by Jenny J
While the principal gave a relatively cliché-free speech about that over-used word “future” that we evidently had “ahead of us” and how we still had two years left in which to “achieve great things”, I stared at the other first years. There were a few straight-backed young men in well-fitting suits and well-combed hair, but the majority wore informal T-shirts and were apathetically lounging in the pews. A couple of girls on the drama course had pulled out all the stops, with blindingly white dresses and flowers in their hair, hands intertwined and massive great tears glistening on their cheeks, as if they were practising for their graduation.
I looked at them and tried to understand what they were feeling, because perhaps I was missing something here, a dimension of life or something. Perhaps I was detached, but if that was the case I had nothing against it. Crying because I wouldn’t be able to see my class-mates for a couple of months? Crying because I wouldn’t have to be bullied by Vendela and FAS-Lars? No, I don’t think so. I simply couldn’t imagine feeling like those girls in their white dresses even when I finished school for good. I would be hanging out with Enzo anyway. And the others? No. There wouldn’t be even a fragment of sorrow to squeeze from it. Not for this. Not for them.
I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts that Enzo had to tug at my arm when it was time to stand up and sing Uti Vår Hage which we had apparently been practising for over a month without me really noticing. And as I stood there singing about lilies and columbines and roses and sage, wondering what sage had to do with it – as I stood there with my mouth on autopilot, who did I see right at the back of the church, closest to the wooden doors, in a light green coat? Who did I see there, with big eyes and shiny brown hair?
Mum.
My Mum.
And I think the whole church went quiet. Yes, that must have been what happened. Her eyes were looking straight at me, straight into mine, which were green and so painfully like hers.
And my heart stopped in my body and stayed like that.
Utterly still.
I’ll Love You Always
When the ceremony was over I watched my classmates rush shrieking towards the doors and out of the church.
But not me. I didn’t rush. I didn’t shriek.
I walked towards Mum, my Mum, who was standing immobile despite all the people who were pushing and shoving, forcing their way past, like cattle which had been indoors all winter and now longed to get outside to the first green pastures of spring.
When I was a few metres away from her my feet stopped suddenly. It was like I couldn’t go any closer. I was unable to put one foot in front of the other, as if an invisible wall had been built and I couldn’t get past it. I looked at her helplessly and then, then, she began to walk towards me. And she came up to me and hugged me, and it was a different sort of hug from the one she usually gave me. She said:
‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.’
Over and over she said it.
And I was also sad. I was so profoundly sad, and as proof my eyes filled up. And I breathed in the smell of her hair and I cautiously put my arms around her and we stood like that for an eternity.
Eventually a hunched church warden with skin as fine as paper gesticulated at us and said apologetically that we had to leave the church so that he could get it ready for some choir that was going to sing there that evening. So we walked out into the blindingly yellow-white sunlight and there was Enzo and his mum in a circle of other people, talking about how fantastic something was, although I couldn’t hear what. And Mum, who had never met Enzo or his mum before, stretched out her hand to Enzo first, which I thought was lovely of her, if a little unorthodox, because it indicated that she understood how much he meant to me. Me: who before today was never even sure that she remembered his name. And Enzo smiled and looked spectacularly stylish in a black suit that wasn’t the slightest bit overkill, and his mum was proud and happy and, as usual, as thin as a vanilla pod, but there was nothing I could do about that.
We didn’t talk about Asperger’s but we did go to an Italian restaurant in Södermalm and eat dinner together like a real family. Dad must have known she was coming because he met us at the underground station. There were checked tablecloths on dark wooden tables and it was weird and unfamiliar, but it was okay.
I sat between Mum and Dad with a silvery dish of parmesan in front of me and felt like I was four years old. That wasn’t surprising: we hadn’t sat all together at the same table since I was that age.
They spoke to each other falteringly about the décor, staring at me continuously. Looking for help. I didn’t offer any help. Not on principle: I simply had no words to say because my fragile heart was in my throat. I had to stare hard at my spaghetti to make them look at each other. When even that failed I made an excuse and went to the loo. I opened my report in there, sitting with my knickers around the top of my boots. The expected, far too frequent letter Ps for pass were sweetened with a couple of crucial Ds for distinction. The distinction in Swedish was to be expected, something I had coolly counted on.
The most amazing grade was the one for design: a massive D for distinction radiated up from the report, even though I was clearly lacking on every level and even though Valter hadn’t even seen the shelf, as requested, to be able to give it a final grade.
A shelf is not a sculpture, Maja.
That grade stank of positive discrimination, but that’s never a particular problem when it concerns you personally. And perhaps I was given a little clue when Valter had said in a lesson: “It’s easier to trim a flourishing tree than it is to get a barren one to flourish,” just happening to look at me. Ugly but good, then.
I thought about the shelf and how the debris from it lay in a ditch alongside Gamla Övägen, with its flamingo, heart and everything. Thought about how I had been lying there in the same ditch, like debris myself, my heart thudding in my thumb but with no varnish to protect it. Thought about how I had stayed there, unable to get up. And how lucky it was that I did finally get up and go on. With a bit of help from a chain-smoking Justin Timberlake fan.
I flushed the toilet, washed my hands meticulously and looked at myself in the mirror: the black hair, the stupidly short bangs, the green eyes. I looked at myself and whispered:
‘I’m not average. I’m a flipping flourishing tree.’
Then I went back out. Mum and Dad looked gratefully at me, as if I had saved them from each other. Dad had loosened his tie and Mum had drunk up all her sparkling orange. I suppose I had been gone a long time. I sat down and we went back to that awkward conversation about the décor, talking about the checked tablecloths and the copper saucepans nailed to the walls.
But we didn’t talk about Asperger’s.
We absolutely did not.
The one indication that it was the only thing we were thinking about was that no one mentioned a word about it. The closest we got was when Mum mentioned in passing that I hadn’t been to Norrköping for a while and perhaps I would like to come down for a couple of weeks to stay, immediately after Midsummer? Yes, I said, hiding my mouth behind my napkin, sure, I could do that, and in the middle of it all my phone vibrated with an incoming text. It was from Justin. From Justin who was called Jens. I read it in secret under the table as the dessert was being served by a gorgeous young man in a white shirt and a shiny green waistcoat.
Congratulations sweet Maja! One year over! Only two to go till you are respectable. Guess what? Can’t sell any more wrecks in the Stockholm area. So … come here! J.
That made me so very happy! I was so very happy that it hurt. And I couldn’t help smiling, one of those stupidly wide smiles that idiots in love smile, because perhaps we could be together now, now we no longer had the same haircut? And that text made it easier to agree to Mum’s suggestion, so I repeated myself and said:
‘Sure. Sure I’ll come and stay, at the end of June.’
And she gave a wide smile and said:
‘Good!’
Mum h
ad made up her mind to pay and nothing could stop her; not Dad’s proffered bank notes or barely audible reminders to add on a tip in that case. Mum paid and as usual it was precisely the amount on the bill. She picked up her coat and walked briskly out of the restaurant. I followed her. When I looked back I saw Dad quickly throw another hundred kronor note onto the silver tray. When he caught me looking he put his finger to his mouth, to silence me. But he needn’t have done that. I was already silent.
We stood outside on Götgatan, looking at each other. No one said anything. After a while Dad asked Mum if she would like to stay the night on the sofa, but she said no in that liberatingly direct way that is so much a part of her, that really does mean no and absolutely nothing else. Nothing hidden, nothing concealed or disguised. And that’s why he didn’t insist but simply accepted it with a nod. I’m almost certain he felt relieved.
As we slowly walked along Folkungagatan, Dad said he would take the underground home and asked if I wanted to go with him. I hesitated. It felt like something else needed to be said. And as if she understood, as if for once she understood, Mum said:
‘Maja, would you come with me to Central Station? We could walk there. It’s not too far and the train doesn’t leave until nine forty-five.’
It was gloriously light out even though it was approaching nine o’clock. The streets were buzzing with people: students dressed in white and wearing velvet caps, women in high clicking heels and men who had turned up their shirt sleeves and thrown their jackets nonchalantly over their shoulders. There was chatting and laughter and loud, pounding music coming from open windows. There was a smell of lilac and exhaust fumes and frying hamburgers. I imagine we had masses to say, that we should have talked nonstop all the way, but we didn’t. We walked in complete silence. Sometimes I sneaked a look at her to see if she was about to say something, but it seemed she was wrapped up in her own thoughts and made no attempt to start a conversation. We walked all the way to Central Station from Götgatan without saying a word.
The train went from platform eleven and I walked with her onto the platform. My pulse was racing now. I couldn’t decide whether I should really say something or whether I ought to think we had plenty of time ahead of us, like the principal said; that we had two weeks after Midsummer and the whole of the rest of our lives. Perhaps I ought to say something now now now, but she should be the one to say something, shouldn’t she? Say sorry, explain herself, tell me what happened. It was up to her, surely?
Before she boarded the train she hugged me. It was a long, hard hug and she smelled good. Like something flowery, lady-like, and I thought it was touching, that she had put on perfume when I knew it was something she never did otherwise. She let go of me and I felt something, a sort of powerful, throbbing desperation, not just in my thumb but all over my body, and just as the doors were about to close she pushed an envelope into my hand. She stood in the window and she didn’t take her eyes off me. I felt the desperation fade, felt my heart slow down and begin to beat normally again.
As the train pulled out of the station I stood on the same spot, watching her go. For a brief moment I saw her, saw her dark hair, her eyes. Then, clutching the envelope in my hand, I continued looking at the place on the train where I knew she was standing.
Maja
My darling daughter. You are so grown up now and that’s hard for me to understand. How did that happen? How did my little baby become such a beautiful and strong-willed girl? I’m writing to you because I know it will come out right, what I want to say. I’m writing to you because when words come out of my mouth they tend to go wrong. This mustn’t go wrong.
I’m looking out over the fields. I’m on my way to see you and I dearly hope you will accept me. I know that what I did was unforgiveable. In history, in literature, in reality, a mother must never disappear, never collapse on the floor and be unable to get up again. Neither should a father, of course, but the judgment that falls on a mother who disappears, who collapses, is always harder. Most of all in the way she judges herself. I disappeared and I fell and I cannot make it undone. I could not deal with my surroundings, the outside world, of which you were a part. That is why.
But do you know what made me get up again? Do you know what made me get up from that cold floor?
It was you, Maja.
You are a part of me. You will always be a part of me. You are my daughter and I am your mother and that side of me does not belong to any syndrome. I’m totally, totally convinced of that. It was as if it started to turn around when I realised I am something else apart from the diagnosis, that there is something else within me, a core, which belongs only to me. The darkness became a little lighter, the struggle became a little easier. It was you who made me realise it, that I am something more.
I will always find it hard to understand how people function, how they think and feel. It is a great source of sorrow for me and I am beginning to understand that it is a sorrow for you, too.
I hope you will help me, help me to understand, because I cannot do it by myself.
I am your mum, Maja. I am your mum who also has a syndrome called Asperger’s. I am a mother with hundreds of failings and thousands of faults.
But I am your mother and hopefully even I do some things right sometimes.
I will love you always,
Your mum.
I stuffed the letter back into the blue envelope and looked along the rails that curved into the distance, where Mum’s train had long ago disappeared into the tunnel. I let my eyes drift up towards the blue horizon, where a pale and misty cloud thinned out and evaporated.