Dad has bought Pepsi too, something we never normally have, and chocolates for Mum. ‘But we’ve got nothing to celebrate,’ she says. She loves chocolate and normally keeps a bar in the top drawer of her bedside table. ‘We can find something to celebrate,’ Dad says. But there’s no celebration.
Mum gets the electricity bill and the telephone bill and demands that he gives her the money. Dad only gives her a bit. ‘And you who lent money to that alcoholic last week. You realise that we’re never going to get that back, don’t you?’
‘It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t pay us back. That’s life. What goes around comes around,’ he reassures her. Then he dashes out of the kitchen, out of the house and into the garage. He starts up our old wreck of a car with a cough and splutter and drives off. As he usually does when they’ve argued.
I sit in the kitchen looking at the flowers and the meat and the chocolate lying on the table. I think the same as Mum, what’s the point of flowers?
I wake up and I don’t want to wake up. Don’t want to get up and don’t want to lie awake in bed. I’ve got a cold. It’s been a long night. In and out of bed. Then the phone rings. It’s a flower shop. I lie there and wonder who they might be from. I go through everyone who might possibly send me flowers, without coming to any conclusion. But somewhere out there, there’s someone who thinks I need cheering up. I do need cheering up. I stay under the duvet. A secret admirer?
When the flowers are finally delivered in the early afternoon, it’s a gigantic bouquet. At first I don’t see the card and the bouquet just stands magnificent in the middle of the kitchen table. I look amongst the flowers again. Then I find the card:
Dear Eli! Congratulations on the publication of your new book. It is a truly wonderful children’s book! With best wishes from your friends at the publishers.
I’m lost for words. Has one of my children’s books been published today?
How can you forget something like that? Publishing a new book is usually a big thing for me. They write about it in the papers, fresh copies stand on bookshop shelves and in the library. I crawl back to bed and try to feel something. But nothing happens. I go and get the bouquet of flowers and put it in the bedroom. I don’t agree with Mum any more, what’s the point of flowers? I lie there looking at them. Yes, they’re sending out sparks. I catch them and feel: it’s worth fighting on.
I sit at the front of the classroom. The teacher is drawing a cow on the blackboard with all its four stomachs and what they are called. I see the outline of the cow, but not the text, what the four stomachs are called. That is what we are supposed to be learning, and I really want to. How can the others see? We have to write it down in our books. I draw a cow, wait for the teacher to point and say the word out loud. But she doesn’t.
I’ve known for a long time. The others see much better than me. But I can’t tell anyone. Being dyslexic is enough. I can’t say that I can’t see the letters at all. And who would I tell? Not the teacher. Not anyone at home. I don’t know.
I think to myself that everything will sort itself out when I’m a grown-up. And until then, I’ll just have to keep a secret.
It’s a sunny day in the middle of summer. We’re going to go swimming, the whole family. I’ve been looking forward to it all day. While I wait, I walk around in the high grass with the scythe in my hand. I’m just going to cut a bit. I’m good with the scythe.
But then there are some hazel shoots. They’re far too thick. I take one hand off the scythe so that I can hold the shoots. I swing with all my might and slice the hand that is holding the shoots. I drop the scythe and my hand rushes up to my mouth. I’ve cut my pinkie. The blood is pouring. My pinkie is almost hanging off. It’s nearly cut to the bone.
I run into the woods behind the house. The others can go without me. I hold my other hand tightly round my pinkie. I mustn’t be sick or hurt myself. It’s Mum who can’t take pain. It’s Mum who can’t take it when things don’t turn out the way she expected.
When I’m certain that they’ve gone, I go back to the house. The blood is still pouring. My finger is thumping. It has nearly fallen off. At home, I try to make a splint to keep it straight. Then use a gauze bandage and lots of plasters. The splint is an ice-lolly stick from the drawer. It’s longer than my pinkie and juts out. I break off the top. It has to look like a small cut. The blood seeps through and I have to bandage it again. It heals over time, but will now forever be a slightly crooked pinkie.
The bell rings. I open the door in my pyjamas. It’s midday. I spent most of the night writing.
It’s Jonathan. I rush into the bedroom and put on some clothes. We sit down at the kitchen table. I’m not as curious about Jonathan as I have been about my previous therapists. He tells me about himself over time and is not particularly secretive.
We write down everything we do. Draw up lists and anxiety management strategies. There are always two sides, problems and solutions. Advantages and disadvantages. I have a form to fill out every evening about how I think the night is going to be, on a scale from one to ten. The next morning, I have to fill in how it was, on a scale from one to ten.
I see Dad sitting in the car in the garage having a sneaky cigarette. Because he’s stopped smoking.
He has a rope round his neck. I wrench open the door. He puts his finger to his lips and says shhh. Then he stubs out the cigarette. ‘Don’t tell anyone.’ ‘What are you going to do?’ I ask and point at the rope. He doesn’t answer. He’s not very good at talking. Except for when he’s telling funny stories.
There’s something dark in his eyes. He starts the car. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Nowhere.’ ‘Can I come too?’ Normally he lets me. But not when they’ve been arguing.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he says in a hard voice, and pushes me out of the car, then locks the door. He lights another cigarette. I stand with my face to the window and stare in. ‘Dad, Dad,’ I shout.
When he’s finished the cigarette he suddenly starts the car and I have to jump out of the way. He reverses out of the garage at full speed. Spins round and races off out through the gate. I run after the car down the street, waving my arms and shouting: ‘Stop!’
He probably won’t manage to hang himself. There’s so much he can’t do. He can’t keep down a job. He can’t help in the house like Mum wants him to. He wants things to be neat and tidy, but in his own way. When we’re going to go anywhere, he gets all us kids into the car hours before we leave. But there’s lots of things he can do. He’s a good carpenter, he makes paintings and sings. He calls in strangers from the street to come and look at his paintings. He reads books. He reads out loud for us children. He and I can stop grimacing. Stop flaring up for nothing. Stop going to pieces.
I sit on the snowdrift by the gate and wait for him to come back. I feel the cold and damp seep in through my trousers, through my tights, knickers and right into my bum. I wet myself. I’m wet from the outside in and now from the inside out. I move from the yellow patch in the snow and find myself somewhere new to sit. It looks like a dog has been here. Mum calls out that food is on the table. I don’t go in. I wait until it gets dark and then I see the car creeping slowly up the road. And I hurry in. Dad mustn’t see that I was waiting. That I was scared he might die.
Events wait to become stories. The sculpture sleeps in the stone. I’m writing about my childhood again. At first I thought that memory was a photograph that became a painting as I wrote. And that the painting then replaces the memory. But the more I write, the more I realise that the memory was never a photograph to begin with. There is no original. Does creating involve both writing and erasing at the same time? I don’t think so. I think that the past is a swirling torrent, but you can still wade out into it. I normally say that I have experienced everything I write about, because when I write it down with the full range of emotions, I have experienced it. But it’s wrong to think it was like that from the start. Memories don’t stay where you left them. You’ve dragged them around with
you into every nook and cranny of life. Like pulling a sledge, a lot has fallen off and more has been added.
It’s Christmas Eve and I’m all dressed up and waiting. I do somersaults in Mum and Dad’s big bed. I do somersaults from the bed down onto the floor, several times. And then, crash. I land on one of Dad’s paintings. It’s standing on the floor with a few others that he’s done, leaning up against the wall. The glass breaks and the painting gets torn. What will Dad say? What will he do with his mouth? And his arms? Will I get hit?
I can run round and round in the deep snow out in the garden. Without seeing the sunlight and rabbit tracks. Just run. Run until I’m dizzy and can put up with anything. Dad might come after me.
I’m too big to be tied to the bed, like when I was little. I’m too big. How will I be punished? How can I somersault backwards again so that it never happened? ‘Cut yourself,’ Espen says. ‘Blood, courage.’
I pick up a piece of glass and start cutting my arm. Now I’ve ruined Christmas Eve, I think, close my eyes and cut a deep wound in each arm. The blood runs down onto my white dress and down onto the white wooden floor.
It’s Granddad who finds me. He looks at my arms. ‘That needs stitches,’ he says, and gets Mum and Dad. They look at the cuts and say nothing about the painting. Silently they pick up the pieces of glass. They start to discuss whether I really need stitches as it’s Christmas Eve and we’re about to eat Christmas dinner. But in the end we go, just in case.
There’s nearly no cars on the road. It’s five o’clock and we wind down the car windows to listen to the church bells ring in Christmas. At A&E there are Christmas decorations, but nearly no people. The people waiting there are silent and all dressed up. Apart from one man who comes in on unsteady feet with blood on his face. He stinks and he’s left to sit in a corner and talk to himself.
The doctor is kind and asks why I have done this to myself. To which I don’t have an answer. She says that she will get me an appointment with a child psychiatrist. Someone to talk to. I get nine stitches in one arm and seven in the other. I get some stickers of Santa Claus to share with my siblings, who have been quiet and good in this horrible place.
Then we go home again. Eat Christmas dinner and sing Christmas carols around the tree at midnight. And then, finally, I get to open my presents in my pyjamas. I’ve got a piece of white material from some relatives where I can embroider the letter E with flowers all around it. I can’t embroider and don’t want to learn. My eyes are too bad. I want the same things Torvald gets.
The good presents must not be overshadowed by the futile anger I feel about the ones that are wrong. It seems so pointless to get something you don’t want when there is so much you do want. I get a box that Dad has made and decorated with a traditional Norwegian rose painting. I like it. I’m going to hide all the things I don’t like in it and bury it in the garden until summer. I’ve got a special place for things I don’t want to be found.
After Christmas, Mum and I meet a child psychiatrist. She has toys and a sandpit in her office. Mum tells her all about my screaming and crying and bird noises that really pierce your ears once I get started. And that I can wreck a whole room if you just turn your back. That I wet myself at night and get hysterical about things that Mum doesn’t understand.
I say nothing. Me, who is normally bursting with words. The child psychiatrist asks Mum to go out, but that doesn’t help. I’ve got nothing to say to this woman I don’t know. Nothing about this. Nothing about the difficult things. I’m used to making things up and telling stories, but that’s not what this woman wants to hear. I can’t mention Espen. He’s a secret.
The psychiatrist asks if I want to come back and play in the sandpit. I don’t want to. She writes out a prescription for some pills that I’m to take every evening. I don’t know what the pills are for and Mum doesn’t either when I ask her. Next time when Marit goes to the chemist to pick them up, she asks and is told they’re for nerves.
‘I’m nervous.’
‘Yes, I can see that,’ Jonathan tells me.
‘I’m nervous about the jab tomorrow. Haven’t been able to sleep all night. Everything inside me says that I don’t want a depot injection of anti-psychotic drugs. I keep trying to tell my doctor, but he says that it’s a preventative measure. My little boys inside say don’t, full stop.’
‘I know that they make a fuss and don’t want to. But it’s not them we should listen to,’ Jonathan says.
‘My doctor told me that I’ve got a chronic illness. Wasn’t much fun to hear that.’
‘He’s both right and wrong, really,’ Jonathan says. ‘Childhood is also chronic. It depends on how you deal with it, there is always a healing power. If we only did what our mothers did all our lives, the world would come to a standstill.’
‘I don’t want to have neuroleptics in my body, now that I’m well. I think it would be good to only take them when I’m psychotic. But being given the injections instead of pills, just because the doctor thinks I’m skipping the pills, makes me feel powerless. I want to do that. I want to be well now.’
‘We’re working on it,’ Jonathan assures me. ‘We’ll show the doctor that what we’re doing is better than medicine. We’re working towards you being drug-free. You’ve had your dosage halved since last year.’
‘But I don’t want to take anything at all.’
I close my eyes and throw the chronic label over my shoulder, behind me, where it belongs.
Mum and I are going to go skiing. Mum has promised me some hot chocolate at a teaching college by the edge of the forest. Mum has new skis and new ski pants. Yellow like Big Bird, with a ribbed yellow woolly hat. She looks very smart. We use the wrong wax, but don’t re-wax our skis. Just set out on skis that are slippy. We have to cross a big road before the forest starts. When I’m on my own, I normally ski to a café further into the forest. But Mum can’t face going that far. I always turn back at the café. Don’t go into the warmth and buy something. I just stamp my card so I can show them at school that I’ve been there. The teacher then writes the number of kilometres down on a squared sheet that hangs on the wall. My column is the longest. The teacher has had to tape on an extra piece of paper to write up all my distances.
There is a high snowdrift by the side of the road left behind in the wake of the snowplough. The road has been gritted so you have to ski down the drift at an angle and stop abruptly at the bottom to take your skis off. Mum stands on top of the snowdrift. She gingerly puts one ski down. Instead of doing the plough, she leans on her sticks. The whole of her upper body is leaning forwards. The skis slip away from under her. I can see what’s about to happen.
Mum falls hard on her back. She slides down to the road and then just lies there. I follow her. Stand there. ‘Did you hurt yourself?’ I ask. I saw how hard she fell. She says nothing. I give her my stick and she hauls herself up with great difficulty. I see her wince and put her hand to her back. ‘Shall we go home?’ I ask. ‘Absolutely not,’ Mum says. ‘I’ve promised you a hot chocolate.’
We ski across the fields towards the forest. Mum is in pain but doesn’t give up. We make slow progress. I don’t race ahead. I move my skis in slow motion, turn around and see Mum is straight as a poker and determined. I want to go home.
We get to the college. We have to go up three floors and there’s no lift. Mum can scarcely walk. She stops on every step and I can see how much it hurts, but she says nothing. We find a drinks machine in the corridor and buy a hot chocolate each. Mum drinks hers quickly. Mine is too hot. I burn my mouth. I don’t chat away like I normally do. I say nothing and Mum says nothing. I’m sure that Mum wants me to enjoy my warm chocolate, but I don’t. I force it down in small gulps. Mum wants everything to be as planned. But it’s not.
When we go back down the stairs again, Mum is in terrible pain. Pain is not allowed for us children. And not for adults either. She goes down a step then stops. Down a step then stops. Slowly we make our home across the fields as dark f
alls.
Mum doesn’t sleep all night. She is tired and stiff at breakfast. She says that she’s going to go to the hospital, that it’s nothing to worry about but she just wants to get it checked. She comes home after having had to wait for a long time. Three ribs are broken. Espen shouts: ‘Ouch! Ouch!’ No one hears him. I say: ‘No!’ It doesn’t exist. Pain doesn’t exist.
‘Maybe you should call your mother,’ Espen says. But I don’t want to right now. ‘Maybe you could make her laugh a little,’ he says. I bang my fist against my head.
‘Maybe I could make myself laugh,’ I say.
‘Good,’ says Jonathan.
The doorbell rings. It’s not the minister, it’s the boys from the street. They want to play football or go skiing with Mum’s little wild princess. But one evening the doorbell rings and it’s dark and there are no children outside. I can feel in my whole body. Someone has died.
No one opens the door and the bell rings again. The sound tears through my body. I lean forward to look out of the kitchen window and see a dark shadow. It’s the minister. I open the window and try to say hello. I can’t get a word out. I’m visible in the brightly lit kitchen.
‘Is your dad at home?’ asks a voice in the dark. I close the window. It’s Mum who decides. I don’t want to let him in with his horrible message. I run and hide in the cupboard above the garage. I crawl under some soft yellow glass fibre matting. Whoever isn’t at home has died. Who isn’t at home?
Then I hear a voice that isn’t Espen. ‘You’re not alone. You’re not Eli any more. You are me, Emil,’ the boy’s voice says. ‘You don’t need to be so frightened of death any more.’
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