A Frozen Woman

by Annie Ernaux

  Seven in the evening, I open the fridge. Eggs, cream, lettuces, everything’s lined up on the wire shelves. Absolutely no desire to fix dinner, and worse, not the slightest idea what to make. Provider’s block. As though I’ve forgotten everything. A minute of torpor until the fridge kicks in, a sort of call to order. Make something, anything, keep going. So I fall back on what I know by heart, fried eggs and spaghetti.

  Worst of all, supermarket schizophrenia, so unpredictable. I push the cart along the aisles: flour, oil, canned mackerel. Hesitation. Always a warning sign. Next to me, other women are gaily pillaging the shelves with expert hands. Others are posted in front of the canned goods and cookie boxes, reading labels, studying the ingredients with terrific concentration. I’m sure I need loads of things for tomorrow, the rest of the week. I no longer feel like getting anything. I move up and down corridors of provisions that seem more and more like one big blur. It all horrifies me, the Muzak, the lighting, the other women’s determination. I’m stricken with nurturing amnesia. I feel like bolting then and there. Making an effort, I blindly toss in cheeses and some prepackaged cold cuts, waiting calmly in line behind victorious carts overflowing with food and proudly pushed along by women shoppers. Only outside can I breathe freely. Existential nausea in front of a fridge or behind a supermarket cart, what a good joke, he’d like that. Everything about these years of apprenticeship seems shabby to me, insignificant, hard to express, except in picayune complaints, scattered whines, I’m tired, I’ve only got two hands, why don’t you do it yourself—this domestic singsong springs spontaneously to my lips, and he listens with deaf ears, as though such language were nothing out of the ordinary, or simply the recrimination of some underling, grousing the boss has privately dismissed as negligible and obtuse.

  Of course one can keep track all the time: I fix him breakfast, I brush his suit; he should unplug the sink and take out the garbage. You buy yourself a record, so I get a book. Shit? Fine, I reply: son of a bitch! It doesn’t seem much like a fair exchange of freedoms here. I keep tabs anyway. Exhausting, this nitpicking that leads me to spend money on a book or leave the garbage can full—neither for pleasure nor through real rebellion, but for revenge. Ever since the beginning of the marriage, I’ve had the impression of chasing after an equality that continually eludes me. I can always make a scene, a real corker, acting out everything, revolt, divorce, forget thoughtful discussion, an hour’s devastation, the red sun in my colorless life. Feeling my temperature rise, trembling with anger, lashing out with the initial challenge that will shatter all harmony: “I’m sick of being the maid!” Watching for him to slip on the mask, waiting for the good replies, the ones that will goad me into recovering a lost language, violence and the desire for something else besides this. Words tumbling out pell-mell with that vulgarity he so detests to tell him that this life stinks, that I’d rather die than be like his mother (naturally I attack him through his most sacred cow).The pleasure of being able to scream myself crazy without him putting me down with a superior smile, no big words if you please. But the time will come when I won’t allow myself to pitch a fit, “because of the child,” aren’t you ashamed, in front of him, dignity, in other words, submission. A father with a firm hand and a mother who keeps mum: very good for children’s nerves.

  A gray Sunday, perhaps. One of those early afternoons, always so dreary outside the tourist season. I must certainly have fed Kiddo, and we’ve had our dinner, too: roast beef, beans, perhaps a custard for dessert. My after­dinner mint: the dishes. Suddenly, a casual observation. “The latest Bergman is playing at the Ritz.” And then, “Would it bother you if I went to see it this afternoon?” Finally, in the face of my silence, “What good is it for two of us to stay with the kid?” I don’t cry, I don’t shout. A logical conclusion: that’s marriage, choosing between one or the other’s depression—both would be a waste. It’s also clear that my place is with my child and his at the movies, not vice versa. Off he goes. Later on he’ll go play tennis in the summer, go skiing in the winter. I will take care of Kiddo, take him out for a walk. Oh those lovely Sundays . . . At three o’clock, up go the blinds in Kiddo’s bedroom, the deserted street, the park, the swans. Jealousy, sometimes. Seen from the window of F3 or from behind the stroller, the world is divided in two: the women he could have, the men I no longer can. In the evening, wolfing down his supper, he tells me about his day. Skiing gives you an appetite. “My husband goes hunting every Sunday.” “Mine loves to sail.” Fishing, cycling, bridge, the clarinet, pétanque, billiards, they’ve got lots of hobbies, and the wives are always understanding, almost proud. “He’d spend every day at the choral society if he could.” And your wife, does she have any interests? She’d like to take up tennis again, but I don’t know how keen she really is about it. Those interests fade away all by themselves, one after the other, naturally. Stop bitching at me, you’re perfectly free to go skiing if you want! Yes indeed, aside from the cooking, the kid, and the housework, I’m metaphysically free.

  As for preventing him from leaving me alone with Kiddo, making him stay, he has a fine time throwing all my former principles in my face: being independent, not clinging to each other or holding each other back, and so on. Go ahead, call me Superglue, or something snootier, a praying mantis, a castrating woman. I tell him thanks, I’ve read Freud too, but no, I don’t feel like being castrating, what a lousy image. And then, which is preferable: that solitude, the outings with Kiddo—or the phony communion of two hearts in front of the TV and dispiriting family jaunts on Sunday to a deer park, a zoo, a scenic panorama, the fathers carrying their kids on their shoulders while they eye other men’s wives, and vice versa? Pitiful. Nap time on Sunday is the same as on any other day: I cram for the competitive exam, still my guiding light.

  With two months to go, I opt for the day-care center—and guilt, of course, handing over the naked little body to the nurse at the creche in the morning, and not immediately recognizing the toddler in the plaid municipal smock at the end of the day. Hearty congratulations are always offered to the valiant wife of a man who has managed to pass his exam while holding down a job, but of course you had a hand in his successes, all that moral support, and keeping the children quiet, taking care of everything so he could study! A husband, though, would more likely receive sympathy. What an ordeal it must have been, with that wife of his. In any case, mine prefers the sympathy. To be congratulated like a humble female, suspected of having helped me-what a humiliation, a black eye for any self-respecting executive. Masculine values, the sacred difference between us—I learn a thing or two about them before I’m through.

  Checking the list of exam results, feeling washed clean of a year’s hard work, wandering through the streets, where the smell of a café-bar would fill me with sudden happiness, amid the throngs of students in June or October, savoring my success all day long . . . That was before. I get my CAPES and I can’t feel any joy at all. Too many anxious naps, too many baby clothes to wash, too many pressure cookers to keep an eye on and carrots to peel in the middle of the history of dramatic theory or the modern novel. Another stroke of luck: I feel that the jury has somehow rewarded not my intellectual accomplishments but my merits as a wife and mother.

  I am a teacher: the goal of my studies, and then my hope of liberation, of a life beyond going to the park and scrubbing saucepans. I almost arrive late on the first day of school; the mother’s-helper has missed her bus. The tumult of the hallways. Then forty faces, thirty-five the next hour, then another twenty-four, and those fidgeting bodies, those eyes, and the voices, stilled for the moment, but ready to bombard me with questions. A far cry from my little apartment, with its kitchen filled with sunshine, a gentle world of dusting and making baby cereal, and the docile tenderness of a child. No matter how I’ve cursed that cocooned existence and tried to fight back, it has gotten to me after all. I have stage fright something fierce that first morning. Simply talking and being listened to feels strange after the to
rpid silence of home or Kiddo’s twittering. But the pleasure does come; perhaps it’s the pleasure of power. I have a hold on the world once more, and even my solitude among those forty students is exhilarating. I am alive again. When classes are over, I am brimming with projects, ideas for trips, the library; away with the bland summaries of the Lagarde and Michard anthologies—I’ll find texts they will enjoy. I remember the slight coolness at the end of that warm September day, and the impression that my existence has been thrown wide open by everyone I’ve met at school; I can see all those different and still nameless faces, some scowling, others looking quite pleased with themselves, and one girl slumping at her desk, lost in a daydream. I’m eager to prepare the next day’s classes and to read the notecards the girls have given me with information about their families, their likes and dislikes. At the same time I feel a welcome fatigue and would enjoy listening to a record before tackling my work. Later I might have stretched out, put my feet up. Like him. He’s right, you don’t feel like doing much else. But whoa, here’s the big difference: sitting down, cuddling with Kiddo, reading Le Monde—the fantasies of a woman exhilarated by her first day on the job. As soon as I arrive, the mother’s-helper leaves. I get to fix Kiddo’s dinner, and ours won’t appear magically on our plates all by itself. My schoolwork must wait till after Kiddo’s bedtime. My husband will watch TV. I’mnot a teacher, I will never be a teacher. I am a wife/mother/ teacher. Nuance. I begin the second cycle of my apprenticeship, the bitterest years, the most difficult to recall. I had certainly longed for a profession, the beacon beyond those afternoon naps and trips to the park. On the one hand, housewives, my special horror; on the other, single women, with what I suppose must be empty lives. Obviously, I think I have it better. You stop measuring your life against the one you wanted and start comparing it to those of other women. Never to men ‘s lives, what a thought. And yet, our male colleagues can march with stately tread from the lycée to their cars, go hold forth at union meetings, listen to themselves talk and vote on motions regarding their disastrous working conditions, bickering endlessly about the limits of their job descriptions: teachers shouldn’t have to supervise the students, or correct detention assignments . . . They’ll split hairs forever to avoid doing one extra lick of work. Male habits, no doubt. Me, wife and mother, I’ve got to run. At noon or five o’clock, they want to discuss things after work, no time, ciao guys, my kid’s waiting and I have to stop by the butcher’s. I will not be the teacher I had thought to be, efficient, flexible, available; simply functioning at all is hard enough. Classes, errands, papers to go over, nothing in the fridge. There’s been a mistake: Jack-of-all-trades was a Jill. Do the same work as a man, but never lose sight of your home: drop it off at the door when you enter the lycée, pick it up again when you leave. In the evening, pouring the package of spaghetti into the boiling water, with Kiddo wandering around underfoot, I feel as though my life were cluttered right up to the brim, with no room for even the tiniest drop of the unexpected, the slightest curiosity. I don’t dare think like this, listen to all of them—teacher, what an unusual job “for a woman,” eighteen hours of classes, at home the rest of the week, lots of vacation time to take care of the kids, to dream, the kind of job that’s easy on the family, a woman “realizing her potential,” bringing home some bacon, still a good wife and mother, too, who could complain? What’s more, I fall for that bit about the total woman and take pride in juggling everything, meals, child, three French classes, guardian of the hearth and fountain of wisdom, Supergal, not just an intellectual, in short, I’ve got it all together. As a last-ditch effort, when all else—and especially serious reflection—has failed, try wishful thinking. If there’s a “total man” out there, someone together enough to come home from the office, tie on an apron, and give the kids a bath, then he’s keeping pretty quiet about it. Since I am right in the middle of this difference, these are not the kinds of arguments that occur to me. I find it normal that he doesn’t do any errands, because men look too silly and out of place behind a shopping cart; it doesn’t surprise me when his salary is considered a handsome sum for the two of us while mine is a supplement, a fair amount, but from which numerous deductions must be made, for the mother’s helper, taxes on a second income, leaving only a paltry figure when compared with his. So how can I dare say that I’m not working simply for the pleasure of it? I feel guilty leaving him to watch the child on Saturdays when I have meetings at school because it keeps him from his tennis, and I hesitate to ask him to take out the garbage, for what is the point of this drop of water in the sea of housework? I even try gentle persuasion, oh much more effective with men, dear, and nagging does so get on everyone’s nerves. And very important, two voices: one for the students, energetic, with an almost masculine authority, like that of those fathers who bellow and box ears at home, an outdoor voice, while the other one is for the apartment and for going out with him, a little bird voice, harmless, intervening modestly, discreet about all its outside life, classes and teaching. The gung-ho, dedicated types—those women are a pain in the ass. Luckily you’re not like that, you’re more levelheaded, which means that I keep my mouth shut about my job.

  Vacation. I take my place among the women sitting on the sand, surrounded by buckets and shovels, while the unmarried girls run off toward the waves, and because the worst consolations loose their sting after a while, I tell myself that their turn will come, and they’ll be tied down with the kids while their husbands spend the day sailing. I put my faith in family holiday camps, wall-to-wall families, with the two dining halls, the sticky one for the shrieking children, the deadly boring one the parents, and what are you doing this afternoon, it’s nice here, I’m with the visiting nurse service, and you? We breathe the air of Provence one year, of Aquitaine the next; we both sun ourselves, without buckets or shovels, during Kiddo’s supervised naps at the children’s center, and we dance at night under the pines. Pretending to live the way we used to when we weren’t yet bound by salaries, lunch and dinner together, the child. Nothing but pretense. Driving back on the autoroute, nothing to fantasize about, another two weeks that won’t leave any cherished memories behind. I remind myself l’ll have to buy some laundry detergent for all our dirty clothes, some bread, ham, and milk. Can’t you pay attention to your child, keep him busy, he’s driving us nuts and I’m trying to drive! I spend weeks in a real family environment. The worst. Gossiping with my sisters-in-law, stringing beans, while the patriarch and his sons are fishing or playing écarté. His lady wife proudly calls them to the table: “Everything’s ready, men!” Surrounded by this good humor and joyous acceptance of roles, I feel weird, out of step. It’s not nice to be so jealous of the men, let them relax, enjoy themselves like kids, you mean you’d rather he were off chasing skirts, vacationing on his own, he must be sick and tired of having a wife and brat on his back.

  As for me, more than a month left before school starts again, a precious month to play housewife and doting mother while he toils in the office. I hope you realize how lucky you are to be a teacher. Finally enough time to give all our clothes a good inspection and remove any stains, to take Kiddo to the slide and swans myself, try my hand at peach preserves and avocado and shrimp salad. And to read for pleasure, to write poetry during the peace of naptime. In a nutshell, a modern woman, practical, but not a stay-at-home, creative around the edges—drawing, sofa cushions, crewelwork, crossword puzzles. And where did I read that Virginia Woolf “also” baked pies? Not incompatible, you see. Two and a half hours. Kiddo’s asleep. Paper, pen. Anything, diary, poem, novel. Dreading his awakening. But more than that. I cannot manage to believe in the reality of what I’m writing, just a form of relaxation between the avocado-shrimp salad and taking my son to the park. Make-believe creation. Kiddo wakes up. Back to the serious business of dressing and feeding him, then off to the park. Another literature-break tomorrow. What’s still best, at naptime, is to leaf through Le Nouvel Observateur, work out a game of solitaire, or sun myself
on the balcony. Suits my present way of life to a T.

  I emerge slowly from the peepee-years. Kiddo goes off to nursery school; diapers and stroller, no more than unpleasant memories. And haven’t I waited for this time, my growing freedom, the return of just—or almost—like before! Made it. A whole slew of things to do on offer: the union, why don’t you join the theater club, come to the Freynet lectures on teaching methods, learn how to ski, or play tennis? I no longer even know what I really want to do. I try everything; nothing sticks. Too time-consuming, and I’m always doing things by halves, excusing myself from meetings—Kiddo has the measles—and leaving early to fix dinner. All that stuff is nothing but a break in the family circle, an invitation to domestic neglect. And as for something on the side, a few more conversations might have done it; a colleague, blond, attractive . . . Worst option of all. And wherever would I stash a secret love affair?

  The simplest adventure, no-risk, something I can just drift into, is close at hand, and all I have to do is stop taking those twenty-one poisonous pearls in their pill dispenser in the medicine cabinet. How can I have let it come to that? Hardly a twinge of bad conscience before jumping headlong into the only undertaking with universal approval, blessed by society and my in-laws, a job that won’t piss anyone off. I trumpet everywhere the noble motive that gets me off the hook: having only one child is so sad, unhealthy, two ‘s perfect, Remi and Colette, Andre and Julien, touch mama’s tummy, your little sister’s in there, what a heartwarming scene. My real motive is that I can no longer think of any way to change my life except by having a baby. I will never sink lower than that.