Bitter Bitch

by Maria Sveland

  One of Sigge’s favourite films is Finding Nemo, in which a father fish spends the entire film searching for his son who has been taken away to an aquarium. The mother is quite simply dead, like Pippi Longstocking’s mother. And where is Alfons Åberg’s mother? No one knows.

  It is as if stories for children have also been forced to compensate for the father’s absence in real life.

  I know a lot of people who have grown up without their fathers, but no one who has grown up without a mother. I know a few whose fathers have actually been present. Dads who have shared custody, and dads who have not worked and worked and worked. But there are not many. There are far fewer of them than all of the fathers I know who have never been around, who have just come home and played a guest role on the weekends. Fathers who have cooked fancy dinners on Fridays and Saturdays before it was time to leave again on Monday morning.

  I suppose it must feel good to be missed so; so wonderful in fact that you might misunderstand the whole thing and become proud and fulfilled or write a song about your daughter’s loss? Dad come home. Because I miss you. Come before the summer is over, Dad.

  And then everybody thinks it is sweet when it is actually horribly sad.

  There is one stuffy June morning I will never forget. The liver pâté was mouldy, which is the most disgusting thing I know, and Johan had been away working for several weeks and home only at the weekends. Sigge missed him and I missed him and we were walking through the park on our way to daycare, two tired and sad souls. Sigge was sitting quietly in the buggy. He usually asks about everything we see along the way, why the air is so transparent, where the sun actually lives and if I like ice cream with pears and whipped cream. But today he was just sitting there quiet and tired, and I wanted to stop and hold him but instead I walked even faster. And then in the middle of the silence his questions started to come.

  ‘Mommy, why does Daddy have to work in Växjö?’

  I gave him a tired, noncommittal answer.

  ‘He just has to. That’s where his job is right now.’

  ‘But why?’ Sigge continued.

  ‘To earn money so we can buy food and pay the rent.’

  ‘Why?’ Sigge said again, and I realized that he really did not understand and then I started wondering whether I really understood.

  ‘People have to work,’ I said and heard how hollow it sounded.

  ‘Why?’ said Sigge, and I realized that I really did not have a good answer. It became even clearer to me that no one forces us; these are personal, independent choices. But I could not tell Sigge that. I could not tell Sigge that Johan really wanted to work in Växjö. It is hopeless thinking that there always seem to be a thousand legitimate reasons for making unequal choices. We need the money. Nope, we actually do not, we have enough to get by. But we need each other and your child needs you!

  I am also one of those mothers taking pictures of their child with his father in order to compensate for his absence. For lack of a harmonious present you must create a harmonious past.

  And then in the middle of June, before we went on holiday, Sigge started banging his head against the buggy. He does this when he gets angry or sad, which is pretty often. He was simply exhausted after a whole year at daycare with only a short Christmas break and now he needed a holiday. But we did not understand that then, instead we worried about his behaviour, something we had never experienced before.

  Normally Sigge is neither particularly angry nor cranky. Now he did not want to play, or tease or cuddle. He ran around like a thundercloud and banged his head against a wall every now and then when we told him to come and get dressed.

  We went to Gotland two weeks later, where we had rented a house for three weeks, and the first morning Sigge stopped banging his head. He woke up like a ray of sunshine and wanted to hug us and explore the anthill which was in the tree in the corner of the garden.

  It was really so silly. After a difficult year in our marriage we just kept on working, becoming ever more irritated and exhausted, instead of pausing and realizing that the three of us needed time together.

  How stupid can you be? What kind of stupid choices are we making anyway? Choosing strange priorities with devastating consequences that can destroy everything that has meaning.

  In the evenings, after Sigge had fallen asleep, we sat close together in a hammock and talked and looked out over the fields. It took a long, long time before it was too cold to sit outside. We looked at each in wonder and asked why we hadn’t done this earlier. We were surprised and happy that we had so much we wanted to talk about, almost like we were getting to know each other all other again.

  During the day we biked to the ocean and we made love every afternoon when Sigge took his nap. In the house there on Gotland we had time to heal some of the wounds that had been opened, or rather we made time for each other – something we seem to be devastatingly bad at under normal circumstances.

  Now, lying here in the deck chair, I just got a text message from my boss Richard at the radio station. I sent him a text earlier today asking something about work. I was struck by a pang of anxiety in the face of all of the work which will be waiting for me when I get back home next week. And now Richard had replied.

  ‘Darling! You shouldn’t be thinking about work right now. I’ll take care of it! Good that you’re enjoying yourself, you definitely deserve it. Hugs from a cold and grey Stkhlm!’

  The awkward thing is that thoughtfulness like this makes me weep. I do not quite know why, but I start to blubber and I feel small. I have not really been mothered, as therapist Niklas would probably suggest. Yes, that is probably what it is, but I have been fathered even less. But that is not really something you can talk about, because there is not a psychological term describing a father’s care for his children, maybe because no great achievements are ever expected of them?

  In any case, Richard and orange men. There is some hope for the male of the species after all.

  This morning at breakfast I saw the gesticulating man again, the one I had thought looked so nice. But this morning I looked at him up close. He was on his way to get some coffee when he passed my table, and I discovered that he was walking with a zombie stare and a back that was far too straight. He was patrolling the tables like an old military man, whistling with a stern look on his face. His wife was hobbling after him (strange that I did not see her limping the other day) and when she passed my table I discovered that she has a hearing aid! That is the reason for his wild gesticulating. He doesn’t have a choice!

  Sometimes the jigsaw pieces fall into place and I cannot help but laugh. Maybe it is due to the fact that the red wine was unusually good tonight and that I am sitting here on my balcony, newly bathed and stuffed with food, watching the sun sink behind the volcano of Mount Teide. Or maybe it is just because the bitter bitch in me has a right to her cynical observations?

  I remember reading a newspaper article with the headline ‘Listening to women is difficult’. The introduction read, ‘Now you have an excuse for why you never listen to your wife. According to British researchers, it’s harder to listen to women than men.’ I thought about the excluding term of address, ‘Now you have an excuse as to why you never listen to your wife.’ They did not even bother to pretend that they were addressing both female and male readers.

  Then a fantastic circular argument was presented, in which psychologists at Sheffield University had studied men’s ability to listen to women without losing their concentration. And lo and behold: it showed that men had a harder time listening to women than to men! The reporter had even interviewed one of the researchers, who stated that women make use of language’s melody in a way that makes their voices harder to listen to. Of course, the article was written by a man, and I cannot help wondering what this article would have been like if it had been written by a woman: ‘It has been proven, men are stupid. Now you have an explanation as to why your husband never listens to you. Men have a harder time concentrating which, according to
British researchers, is due to a small genetic brain imperfection.’

  As luck would have it there are female researchers and they often arrive, as if by chance, at other conclusions. In It’s Called Love, my favourite über alles Carin Holmberg writes about the phenomenon of not being listened to. She has inter viewed tons of (heterosexual) couples about all aspects of their relationships. Among many other things, she asked how they listen to each other. And just think, the men explained that they find it harder to listen than their girlfriends/partners. The girlfriends, on the other hand, say they understand why their husbands find it difficult to listen, because they tend to bring up things which are unimportant or uninteresting!

  ‘Personally she thinks that she’s a good listener. This of course should be seen as meaning that he doesn’t talk very often.’

  The entire book is a searing confrontation and a detailed study of the everyday inequality and power imbalance between men and women. One of Holmberg’s theories is that the voluntary subordination by women makes men’s superiority invisible, to both of them. We constantly parry, cover up and take on roles and household chores ‘voluntarily’ like that of the dependent wife or an alcoholic. It is a line of reasoning to which I have no trouble relating. Acknowledging that men are oppressed is painful and something I would gladly postpone…

  But what really hurts is when Carin Holmberg asks why men aren’t more bothered by their voluntary superiority?

  If I were white and living in South Africa under apartheid and started a relationship with a black man it would torture me endlessly that we, according to that culture, were not considered equals. If, despite the obstacles, I continued loving him, I would dedicate my life to fighting against apartheid.

  Love – the greatest and most beautiful of all powers, the one that can truly heal wounds and change people for the better.

  Why is it that men, in the name of love, fail to do every thing within their power to fight against the injustices, against patriarchal apartheid? And if they see the power and thousands of years of patriarchal oppression as something which is too difficult for them to change, how is it that they do not struggle against the injustices within their own relationships? As they say, power corrupts. But does this apply to men as a group, too?

  Society and culture sanctions marriage in all possible, crazy ways, something which is still, in some way, an explanation for the fact that women find themselves on the losing end of things. When it comes to caring for, loving and making time for a new little person, anybody who has children knows that two parents are less than ideal. On the other hand, three or four would be just about right. Then there would always someone around while the rest are catching up on sleep, making love, cooking, cleaning, shopping, working. If you ignore the oppression gay people experience, I think the rainbow families, the dykes and the fags, who get together and become parents, in many ways feel much better than straight people who just keep on struggling.

  This afternoon I walked down to the ocean. I stood there, taking deep breaths, and I felt happy, until two young men on Vespas drove by, stopped twenty metres away from where I was standing, turned around, drove back and parked two metres away from me. I remained standing there, pretending not to notice. I told myself to keep enjoying, something that lasted about thirty seconds. By this time they had moved so close to me that I could not ignore them any longer so I gave up and left. They yelled something in Spanish after me but I just kept on walking.

  In the evening I tried walking to the neighbouring village of Santa Ursula for dinner. At times like these I see the limitations of travelling alone. At the little pizzeria, which was a bit dodgy looking, three men and I sat spread out at different tables.

  When I raised my beer glass to take a drink I suddenly saw out of the corner of my eye one of the younger men lift his glass as if to say cheers. I did not want to seem rude so I carefully returned the gesture and smiled what I hoped was a cool smile. I really should not have done that. He immediately started speaking wildly in Spanish with the other men and then laughed a he-he laugh. I understood all too well what it meant. Dammit.

  I suddenly remembered the shock I had experienced as a sixteen year old when I was travelling around Spain by train with three girlfriends and we suddenly saw that two teenagers were standing a few metres from our table, masturbating. They were staring at us the whole time, unashamed. I strongly doubt that a man sitting alone has ever experienced something similar, either a woman masturbating openly or he-he laughs directed at his table. I strongly doubt that men can comprehend the discomfort or fear involved in having to deal with it.

  I wonder how this really affects women, deep down. I assume that if anyone were ever interested in researching this they would end up with a shocking result.

  For safety’s sake I took a taxi back to the hotel. Once back in my room I felt how cold I was. I ran a hot bath and listened to my beloved Nina Simone and became warm down to my bones. I fell asleep like this, comfortable, warm and safe.

  800 DEGREES

  It is raining on Tenerife today and the mood at breakfast is just as dreary as the weather outside. The situation is made even worse by the fact that I forgot to put my contacts in, and everything is just a fuzzy mist. I’m only able to watch a German family at the table closest to me.

  The woman looks terribly sad. Not just a general distant sadness like so many of the women here, but with eyes that are really red from crying sad. It looks like she’s only just stopped crying. The man, who is twice her size, is chewing methodically on his ham sandwich. They have a young son who is about eight years old, and he is trying to cheer them up by telling some German jokes I do not understand. Both parents smile crookedly at him so he will not get even more worried, but you can see that he is really sad too.

  Their sadness is infectious and I realize that I am suddenly feeling anxious as well. So I try and concentrate on the book I have brought with me to breakfast, The Collected Works of Subcomandante Marcos. It helps to read it when the every day feels petty and I need a little distance from my life. Subcomandante Marcos is the spokesman for the Zapatista guerillas in Chiapas, Mexico. In the Zapatistas Army, men and women fight alongside one another for peace, democracy and equality for the unbelievably poor indigenous people. Marcos writes about their struggle in his texts, which are both poetic and political.

  On March 8, 1996 Marcos writes:

  It appears that dignity is contagious, and it is the women who are most likely to become infected with this uncomfortable ill … This is a good time to remember and to give their rightful places to the insurgent Zapatistas, the women who are armed and unarmed. To remember the rebels and those uncomfortable Mexican women now bent over knitting that history which, without them, is nothing more than a badly made fable. Tomorrow … If there is to be one, will be made with the women, and, above all, by them.’

  It is easy to romanticize the Zapatistas when they have a subcomandante who writes so beautifully. I’m sure you would find many faults in the feminism of Marcos and the other male Zapatistas if you lived with them for a few weeks, but still, how can you not be grateful? They are at least demonstrating the possibility of men and women fighting together against injustice.

  It is both predictable and yet still terribly annoying that in affluent Sweden, men are notable for their silence and their absence from the struggle for equality between the sexes. Hiding behind the myth of the equal Sweden is easy, but it is really just a way of denying that injustice exists, something they gladly do with the aid of personal experience, a twisted travesty of the women’s movement’s credo that ‘The private is political.’ By doing so men can, for example, claim that the statistics on battered women are exaggerated, something one of Sweden’s most well-known male journalists said in an interview once: he personally only knew of one case of domestic violence among his friends and family.

  A few years ago I got a job on a new community TV programme for young viewers aged between twenty and thirty-five, which the
leading channel SVT would be producing. Filled with expectation, I drove out to the hotel in the archipelago for a two day conference at which the editorial staff would get to meet each other for the first time. We were also supposed to bounce around thoughts and ideas for the upcoming programme.

  When a group of men and women who do not know each other meet, the women fall silent while the men develop verbal diarrhoea. That is what it was like in my film studies class at university when we had large lectures of 120 people. Most of the girls sat quietly taking notes and occasionally asking a question, while several of the boys would embark on a pseudo-dialogue with the lecturer. They rarely asked questions; instead they made statements. They often repeated what the lecturer had just said in their own words, presenting it as though it was their own observation. And strangely enough, the lecturer often went along with it, especially if she was a woman, nodding in agreement and saying, ‘Hm … that’s interesting.’

  A similar situation occurred in the conference room in the hotel in the archipelago. The girls sat quietly, despite the fact that we were all smart women with several years of experience within journalism, while the men tossed their opinions around. They joked loudly while we laughed politely and encouragingly at all of their thoughts and ideas.

  In the end my behaviour made me want to puke, but I am too well brought up for that so instead I boiled with rage. I felt it swell inside me, my eyes narrowed and I wished I were brave enough to test my random ideas in front of everyone, loud and proud. Finally I could not hold it in any longer. I let go and my anger boiled over. I had several ideas I wanted to try out, but in this situation I was forced to run with the most radically feminist one.

  ‘I have a piece which I would very much like to do …’ I said interrupting one of my male colleagues who was in the process of explaining how important it was for us not to be so politically correct.