She imagined it was like being in love.
Whereas before she felt down but couldn’t cry, tired but couldn’t sleep, she now accepted her existence so fully that she often burst out laughing. She slept well, although she frequently woke up with a feeling that could be mistaken for . . . happiness.
She chose the word happiness, even though it was perhaps a bit too strong at present.
Some people would, no doubt, say she was lonely. She was certain of that, but it didn’t bother her. If only they knew what she actually thought of the people who thought they knew her or what she did. So many of them had allowed themselves to be blinded by her success, despite living in a country where modesty was considered a virtue and superiority the deadliest of all deadly sins.
A nonspecific, unfamiliar anger flared up in her. Her skin crawled, and she ran her cold hand down her left arm and felt how firm she was, how compact her flesh was on her body, hard and dense, as if her skin was slightly too small.
It was a long time since she had bothered to think about the past. It wasn’t worth it. But things had changed so much in recent weeks.
She was born on a rainy Sunday evening in November 1958. Her mother died within twenty minutes of giving birth, and the way the state had treated the tiny, half-dead child made it crystal-clear that Norway was not a country where you should believe you were worth something.
Her father was abroad. She didn’t have any grandparents. One of the nurses had wanted to take her home to her family when she recovered a bit. She thought the baby needed more love and care than could be offered by a three-way shift at the hospital. But the egalitarian country of which the baby was now a citizen did not permit such special arrangements. So she was left in a corner of the children’s ward, where she was fed and had her diaper changed at fixed times, but otherwise was given very little attention until her father came to take her home three months later, to a life where her new mother was already installed.
“Bitterness is not in my nature,” the woman said out loud to her own diffuse reflection in the window. “Bitterness is not in my nature.”
She would never have used the expression “burning rage.” But that was the cliché that came to her all the same as she turned her back to the view and lay down on the far-too-soft sofa so she could breathe more easily. Her diaphragm was burning. She slowly raised her hands to her face. Big square hands with sweaty palms and short nails. She turned them around and noticed a scar on the back of one of them. Her thumb looked as though it had been broken. She tried to recall a story that she knew existed somewhere. She quickly pulled up the sleeves of her sweater, she pinched and touched her own skin. The heat was so extreme now that she could barely swallow. Suddenly she sat up and observed her body as if it belonged to someone else. She ran her fingers through her hair and felt the grease on her scalp against her fingertips. She scratched herself with small, sharp movements until her scalp started to bleed.
She sucked her fingers greedily. A vague taste of iron hung under the nails, and she tore them off, bit her skin, and swallowed. Everything was clearer now. It was important to reflect on the past; it was necessary to piece together her story, to make it whole.
She had tried once before.
She’d been thirty-five years old when she finally managed to argue her way into seeing a copy of the dry hospital report of her birth, full of terminology, and she couldn’t face dealing with it then. She had leafed through the yellowing pages that smelled of dusty archives and found confirmation of what she had feared, hoped, and expected. Her mother had not given birth to her. The woman she knew as Mommy was a stranger. An intruder. Someone she didn’t need to feel anything for.
She had felt neither anger nor sorrow. As she folded the handwritten pages, she simply
Whereas before she felt down but couldn’t cry, tired but couldn’t sleep, she now accepted her existence so fully that she often burst out laughing. She slept well, although she frequently woke up with a feeling that could be mistaken for . . . happiness.
She chose the word happiness, even though it was perhaps a bit too strong at present.
Some people would, no doubt, say she was lonely. She was certain of that, but it didn’t bother her. If only they knew what she actually thought of the people who thought they knew her or what she did. So many of them had allowed themselves to be blinded by her success, despite living in a country where modesty was considered a virtue and superiority the deadliest of all deadly sins.
A nonspecific, unfamiliar anger flared up in her. Her skin crawled, and she ran her cold hand down her left arm and felt how firm she was, how compact her flesh was on her body, hard and dense, as if her skin was slightly too small.
It was a long time since she had bothered to think about the past. It wasn’t worth it. But things had changed so much in recent weeks.
She was born on a rainy Sunday evening in November 1958. Her mother died within twenty minutes of giving birth, and the way the state had treated the tiny, half-dead child made it crystal-clear that Norway was not a country where you should believe you were worth something.
Her father was abroad. She didn’t have any grandparents. One of the nurses had wanted to take her home to her family when she recovered a bit. She thought the baby needed more love and care than could be offered by a three-way shift at the hospital. But the egalitarian country of which the baby was now a citizen did not permit such special arrangements. So she was left in a corner of the children’s ward, where she was fed and had her diaper changed at fixed times, but otherwise was given very little attention until her father came to take her home three months later, to a life where her new mother was already installed.
“Bitterness is not in my nature,” the woman said out loud to her own diffuse reflection in the window. “Bitterness is not in my nature.”
She would never have used the expression “burning rage.” But that was the cliché that came to her all the same as she turned her back to the view and lay down on the far-too-soft sofa so she could breathe more easily. Her diaphragm was burning. She slowly raised her hands to her face. Big square hands with sweaty palms and short nails. She turned them around and noticed a scar on the back of one of them. Her thumb looked as though it had been broken. She tried to recall a story that she knew existed somewhere. She quickly pulled up the sleeves of her sweater, she pinched and touched her own skin. The heat was so extreme now that she could barely swallow. Suddenly she sat up and observed her body as if it belonged to someone else. She ran her fingers through her hair and felt the grease on her scalp against her fingertips. She scratched herself with small, sharp movements until her scalp started to bleed.
She sucked her fingers greedily. A vague taste of iron hung under the nails, and she tore them off, bit her skin, and swallowed. Everything was clearer now. It was important to reflect on the past; it was necessary to piece together her story, to make it whole.
She had tried once before.
She’d been thirty-five years old when she finally managed to argue her way into seeing a copy of the dry hospital report of her birth, full of terminology, and she couldn’t face dealing with it then. She had leafed through the yellowing pages that smelled of dusty archives and found confirmation of what she had feared, hoped, and expected. Her mother had not given birth to her. The woman she knew as Mommy was a stranger. An intruder. Someone she didn’t need to feel anything for.
She had felt neither anger nor sorrow. As she folded the handwritten pages, she simply
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