A Frozen Woman

by Annie Ernaux

  After lunch, well, ciao, see you tonight. Solitude. Not the solitude of eighteen, peering out the window of the bathroom, or that of the hotel room he has just left, in Italy, in Rouen. A solitude of empty rooms with a child who cannot talk yet, my occupation a series of trifling and unrelated chores. I can’t get used to it. As though I have been summarily put away on a shelf. He’ll have the cold air of the streets, the smells of stores opening for business; he’ll arrive at the office and have to buckle down to work, but he’ll have the satisfaction of completing a dossier. I’m jealous, yes, why not? That dread of not proving equal to a task, and the pleasure of carrying it out successfully—I love that, too. What challenges and triumphs does this cozy apartment offer me? Keeping a mayonnaise from separating, or turning Kiddo ‘s tears to smiles. I begin to live in another time. No more sweet, mellow hours passed lounging on the terrace of a café, the tranquility of the Montaigne in October. The forgotten hours spent reading a book through to the last chapter, talking with friends. I’ve lost something I’ve known since childhood, the rhythm of time devoted fully to a task, followed by moments in which mind and body suddenly open and float free, in repose. He has not lost this rhythm. At noon, in the evening, on weekends, he finds time to unwind, read Le Monde, listen to records, balance the checkbook; he even finds time to be bored. Relaxation. My time is now constantly cluttered with a hodgepodge of jobs. Laundry to be sorted, a shirt button to sew back on, an appointment at the pediatrician’s, we’re out of sugar. The inventory that has never moved or amused anyone. Sisyphus and that rock he rolls endlessly back up the hill—at least it’s dramatic, a man on a mountain outlined against the horizon, whereas a woman in her kitchen tossing some butter into a frypan three hundred and sixty-five times a year, that’s neither heroic nor absurd, that’s just life. You know, your problem is you can’t get yourself organized. Organization, the watchword of women everywhere, magazines overflowing with advice, save time, do this, that, and the other, like my mother-in-law (if I were you I’d try it this way, much faster), but it’s really a method of sticking yourself with the most work possible in the least amount of time without pain or suffering because that would bother those around you. I fall for it all, too—the memo pads for shopping lists and the reserves stockpiled in the cupboard, the frozen rabbit for unexpected visitors, the bottle of vinaigrette made in advance, the breakfast bowls set out on the table the night before. A system that relentlessly devours the present: you keep moving forward, the way you do in school, but without ever seeing the end of anything. Speed is my motto. Forget the sprightly dance, the loving touch of the dustrag, tomatoes carved into roses; I go full tilt, stampeding through the housework trying to free up an hour in the morning, which often turns out to be a mirage, but most of all I keep my eyes on the great prize of the day, that personal time regained at last but constantly threatened: my son’s afternoon nap.

  For two years, in the flower of youth, I see all the freedom of my life hang by the thread of a dozing child. First, suspense, waiting for his regular breathing, and silence. Is he asleep, why isn’t he sleeping today, how irritating, and finally, he nods off: a fragile respite, poisoned by the fear of a premature awakening because of a car horn, a doorbell, a conversation out on the landing. I’d like to wrap his sleeping world in cotton. Two hours in which to cram for the CAPES. Shouts outside, the squeaking of his teddy bear, the clatter of tumbling building blocks: each time I think, that’s it. But isn’t he the sweet baby, waking up all happy and full of bounce—I know. And I snap up the blinds, warbling like everyone else, now we’ve had our sleepy-time, so let’s go peepee and we’ll take a walk in the park, feed some bread to the swans, and I whip up the old maternal joy with lots of laughs, songs, and tickles for Kiddo. Not for me the unworthy desire to park him in his playpen and go on studying, with Stopples foam plugs jammed into my ears. Above all I must be a real mother, dashing into the bedroom as soon as he wakes up, scrupulously checking his training pants, getting ready for our stroller outing, but not rushing him, suiting my pace to his. Whatever possesses me! Sour-smelling, runny-nosed brats of my childhood, abandoned to the less than watchful eye of a tired neighbor or a dotty grampa—as though I could take you as examples! Your mothers were poor and knew nothing about child care. Whereas I live in a pretty apartment, with an inflatable baby bath, scales, and bum cream, it’s not the same, and that psychoanalytical curse—the first three years are the decisive ones—well, I know it by heart. It weighs on me twenty­four hours a day, and on me alone, of course, since I’m in complete charge of the child. And I’ve read that bible of modern, organized, germ-conscious mothers who keep house while their hubbies are off “at the office,” never the factory: I’m Raising My Child, l, me, the mother, obviously. More than four hundred pages, over a hundred thousand copies sold, everything you need to know about “the job of being a mama.” He gives me this guide as a gift one day after our move to Annecy. The voice of authority—the lady in the book—tells how to take baby’s temperature, give a bath, and at the same time someone is murmuring, like a counting rhyme, “Papa, he’s the boss, the hero, he’s the one who’s in charge, that’s only natural, he’s the biggest, he’s the strongest, he’s the one who drives the car that goes so fast. Mama, she’s the good fairy, the one who comes when baby is hungry and thirsty. She’s always there when she’s called,” page 425. A voice saying terrible things: that no one could ever take care of Kiddo as well as I can, not even his father, who has no paternal instinct, just a paternal “streak.” Crushing. And a sneaky way of making you feel afraid, and guilty: “He calls you . . . You pretend not to hear . . . In a few years, you’d give anything in the world to hear him say once again, ‘Mama, stay.”’

  So every afternoon I take Kiddo out for a walk so that I will be an irreproachable mama. Out for a walk, it’s called, out: the same word as before. But there is no more outside for me, just a continuation of the inside, with the same preoccupations, the child, the butter and the box of diapers I must buy on the way home. Neither curiosity nor discovery, nothing but necessity. Where is the color of the sky? The sunlight glinting off the top of the walls? At first, all I know of Annecy is canine territory: the sidewalk. Always nose to the ground, tracking, the height of the curbs, the width of a gap, go/no go, weaving around obstacles, lampposts, trash baskets, people walking blindly into the stroller. At the park, we women sit quietly on the benches, or dawdle along the paths in the middle of the afternoon. Killing time, waiting for the child to grow up. They ask me how old mine is, compare him with theirs—teeth, walking, messiness. Later on, when Kiddo can toddle around and play with other children, we keep a sharp eye out, ferociously protective behind our bland smiles, in league against the filthy dogs who do their business so close by and the big kids of twelve with their bicycles on the paths, it shouldn’t be allowed. Not much more than that to talk about. I remember conversations I had with my girlfriends not even three years earlier, those exciting discussions of romantic matters, so unlike these listless observations about our kids. But is there really so much difference between “I’m going out tonight with Whosis, what dress should I wear?” and “We have to leave now, Papa will be home soon,” which I find myself saying along with everyone else? Each of us is isolated by the famous halo of the married woman, so we fall back on chatting about the children, a safe subject, because we don’t dare let ourselves go and really talk, as though the shadow of a husband were always between us. The surrounding landscape is superb: the lake, the blue-gray mountains, and in June, when the casino orchestra comes out onto the terrace to play for the tourists, the faint strains of blues and pasos dobles reach the sandbox. Life, the beauty of the world. Everything is outside of me. There is nothing more to discover. Home, dinner, dishes, two hours nodding over a book, trying to work, bed, start all over again. Lovemaking, perhaps, but that as well has become a domestic activity, neither an adventure nor something to look forward to. I go home through the downtown area because of the wide sidewal
ks. Single girls and men go into the cafés, while I enter the only place in the city where I won’t be incongruous with a young child, a place for women, from the checkout girls to the customers, with shopping carts so you can push around the baby and the groceries without growing tired. The supermarket, my reward for going out.

  Yes, I know, Kiddo laughs to see the swans, crawls on the grass, and then he learns to throw balls, gaze in wonder at the tricycles, sail down the slide with a serious expression. But me . . . Any talk about feeling trapped, stifled, immediately arouses suspicions—another one who thinks only of herself. If you are unmoved by the grandeur of this duty, to witness the awakening of a child (your own son, madame!), to nourish him, protect him, guide his first steps, answer his first questions (the voice should rise higher and higher, then slam down like the blade of a guillotine), then you should never have had a child. The most wonderful job in the world—take it or leave it, but don’t go into details.

  I never do feel the grandeur. As for the happiness, I don’t need I’m Raising My Child to tell me when it pops up every now and then, always unexpectedly. One September afternoon, I buy him a red car. I watch him go down the stairs of the Prisunic variety store, step by step, fiercely, greedily clutching this toy to his breast. And that earlier day when he launched himself upright into space for the first time, from the armchair over to me, his little face straining with effort, then breaking into a smile when he succeeded, once, many times. I don’t need to remember everything to prove that I was “also” a real mother, as I had been a real woman. Neither do I wish to become involved in that argument of comparisons and contrasts—don ‘t you think that these moments with your child are more enriching than typing or making ball bearings, or even: aren’t they worth all the books in the world, it’s real life, not make-believe! I was given the business about it being the most marvelous thing in the world, and that’s what kept me from going to the old lady with the bifocals. Today I want to write about the life I never expected, the life that was unimaginable to me at eighteen, one spent with baby cereal, vaccinations, plastic pants that need scrubbing, and Delabarre teething syrup. A life completely and absolutely in my care. I have the burden—but not the responsibility! I’m raising Kiddo alone, but under supervision. What did the doctor say, his nails are too long, you should cut them, what’s that on his knee, did he fall, where were you? Accounts to render, constantly, but the tone is normal, soft-spoken, not tyrannical. In the evening, when he picks up a beaming Kiddo—washed, fed, and freshly diapered for the night—it’s as though I’ve lived the entire day for these ten minutes: the presentation of the child to the father. He tosses him up in the air, tickles him, covers him with kisses. I look on, laughing, in a sort of cowardly contentment. Hours of paying attention to a child, not myself. As his own mother did with him. What are you complaining about—divorced and unwed mothers have no man to whom they can offer up their sacrifices at the end of the day. But sometimes, in the park, pushing the stroller, I have the strange feeling that I am walking His Child, not mine, that I am an active and obedient cog in an asepticized, harmonious system that revolves around him, the husband and father, and reassures him. Modern woman, in slacks and fur-lined pea jacket, walking in public garden with child. Just for good measure, a few swans on the lake or a flock of pigeons. A pretty picture that would have pleased him, if he’d happened along.

  As for him, he has never crossed Annecy with a child in a stroller, shoving everyone—carefully—off the sidewalk while chanting excuse me, excuse me. He has never sat waiting on a bench for the afternoon to go by and the child to grow up. Annecy is something for him to discover at leisure, after work, with his hands in his pockets and the freedom to explore the whole city. I know only the streets where I take the stroller and do the shopping, going to the butcher’s, the dry cleaner’s, the pharmacy: useful streets. ln the evening, when I leave Kiddo with him and go out alone to a store or to a doctor’s or hairdresser’s appointment, I barrel along the sidewalk like a demented bluebottle. I have to relearn how a woman walks when she’s alone. He must cherish an image of the apartment, our home, as a refuge, not as a place that requires constant tidying and jumps on you as soon as you come through the door, with groceries to put away, the baby’s food to prepare, his bath to draw. When you get right down to it, we don’t live in the same apartment. He lights a cigarette, glances around the room at the soft glow of the lamp, the gleaming furniture; he goes to piss in a sparkling toilet and washes his hands in a sink cleaned daily to perfection, he returns along the spotless tile floor of the hall to the living room and his newspaper. He can enjoy the coziness of his surroundings, relax, and appreciate the comforts of home. He hasn’t washed, scrubbed, or snooped around everywhere like a dungbeetle. Enjoyment, period. Whatever you do, don’t leave a dustrag, the Ajax, or a floorcloth lying around, what’s that doing there, and he brings me “that,” holding it at arm’s length, a ridiculous item that clashes unspeakably with the décor. Nothing but neatness and beauty. Two in the afternoon. In the kitchen, all traces of lunch are gone: you can see your reflection in the sink. I’ve put back on the table the rustic pot ornamented with shepherds piping on a blue background. There’s a discreet odor of furniture polish. Kiddo is asleep. Why this tidyness? For whom? Simply so that if anyone were to drop by I wouldn’t have to say, like my aunts, please excuse the mess? I’ve been busy since seven in the morning to reach this void. This must be the time of day when women swallow pills, pour themselves a little glass, or take the train to Marseille. The world at a standstill.

  He is hungry. What does it feel like to spread your napkin over your lap and watch the arrival of food you haven’t selected, prepared, fussed over, kept an eye on, food that’s a pleasant surprise instead of something you’ve been smelling at every stage in its preparation? I’ve forgotten. Of course there’s also the restaurant, but not often, you have to find a baby-sitter, and it’s a big deal, something of an extravagance, I’m-taking-you­out-tonight-my-dear. Not his customary, twice-daily feast, no need to say thank you, oh good you’ve made celery rémoulade, the steak is rare, the sauté potatoes sizzle in their serving dish. By this time I’ve been breathing them, almost prechewing them, for a good half-hour, constantly tasting, checking the salt, are they done yet, and it’s enough to cut your appetite, the real one, that makes your mouth water with desire. But him, at least let him eat, let him repay all my efforts, I’m already adamant on this point, I want that plate cleaned, no leftovers, they ‘re like a waste of my time and energy, and then to have old food sitting around in the fridge, to be retasted, rehashed, reserved—it makes me sick even to think about it. I don’t want to lose completely the thrill and joy of eating. Women who nibble, always disparaged as frustrated, infantile sneaks getting their oral satisfactions on the sly—oh what bad manners. Me, I think those tidbits of cheese and chocolate, those tastes of raw cookie dough keep my sense of hunger alive. The munchies, my personal fast food, no plate, no eating utensils, nothing to remind me of the mealtime ritual, my revenge on that eternity of grub to plan, buy, fix: 365 meals multiplied by two, 900 sessions with the fry­pan, the pots on the stove, thousands of eggs to crack, chops to turn, milk cartons to empty. The natural work of women, all women. Having a profession soon, as he does, won’t get me out of the kitchen. What chore does a man have to take on every day—and twice a day—just because he’s a man? So far away, the occasional little chocolate mousse of my adolescence, my happy alibi to show I knew how to make something with my own two hands like other girls. Pounds and pounds of food, cooked and eaten right away, sustaining life, but it depends on your point of view, because from mine it seems more like a death march.

  I get well into the habit, writing shopping notes down on the memo pad hanging in the kitchen with its cunning red bow, cooking simple dishes during the week and something special on Sundays and for family gatherings. Oh please, do have some more. My dear girl, it’s simply delicious. Let them stuff themselves to the gills
and gaze at me with fond delight, she’s really taken to it, hasn’t she, who would ever have guessed she would turn out to be such a good cook, what a wonderful surprise. I stop comparing things with the way they were before. I pretend that cooking is nothing, as natural as bathing every day; I try to take some satisfaction in it, leafing through the recipe book, which gives the impression of infinite creative possibilities, never the same dish twice . . . But it gets to me anyway.