Bitter Bitch

by Maria Sveland

  Everyone gets along and seems happy, even Mum and Dad. I eat sponge cake and beam, safe in the knowledge that the next morning I am leaving for a month-long backpacking trip. The knowledge that a kind of hell is really over for me now is present in my whole body. The knowledge that something new is waiting for me, Europe and an entire life to live!

  The next morning, my four best friends and I are sitting crammed into a train compartment. Our parents and siblings are crammed on to the platform. I see the dark circles under my dad’s eyes and Mum’s wrinkles from all that smoking. They look tired. I see my beloved little sister and wonderful little brother. I have a stab of guilt; I am saving my life and leaving them behind with Mum and Dad in hell. But I do not want the guilt to sabotage my happy feeling of freedom.

  Not now.

  I am also tired and long to be happy.

  The train starts moving and we lean out of the window and wave.

  ‘Bye!’ I yell loudly.

  ‘Bye!’ I scream.

  Goodbye you arseholes. Goodbye everyone. To hell with you.

  TUFTS OF A LEOPARD

  I call home to hear Sigge’s voice. When I called yesterday he did not want to talk to me. But he comes to the phone today.

  ‘Hey sweetie! It’s Mummy. How are you?’

  I hear his bright little voice which I love more than anything in this world.

  ‘Hi. I’m OK. Bye!’

  He runs off, disappearing; I hear his small steps on the wooden floor. It breaks my heart and I try and keep my voice steady but it goes up into a falsetto. Yet again a kind of justice: if I leave I can count on him being angry at me.

  Grandma Eva is babysitting and says that she and Sigge have drawn a picture of me, Johan and Sigge riding on a boat in Tenerife, all three of us. We hang up and now I am hit with an immense longing mixed with anxiety and guilt. What have I done? What am I doing here?

  I try to invoke the heavy, enormous tiredness I was walking around with in the weeks before I arrived, how disgusting I felt and much I longed for sleep and solitude. Why the hell can things never be good? I have been gone for five days. Five pitiful days! A two year old and his thirty-year-old miserable mummy should be able to survive that without too much trauma!

  Nina Simone is singing ‘I wish I knew how it would feel to be free’.

  Yep. I wish.

  There is a gym at the hotel. So often in the past when I’ve been sad I have thought, I am going to go and exercise. It works almost as well as a warm bath, a way of at least getting a little bit more contact with my body.

  I change and go down to the gym, and it turns out that an aerobics class is about to start. Young Spanish girls with glittery shirts and leg warmers are milling around. A few have small leopard-patterned tufts of fur around their arms and wrists. Maybe the area around La Quinta Park is affluent? On my walks I have seen houses with budding gardens and locked gates for security. Yes, that is probably it. This group looks like it belongs at the Sturebadet gym in Stockholm rather than at Friskis & Svettis. At Friskis you see overweight girls wearing T-shirts bearing the slogan ‘I Love Dajm!’ and all sorts of untrained bodies moving together. A liberating nerdiness rules over the entire building.

  The only time I have been to Sturebadet I slipped on the well-polished tiles and the older women looked at me in concern. I crawled up clumsily from the floor and felt like an outsider. Their looks made me paranoid and I wondered if I smelled, or if they thought I was a junkie who had managed to sneak in for a shower.

  Here among all of these tufts of fur I get the same feeling. For a second my class hatred is ignited. I look down at my washed-out gym trousers and my discoloured, greyish and once white T-shirt. My class anxiety.

  Just as I am debating whether or not to go into the gym and get on a bike, the teacher for the class comes up to me. She is about thirty-five and introduces herself as Rosita. She gives me a friendly smile and says that she hasn’t seen me here before. I explain that I am a guest at the hotel and she asks for my name and says I am very welcome. Her smile is friendly and warm, so I decide to stay.

  The class starts and my heart is soon pumping in time with the bad Euro-disco music. The leopard tufts and I are doing step combination after step combination. I grin happily because it feels so good, almost like dancing. Rosita grins at all of us but mostly at me.

  When it is time for the strength training she comes over and shows the class which angle to use when doing sit-ups by placing her hand on the small of my back. Strangely enough the attention does not embarrass me, instead I enjoy it. It makes me feel chosen. The leopard tufts all look happy and I think that the glitter does not really matter. Let them glitter, it suits them.

  I am greedily drinking from my water bottle after class when Rosita comes walking towards me.

  ‘Sara! It was very fun to have you here! Please come tomorrow at seven, it’s body toning. Lots of fun!’

  I look at her in surprise. This is so unlike the Swedish shyness. I have never had a teacher come up to me like this after a training session.

  ‘Yes. Maybe I’ll come, it was great fun!’ I say kindly.

  ‘Good!’ she says confidently. ‘See you tomorrow!’

  ‘OK,’ I reply, surprised, and realize that I will have to show up again tomorrow.

  I spend the next day in the deck chair, alternately dozing and reading. My muscles are sore which makes me limp to the pool. I clumsily throw myself in and swim a few laps. At least now I look a little bit like the retirees. Maybe the people watching me think I am here for my rheumatism? My MS? Would this give me a more valid reason for leaving my husband and child at home? Well, maybe.

  When it starts getting close to seven I start getting a bit nervous. This feels awkward. What if Rosita’s invitation meant something else entirely? My anxiety irritates me. Does it matter what thoughts could be behind it? After all, I like working out. Why must I get so embarrassed when people show an interest in me?

  I put on my ugly exercise clothes and go down to the gym. Rosita comes up to me immediately.

  ‘Sara! You came! Good.’

  I see a new group of leopard tufts staring curiously at me.

  ‘Yes. Hello,’ I say weakly.

  Rosita takes my hand and leads me into the room. Now I know I have red blotches on my neck, fiery red spots that always appear when I become so horribly embarrassed. What does she think anyway? Have I broken some sort of rule? Got involved in an agreement I did not know about by showing up here again? But the session is starting and after a while I leave all the embarrassment behind and enjoy feeling my body work.

  If Rosita is embarrassed she does not show it at all. Instead she comes up again immediately after the session.

  ‘You were fantastic Sara!’ she says, and it makes me happy even if I suspect she is only saying it to flatter me.

  ‘Thank you!’ I reply.

  ‘Do you want to have a drink with me in the bar?’ she asks happily, and I assume she notes my hesitation because she continues before I get a chance to answer. ‘Just a small beer. It’s such fun to see a young person here at the hotel!’

  She grins and I start smiling too, because there is something liberating about her open manner, even though it troubles me.

  ‘Well, OK, just a small one!’ I reply.

  We decide to meet in the bar in fifteen minutes so we have time to shower. Fifteen minutes later we are sitting across from each other and each of us has a beer.

  Rosita wants to know why I am here and I try and explain what January is like. What January in Sweden can do to people. She laughs and says that she does not understand because she grew up on Tenerife, and when they get a little bit of rain it usually just makes them happy.

  It is actually quite fun. Rosita is inquisitive and happy. We laugh a lot and I ask what it is like to work at the gym here at La Quinta Park. Rosita says that it is OK but she gets tired of all of the retirees. She is thirty-seven and when I tell her I am thirty she is surprised that I am that old.
She becomes even more surprised when I tell her that I am married and have a son.

  ‘You don’t look like a mother!’ she says.

  I laugh. ‘And what does a mother look like then?’

  ‘Fat!’ she replies with distaste. ‘That’s why I don’t have any children. I don’t want to lose my grip.’

  I look at her toned body and think that is exactly what it means to become a mother, losing your grip. No matter how toned you are, you give up your body and a part of yourself. That is why it is so painful. It is not until I manage to let go and lose control that it will become possible to enjoy motherhood. And that is why becoming a mother seems to be such an impossible project when it comes to equality.

  I remember the first few months with Sigge, how every minute was spent getting him to sleep a little so that I could have a moment to myself. How I worked against him instead of enjoying his waking moments. How I had such a hard time letting go of everything, my old life, and just being in the here and now.

  With embarrassment, I remember my third visit to the daycare centre. I brought a newspaper, hoping that Sigge would play by himself so that I could read in peace. The other mums were sitting on the floor as usual, half a foot from their babies. I put Sigge down and walked six feet away and sat down on a comfortable sofa. Sigge immediately started crawling around and investigating the mountain of toys and I happily opened my newspaper and started to read. I was right in the middle of an article about PM Göran Persson’s leadership style when I suddenly realized that everything was quiet. All conversation had stopped and when I looked up from my paper I saw that the five floor mums were sitting there staring at me angrily. Sigge was happily gnawing on an orange plastic fish and I could not understand what was wrong. What had he done? What had I done?

  I had settled down on the sofa and in doing so ended up two feet higher than the floor mums. I did what I had seen so many fathers do at the daycare centre. Apparently for a mother, doing the same thing was not OK. I tried ignoring the silence for half a minute and then I gave up, got up and sat on the floor half a foot away from Sigge.

  The floor mums returned to their conversations, oh, those murderous conversations about lack of sleep, weight gain and colic! So boring, time stands still. I smiled a little at them but no one smiled back. I had clearly shown that I did not want to be one of them and now I was not welcome.

  I never went back to the daycare centre again.

  Now in hindsight I can almost understand them. There really was something typically dismal in my constant desire to escape. I get irritated every time I see a father with that absent look while the child screams for attention; all the dads I see reading the paper while the children are missing them. The big difference is that the absence of the father is not regarded as critically as that of the mother. And it actually makes me a little bitter bitchy. Men can become fathers without needing to forgo their selfish impulses, while women have to give up so much when they wander into the cramped room of motherhood. I see Sigge’s angry eyes, his disappointment when I have been away. Even our children seem to have an inherent feeling for what demands they can place on Mum and what demands they can place on Dad.

  Rosita orders two more beers for us and I thank her happily. I suddenly feel like getting really drunk and ignoring all of these hopeless thoughts.

  ‘Can’t you take me somewhere we can dance?’ I ask.

  ‘Bueno!’ Rosita yells. ‘Of course!’

  We ride on her Vespa and I hold on to her waist tightly. I breathe in the sea air and close my eyes so I will not see the curves Rosita takes without slowing down.

  We are at what I assume is a real Tenerife disco, meaning wonderfully horrible disco music from different decades and drinks which are much too strong. But I want to get drunk so I guzzle my gin and tonic in big gulps. Rosita laughs and pulls me out on to the dance floor.

  We dance wildly, mimicking each other with big movements that create lots of space around us. Madonna is singing that she is a virgin and Bono about Bloody Sundays and we laugh at each other and compete to see who can dance the worst. I think I win.

  In the end I can barely stand on my aching legs so I sit down at the bar and guzzle another gin and tonic. Rosita is dancing with one of the few men who dared to approach us. Her dancing is calmer now, more in tune with his movements.

  The DJ is playing ‘I’m gonna give you a lick with my razor tongue’ and I see several men sticking their tongues out during the chorus and moving them quickly back and forth. Rosita looks at me and rolls her eyes, I roll mine back at her.

  ‘I’m gonna give you a lick with my razor tongue.’ I look around and try to find someone who is doing the tongue thing in a joking way, but everyone seems serious and excited. Damn reptiles.

  I’ve had enough dancing and I walk over to Rosita and give her a big hug.

  ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ I say in her ear.

  Rosita just laughs and hugs me back. In the taxi on the way back I cannot stop smiling. I feel so amazingly satisfied.

  I sit on the balcony for a while and look out into the night and think that life is still pretty wonderful. Right now I am a mother who is doing what she wants to, without guilt or a bad conscience.

  A LITTLE TIME LEFT (1993)

  We come home from our backpacking trip one July evening, happily filthy and hungry. The last few days we have been living on bread and Italian mineral water. We have travelled non-stop from Greece in three days, slept sitting up and sweated on hot trains through Italy and Eastern Europe. But it does not matter, it is just a part of the adventure, filled as we are with our newly won adult freedom.

  Mum has made potato soup and for a short while she stands next to me smiling, watching me as I hungrily down the food. There is a smile and an unusual calm about her which lures me into trying to explain and describe everything we have seen.

  ‘The beaches of Corfu were amazing. We just lay in the sun and went swimming all day,’ I say.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ she says, amused, turns around and goes to the fridge to get out a bag of cinnamon rolls.

  ‘You would like Prague, Mum! It was so beautiful!’ I say, and tell her about how we managed to get a flat in the centre of the city.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Mum says, and puts the rolls in the microwave.

  ‘And Rome was also beautiful, but too expensive for us. I think I’m going to go there when I have more money. We could only afford pasta and tomato sauce, so finally we headed to Greece. It was cheap there.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Mum says, and puts on the coffee.

  ‘We slept a lot on the trains so we could afford to be away longer. It went pretty well, you get used to sleeping in the chairs.’ I say, and look at Mum at the sink with her back to me.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Mum says, and sets out coffee cups and plates.

  She pours herself a cup of coffee, sits down across from me and lights a cigarette. But by now I have stopped talking. Just then Dad comes in through the door. He has the evening paper under his arm and he walks over to the coffee pot and pours himself a cup.

  ‘Well, I see you’ve come home,’ he says, and disappears from the kitchen again with his coffee and his paper.

  I look at Mum’s expressionless eyes, she is staring into thin air and for a moment I wonder if she has taken too many painkillers.

  ‘Thanks for the food!’ I say, and she wakes up for a second and looks at me.

  ‘OK,’ she says, and gets up to put away the dishes.

  I go to the bathroom and take a long, hot shower. I had forgotten what it was like, I think to myself. How could I forget? But four weeks with the best of friends in total freedom made me forget and be happy for a while. Uninterrupted, we talked about the future on the trains and in the hostels and the beaches and the bars. What our lives would be like and what they wouldn’t be like. For four weeks we have been fantasizing non-stop about our adult lives, which lie completely within reach, waiting for us. They are grand fantasies without limitations.

&n
bsp; I put on my dirty jeans and a black T-shirt and bike out into the night, to Doctor Z’s where I know all of my boyfriends are waiting. I cannot be alone tonight, and after just one beer I see the most handsome man I have ever seen. His name is Benjamin and he is new to the area. We dance and his kisses taste like nicotine. I give him a ride to his student flat on my bike and then I make love to him with a longing which is endless.

  Afterwards he is smoking by the open window. I look at him from the bed, where I am still lying with his sticky semen between my legs. He soon comes back to bed and gives me more nicotine kisses, and I think how easy it is to make love to someone when you are hungering as much as I am. I could probably sleep with anybody, but especially with someone this good looking.

  It is August and there are just a few weeks left before we move to Stockholm. Benjamin and my best friends and I, all of us are moving. Moving to small student rooms in dorms where we have to share kitchens and bathrooms with other students.

  We have only seen the rooms in a brochure but nothing makes us doubtful, because we imagine the great time we will have over there in the big city. There is not long left now; I have almost moved, home to Benjamin where I will find sanctuary and lots of love.

  I work at a block of service flats during the last few weeks and I am struck with wonder about how happy some of the old people are and how sad some of the others. I decide to become one of those happy ones when I get old. That is why I need to escape. I wipe up shit and wonder at how incredibly long the old men’s balls can be. More than a foot when they get to hang freely. Every night there is a party somewhere and suddenly the last weeks are over and it is time to leave. Benjamin has an old red Volvo which we stuff with our bags.