Bitter Bitch

by Maria Sveland

  Mum cries when I hug her and Dad hides in the garage so I have to run there and yell ‘Bye Dad!’

  He mumbles back dismissively, ‘Yes, yes, bye!’

  It is autumn in Stockholm and I am so happy my chest aches. A liberating ache, a relief at finally, finally being grown up.

  I spend hours in my green IKEA chair and think about how grand it feels to eat my own sandwiches for breakfast, with toppings I have chosen myself, soft cheese and pickles. I boil several pots of tea and fill my newly purchased teapot with Japanese symbols on it. It was expensive but it is beautiful and it is mine. I am happy when I see it on my little table and I drink hundreds of cups of tea in my room, which is overheated with the twenty-four tea lights I have placed on every free inch of space. I enjoy sitting in my green chair and reading the books for film studies. Expensive, thick books in English which I do not understand, but I read them devoutly anyway and feel important.

  Most of all I enjoy the solitude and the silence.

  Benjamin wants to get together every day and every evening and I make excuses, saying I need to study, and it feels as though I am being unfaithful. Spending time alone is a new experience for me and I am confused by the fact that I prefer my own company to Benjamin’s. It seems that I love wandering around in my own flat, listening to music, reading a book, cooking and most of all thinking long, uninterrupted thoughts. I get to know myself and realize that I rather like myself and my thoughts; that I am an OK person.

  More and more often I feel that Benjamin is bothering me when he calls and insists on coming over. Even more often I lie and say that I have a temperature and Benjamin becomes increasingly frustrated. I hear it in his voice and then I become irritated all over again.

  One day a man comes up to me on Kungsgatan and says that he has seen me around a few times and would I like to have a cup of coffee with him? This is one of those days when I am exhausted and angry because Benjamin has called and insisted on talking half the night. I have grown tired of this kind of token of love, and during the entire conversation I longed to hang up and continue reading Deirdre Bairs’ biography of Simone de Beauvoir.

  I have just discovered certain things Simone de Beauvoir and I have in common, how her father started ignoring her when she turned eleven.

  It was never expressed in words and we were always polite to each other, but what had existed between us was gone. It happened around the time I turned eleven and ever since we’ve never got along.

  When she turns twelve, Simone’s father tells her she is ugly and from then on pays most of his attention to her little sister, Helene. I read and wonder what kind of life I want to live.

  Those are the kinds of thoughts with which I am occupied, with which I want to be occupied. Now, when I have the opportunity to be alone for the first time in my life, Benjamin is there like a leech, obtrusive and slimy. Maybe that is why I follow this man to a café where we sit for hours and talk about life and our families and books we have read and movies we have seen. His name is Jesper and the conversation is filled with an understanding that makes me feel warm inside. It is evening and we go to a bar and continue to talk and I suddenly feel so happy I cannot make myself go home. I know that Benjamin has probably called seven thousand times by now and is wondering where I am, and I get angry when I feel that he is bothering me, that he wants to control me, that he is trespassing on my new life.

  It is two o’clock in the morning before I finally hug Jesper and say goodnight and start heading home. Benjamin is sitting outside my door waiting, and I understand how angry he is when I see his fiery eyes set against his pale face.

  ‘And where have you been?’ he says in a low voice. ‘I’ve been calling all night.’

  He sounds like a father, or a big brother, or a teacher. The exhaustion wells over me, I am tired of feeling chased, tired of lying. I try and explain my longing to be alone and my meeting with the man on the street, but Benjamin just becomes furious.

  ‘Are you crazy? You just followed a stranger and hung out with him until two in the morning?’

  ‘Yes,’ I reply, tired.

  ‘And you only had coffee?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you want me to believe that?’ he yells.

  ‘Yes,’ I reply.

  ‘Are you going to see each other again?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘I’ll be damned if you do!’ Benjamin says, and throws my Japanese teapot to the floor. It shatters into a thousand pieces and I feel my body stiffen. That bastard. I sit down on the floor and start picking up the pieces. Benjamin throws himself on the bed dramatically, sobbing. His crying annoys me more than anything else because I want to cry too. Grieve for my Japanese teapot, my lost solitude, my forced coupling.

  ‘You’re walking all over my life. Do you understand that!’ I hiss at Benjamin. He does not answer but continues sobbing. ‘You’re scaring me and I don’t even know if I love you any more!’ I continue coldly.

  Benjamin stops sobbing and sits up on the bed. ‘But I love you Sara! I’ve never loved someone so much before! You’re the best thing that’s happened to me! Please, can we keep trying? I promise I’ll give you the space you need!’

  I look at him for a long time, trying to invoke the sparks I felt the first time I saw him. I want to love him and my longing for solitude confuses me. Benjamin senses my doubt, a possible opening which helps him gather his courage. He comes over to me and pulls me down on the bed. Drenches my face in kisses and whispers things about love and the future in my ear and I am so tired I let it happened. A few days pass and the man from the street, Jesper, calls and asks if I want to meet again, but I say no. He sounds surprised and hurt.

  ‘OK. That’s a shame. I thought our meeting was special.’

  ‘I did too. At another time I would have loved to get to know you better, but it just won’t work right now. I am so terribly confused and I think I need to get to know myself first before I can start a new relationship.’

  ‘I see,’ Jesper says, and goes quiet.

  I am burning with rage and I silently curse Benjamin’s existence which makes me deny my feelings. We hang up and I curse myself because I realize that it really is not Benjamin’s fault, but it is due to my own insecurity. My inability to have a spine. My need to satisfy people.

  I put on my clothes and go out and buy a new Japanese teapot and stand a little bit taller. I make a promise to myself to try and be honest, so when Benjamin calls two hours later and asks if he can come over I say no.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’m sitting here having tea and thinking, so now isn’t a good time.’

  ‘Stop it! Don’t be silly, I’m coming over!’

  ‘No, I mean it. You aren’t welcome right now, I want to be alone.’

  ‘To hell with it then!’ Benjamin yells and hangs up.

  I smile to myself and pour a new cup of tea. I am happy that I did not come up with yet another white lie in order to be alone. I put The Clash on loud and dance around and around in my small studio flat. In the end I am soaked in sweat so I tear off my clothes and get in the shower. I stand there a long time and let the warm water run over my body and I think about Jesper and Benjamin. Far off I hear someone ringing the doorbell. I turn off the water and listen to be sure. Yep, someone is ringing the bell and I think I know who it is. I wrap myself in a towel and go and open the door, where Benjamin is standing with a bottle of red wine in hand.

  ‘You’re unbelievable!’ I say angrily. ‘Can you not respect that I want to be alone and that there isn’t a special reason for it?’

  ‘No,’ Benjamin says simply. ‘I don’t trust you any more.’

  I fell silent. I understand him; I’ve been telling so many white lies that the truth suddenly seems strange. My guilt makes me let him in.

  He quickly walks to the kitchen, takes out two glasses and opens the wine. We drink and Benjamin talks excitedly about his sociology course and the paper he has just starte
d writing.

  I sit quietly and pretend to listen but my thoughts run away to a slushy darkness deep inside me. Why is it so hard to own your life?

  It is early spring and I am telling white lies again because I cannot manage to be straight with Benjamin. Least of all dare to admit that I probably do not love him that much, when he seems convinced that we are going to spend the rest of our lives together.

  In April when the study grants have arrived for the last time before the summer, Benjamin convinces me to move into his teeny student flat. The timing is perfect. This way we get out of paying rent for the summer, and guilt ridden as I am about my confused feelings I cancel the contract on my beloved studio.

  A week later when we are walking through Djurgården one evening, Benjamin suddenly says that he thinks it would be best if we ended things. I look at him to see if he is joking, but the expression on his face is serious. Embarrassed, he looks down at the ground as he is trying to explain. It turns out that he has been having the same doubts as me during the entire spring, but he was afraid that I would break up with him. Afraid of being left, he chose to be the one to do the leaving. Crazy with rage I curse my stupidity, my damned inherited insecurity. Curse that I am not fifty-five and life savvy, but twenty and stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid and naïve and terribly deceived. I have been walking around for months feeling guilty about doubting our love while he had seemed convinced. So guilty that I even gave up my own flat because he wanted me to.

  I start hating Benjamin openly. After a week he regrets it and wants us to get back together. Now it is my turn to hesitate, but it is only partially successful when we are living in a studio flat with a double bed.

  Summer in that room becomes unbearable and I escape to Budapest with Sanna, manic and filled with sorrow and longing. Budapest is beautiful and filled with wonderful willing young men who want the best for us. We stay at cheap hostels where we fall asleep late and wake up heavily. We wander around during the day and float weightlessly through the city park’s thermal baths amidst fat Hungarians playing chess at the edge of the pool.

  When I finally come home Benjamin is wild because one of my benefactors from Budapest has called and asked for me.

  ‘I know what you’ve been doing over there!’ he hisses, eyes narrowed.

  ‘If you only knew,’ I answer with malicious joy, and bike off into the summer night to one of the countless picnics the summer teems with.

  During the day I work at a group home and search the ads feverishly for a flat. Benjamin wants to go with me and he always finds big problems with the flats I look at. The rent is too high, ugly wallpaper, too far from the city, low ceilings. For some reason I do not understand, we always end up agreeing that it would be better if I stayed in his little student room a while longer. After all, it’s so cheap.

  Finally it is August and I am so unhappy and confused and desperate I decide to rent a tiny, ugly studio in an old service house from the 1960s. The flat’s owner has been dead for three years. The management company has not noticed and her grandchildren have been taking advantage of the situation, letting the flat and raising the original rent by 2,000 kronor. But it does not matter, I will do anything to get away from Benjamin.

  I move into the service house and I do not care if the other retirees wonder what such a young person is doing amongst them. There is one wonderful thing about the ugly apartment, a bathtub which I love deeply and passionately.

  I take a long, hot bath every night while listening to Nina Simone cranked up loud and the dead grandmother makes herself felt via the antique lamp which is part of the furnishings.

  I finally return to my solitude and my uninterrupted thoughts. Autumn makes the world reddish-yellow and I am taking an introductory course on literary theory. I make wonderful three course meals for myself and read strange books about Turpin in the Rolandssången and Brünhilde in The Nibelungenlied.

  Benjamin calls once in October and sounds troubled. I am happy and chat and ask how he is doing and what he has been up to. He interrupts me and says that he is a bit stressed. He’s just calling to ask if I can look up the word cannibalism in my psychology dictionary. He needs the answer for a project he is working on for sociology.

  That is our final conversation and after that we do not see each other again for several years. From friends I hear he has a job as an expert at The National Agency for Education. He just went along there one day and introduced himself as an expert on student democracy – he has written a paper about student democracy and thought it would be fun to work there.

  Yep, and here I become a bitter bitch again. I wish I was a man with inflated self-confidence who dared go looking for a job just like that, without any actual qualifications. Apparently it works, because he got the job and he has a business card which has expert written on it.

  THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE

  TELEVISED

  I woke up happy, every inch of me. Strangely enough my legs were sore but I did not have a headache. I took a long shower while humming the razor blade song. I giggled when I thought about the men’s tongue movements, but stopped when I remembered I had booked to go on a hike in the mountains today. I hurried downstairs and gobbled up my breakfast.

  I waited outside the hotel with a Finnish woman in her sixties for the bus which was going to pick us up. We start chatting and it turned out that she was from Åbo and could speak Swedish. Her husband was not coming, she explained, because he had recently had knee surgery.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘What’s he going to do today then?’

  It was just a question, an ordinary one, but she snapped, openly irritated. ‘I don’t know. He’ll just have to take care of himself!’

  Enough is enough! That is the ticket. I laughed and said that sounded like a good idea. She softened up a bit and her husband came staggering out of the hotel to say goodbye or something. When I caught sight of him I understood exactly why she was irritated. He looked twice as old as her, and had empty, watery-blue Alzheimer eyes.

  ‘Bye! Have a good time!’ he said, while patting her shoulder clumsily.

  ‘Yes, yes, you too,’ The Åbo woman replied, irritated.

  Her husband remained standing there for a while, looking as though he was waiting for something, a gracious nod, something, anything. But the Åbo woman had already turned towards me pointedly and started asking me questions. Why are you here? I explained that I was trying to write and needed to get away and be alone for a while. What did I do for a living? I said that I was a journalist and she brightened up.

  ‘Oh, once upon a time I was a journalist too. But then the children came and there was no way of working such irregular hours any more. So I became a teacher. But I loved working as a journalist!’

  The Åbo woman smiled at me and we talked about working conditions for freelancers; the uncertainty and the lack of money.

  The guide and the bus appeared and we snaked our way along a meandering road high up into the mountains. Then we hiked down small paths for a few hours, through ancient bay forests with a fantastic view over the mountains and the sea.

  The Åbo woman was content, walking with a small, secret smile. After two hours we stopped at a small bar in the middle of nowhere where the bus driver was waiting for us. Everyone ordered la mumba, hot chocolate with cognac, and the bus driver Diego immediately wanted to buy me one. I let him, he looked so nice and happy, so big and fat. An older Danish woman came up and complimented me on my baseball cap and complained that they had not put enough cognac in her hot chocolate. All in all our little group was very happy and energized by our walk. I thought about the Åbo woman’s secret smile and about all of the human destinies housed in the little bar. And just in that moment it became clear to me that all of us are waging a battle for freedom in our own way. There are some events and situations I cannot ignore. Things I do not want to ignore. But maybe you can be a bitter bitch part-time?

  I drank my pitch-black hot chocolate with cognac and grinned at everyone.
Right then I actually did not feel like a bitter bitch. I thought about Johan and Sigge and all of the love to be found there. I thought about my unconditional love for Sigge, which is infinite and heals me with its greatness; my more painful love for Johan, which is also beautiful and filled with joy. Johan actually loves both my strength and my passion. Johan is the one I want to hold hands with when it is dark.

  I thought about my friends who have saved me so many times, a kind of second family without which I would not have survived. I thought about my siblings, how proud I am of what wonderful people they have become despite our difficult childhood. And about how infinitely more boring life would have been without them.

  I thought about my parents, Mum’s love of life in the middle of all the hardship. A rough diamond. Dad’s dark side, his grief and guilt which I have to find a way to live with somehow, and become reconciled with. I felt happy, melancholy, filled with love, rich and talented.

  There in the bar on Tenerife I suddenly remembered an American documentary I’d seen about a man named Stevie. As a child he had been severely abused by his mother and placed in a number of different foster homes, where he had been loved by some but assaulted and abused by others. Now he was twenty-six and almost retarded, knocked around by life, walking around with big thick glasses, greasy hair and bad skin. His mother, grandmother and little sister all lived in the same community where everyone seemed to belong to the cesspool of the poor and unemployed. Stevie had contact with his biological family even though he was constantly cursing what his mother had done to him as a child.

  In the middle of the film, during an interview about Stevie’s childhood, it came to light that Stevie had sexually assaulted his eight-year-old cousin when he was babysitting her. His aunt, the child’s mother, was heartbroken, but spoke the entire time about needing to be understanding because Stevie had had such a difficult childhood. Stevie’s little sister, who was also Stevie’s power of attorney, explained calmly that things did not look good for Stevie, particularly since assaults that he had made on her when they were children were listed on his record. Everything was mentioned in passing and it took a second before I realized the extent of what she was saying. Stevie had assaulted her when they were little and she was still worrying about whether he would go to jail. She was the family member closest to him, the one who took care of him, who allowed him to come along on holiday with her. She was at his side when he needed someone, and yet he had sexually assaulted her when they were children. My head was spinning and I grew hot and cold. How could this be possible? How could reconciliation be so great? These weren’t people who had undergone therapy to survive what they’d been through. They had achieved all of the sensibility, all the love, all the reconciliation on their own.