I stop singing in the choir and I start drawing instead. Big, fat Ävas who change into angels and fly up to God. Sometimes they lose their wings and fall down and die.

  I draw a picture of me as a princess with a Daddy king who is kind, and a beautiful Mummy queen. They love me more than anything else and every day we stroll through our large garden and talk to each other. The king is interested. He asks me what I like best, drawing or singing? Drawing, I say.

  Mummy queen is heartbroken. ‘My sweet child, you sing so fantastically! You must never stop singing!’

  But Daddy king says that I can both draw and sing.

  I sit at my desk for hours and draw and draw, pictures depicting stories that make me happy. I take an especially good draw ing of the three of us in our castle garden down to Mum and Dad. To Mum and Dad, I have written at the top.

  ‘Here. I drew it.’

  ‘Oh, well isn’t that nice!’ Mum says as she is doing the dishes.

  ‘But you didn’t look.’

  ‘Oh, but of course I did,’ Mum says, and turns a little more. She cannot take it because her hands are wet with dishwater.

  I put the drawing next to the telephone and hope they will hang it on the refrigerator. But it remains lying there and one day I crumple it into a tiny ball, and throw it pointedly into the rubbish.

  ‘Why don’t you ever see anything?’ I scream and run up to my room, tears streaming.

  ‘My goodness what was that?’ I hear Dad ask Mum.

  I think about all the Christians I know. My best friend Mariella and her family, they seem happy. I have never seen her parents argue or say horrible things to each other. Mariella’s mother is my day mother, so every day after school Mariella and I go to her house. Sometimes we get rosehip soup with ice cream as a snack and Mariella’s mother never seems stressed. She sits down at the table with us and asks how our day has been.

  One day she grabs hold of me, pulls me towards her and gives me a long, hard hug.

  ‘Mmm …’ she says and smells my hair, just as if she is enjoying it.

  ‘Why are you doing that?’ I ask, perplexed.

  ‘You look as though you need a hug,’ she says, and smiles at me.

  I do not smile back, I do not want to show the tears which are going to come at any moment. Instead I say, ‘OK,’ and go upstairs to Mariella’s room.

  Sometimes I fantasize that Mum and Dad die in a car accident and I am adopted by Mariella’s parents, or by my teacher. She is also a Christian, and she is one of the best people I know. She knows so much and tells us long stories from the Bible. I know some of them because of The Children’s Bible Grandma gave me for Christmas. I have read about Jesus’s goodness and about a lot of crazy, evil people who did not know anything. My teacher leads the juniors at the free church and almost the whole class is there every Wednesday night. The ones whose parents are members of the church have the highest standing with her and I dream about Mum and Dad joining too. I wonder what it feels like to meet the teacher every Sunday after the service?

  All Christians seem to be happy all the time and I am sure Mum and Dad would be happy too
if they became Christians. I write in my light-blue diary in my best handwriting: Dear God. Make Mum and Dad Christian. Also thanks for being such a good God, because you let it snow. It’s pretty.

  But God probably does not read small, light-blue diaries because Mum and Dad never become Christians. They argue and I know they are unhappy. Dad is gone for several weeks at a time and Mum is so busy preparing meals, doing the dishes and vacuuming that she does not have the time or energy for anything else.

  One day Mum wants all of us to go to a real photographer and have a studio portrait taken. I want to go because I am thinking about The Cosby Show on TV. The Cosby family are always happy; Christian and happy. I so badly want our family to look happy in a photograph. Mum is beaming and she is trying to make me and my sister look nice. She makes a frilly blouse for each of us out of an old sheet. The frill is stiff and I can see that the seams are uneven, because Mum was in a hurry when she made the blouses, but I do not want to argue with her when she is so happy. The night before the appointment she decides to trim our fringes; the hair has been hanging in our eyes and should have been trimmed a long time ago. She takes a pair of scissors and zigzags her way through our hair. It is uneven because Mum cannot cut hair, especially fringes. We still do not say anything, we do not even fight with each other, but continue to be nice. It is unusual to see Mum so happy and carefree. She stands in front of the mirror and puts on her new pink lipstick.

  In the morning Dad does not want to come with us. We are sitting around the table eating toast with orange marmalade and Mum is pouring Dad’s coffee.

  ‘Please,’ Mum pleads dejectedly. ‘We’ve booked a time and everything.’