Bitter Bitch Read online

  Or, as the Swedish politician Gudrun Schyman said in what has been called her Taliban speech: women give and men take. I understood exactly what she meant and hearing someone formulate what I had long suspected made me sad. There are certain societal structures, an ideology or religion we might call patriarchy, that makes us expect different things from each other, from love. These structures legitimize men’s power and women’s powerlessness, making us believe in and live by ancient, rotten gender roles which lead to all of us being deeply unhappy.

  But challenging and confronting lovelessness causes pain, and on TV, men like Erik Fichteluis stood, red-faced, and reported on what a disgrace it was that the situation of women in Afghanistan had been compared to that of (spoiled) Swedish women.

  And then it did not seem to matter how much Gudrun explained that she wasn’t belittling the oppression of women in Afghanistan; she had meant that there is patriarchal oppression in Sweden just as there is in Afghanistan, but that the oppression takes different forms (for example women in Sweden do not wear burkas). Gudrun said that this oppression has its origin in the gender power imbalance, but no one was listening because all we could hear was the red-faced male journalists and commentators screaming about how insulted they were at being called Talibanists.

  I am trying to see the humour in it. To a certain extent, these red-faced men on TV are quite funny, but the nonchalance of their message is just a little too irritating. Refusing to admit your own part in oppression is an incredibly smart power strategy, since oppression is made invisible by diminishing it.

  It is almost more obvious when it comes to the question of class. I am thinking about all the times I have interviewed people with middle-class backgrounds and when I have asked what class they grew up in, they irritably snap that they do not understand the question, or answer that the idea of class is obsolete, that there are only individual differences. That is what happened with the young fashion expert and newspaper editor I interviewed for a radio programme.

  ‘What kind of neighbourhood did you grow up in?’ I asked.

  ‘Örgryte,’ the fashion expert replied. One of Göteborg’s most affluent areas.

  ‘OK, and how would you describe the area?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. You’ll have to call Göteborg’s town hall and ask them,’ the fashion expert replied.

  ‘But does it mainly have tower blocks, rented accommodation, or houses …?’

  ‘It is mixed,’ she said, and looked at me with big, blue eyes. She shook her long, well-cared for blonde hair, and despite the fact that she looked like a Barbie doll I knew she was not stupid, just the opposite. This competent Barbie pretending to be ignorant bothered me, and so I continued asking her about class, until she grew tired and said that if she belonged to a class it was the working class because her parents – mother a doctor and father a shipbroker – worked more than sixty hours a week. When I suggested that doctor and shipbroker were not professions one would consider working class, she said that we are all free to define class as we wish. It was so fantastic in some way, and yet so awful.

  The world seems to be divided into two types of people: the ones who think the world is just and those who think it is not. It is mostly men who deny that there is a gender imbalance between men and women. I think it is this denial, more than anything else, that makes me bitter bitchy. I think it has to do with their nonchalance, which creates a feeling of powerlessness and invisibility, as if you have been screaming at the top of your lungs and no one has listened, although you know everyone has heard you. And I am annoyed that it is so effective, perhaps the smartest way of preserving the oppression. The dialogue fades away and you are forced to rewind the tape and start again.

  Of course the issue of class is different now compared to a century ago. An uneducated carpet installer may have a higher monthly income than a librarian. The walls that defined class at the beginning of the 1900s have moved. The working class has a different meaning now than it did in 1920. Nevertheless we live in a society where an uneducated nursing assistant lives in a different socio-economic sphere than a blonde fashion expert with a doctor for a mother and shipbroker for a father.

  When it comes to the denial of injustice within romantic relationships, there is a never-ending flow of valid reasons to excuse the power imbalance. Along with humiliation and invisibility you have the additional difficulty of defining love. I think a lot about love being what love does; that if we started seeing love more as an action than as an emotion then responsibility and obligations would automatically follow. If we stopped viewing love as just an emotion, it would be easier to counter the argument that love can take different forms for different individuals. We might avoid the romanticized Hollywood images that obscure problems in a relationship, the idea that love becomes dull without romance, roses and champagne. Stories I have read a thousand times which suggest that what I am missing can be boiled down to a bouquet of cut flowers. I can easily live without roses and champagne, but I cannot put up with inequality; it should not exist in a relationship in which two people claim to love each other. Perhaps we tell ourselves that love means different things to different people, because if we try to define love we will be forced to see what we are missing?

  What I hate most about being a bitter bitch is the feeling of pettiness which is slowly taking hold, an evil cycle of nitpicking which is difficult to stop. I let the small things become big ones. I do not want to be a petty, small-minded person, but generosity is a luxury which can only exist when you feel good and are treated justly and affectionately.

  The more I think about it, the clearer it becomes: love, the greatest thing of all, has been kidnapped by patriarchy, capitalism and Hollywood, and transformed into something significantly smaller and phonier. Marriage has been kidnapped in the same way. Instead of being a pure manifestation of love it has become something associated with royalty, Carl Bildt and other non-Socialist groups as well as conventions which get etiquette expert Magdalena Ribbing cheering from her flat on Öfvre Östermalm. We no longer see that the institute of marriage obscures pure love, the greatest of all. The fact that I was forced to joke about my marriage after only a month is not so strange after all; nor is it strange, that because of my ideal of equality, I did not really want to be married. I just wanted to have a lovefest.

  It is not strange that I sit here in Tenerife, unable to stop my bitter cunt thoughts, my pitch-black observations. I cannot turn a blind eye to the word any longer, and maybe this is what makes me bitter? I know too much. I know that women often blossom when the initial pain of the divorce has settled, while men suddenly discover how lonely they are. They realize what a bad relationship they have with their children, how few friends they have, since their wives were the ones who took care of the children and the friends and the family while the men worked and made their careers. Men also pay a price for their superiority. A woman with tired legs and a migraine stands behind every successful man. And a divorce is behind every successful woman.

  They are getting up now and leaving, the alcoholic woman and her dissatisfied husband. He doesn’t look at her, instead he walks with determined steps towards the exit and she wobbles after him on her high heels. She tries to keep up while ignoring his angry rejection of her. Perhaps they sometimes lie awake at night and wonder why they got married in the first place. Everything you thought would happen when you get married has not and suddenly thirty years have passed and you realize you have become a bit tipsy and unhappy and your husband is ashamed of you and always walks a few feet ahead. You take a one week holiday to Tenerife and put on a cock-coloured outfit and high-heeled pumps, and it does not help, even though you try and coordinate it with pink lipstick and perfume. You wobble anyway.

  I get up too and go and lie down on one of the sun loungers around the pool, thinking to myself that there must be something terribly wrong; being this tired should not be allowed.

  I fall into a deep sleep and dream that I am in New York. I am t
ravelling and I am happy and everything is exciting but further down the street I hear a choir of women’s voices. At first I think they are singing but when I get closer I can hear that they are screaming. They are angry about something but I cannot make out the words and a man who looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger has stood up on a bench to try and calm them down. When I get closer I see that it is Arnold Schwarzenegger and I feel a bit sorry for him, even though I suspect the women have a right to be upset. His hair is so grey and his eyes look so tired and sad. Suddenly he pulls off his shirt and reveals his muscular, oiled torso. The screaming women fall silent for a moment, surprised, and Arnold happily takes the opportunity to flex his arm muscles and suck in his stomach. A real bodybuilder. When the women realize he has started posing instead of answering them they become even angrier. Large tears start to roll down Arnold’s wounded cheeks. He still does not understand what he has done wrong. Poor devil, I must help him, but the screams drown out everything else and I am forced to lean up close so he will be able to hear me.

  ‘Men also pay a price for their superiority! You have to pay a high price for your power. Do you understand?’

  He looks at me, confused and tries to answer, but the women scream so loudly I cannot hear what he is saying.

  The sound of arguing children in the pool wakes me. Their mother is yelling at them to get out of the water, NOW! There is no father. There are never any fathers screaming hysterically at their children out of exhaustion. They are probably sitting in the bar, drinking beer and chatting.

  I am thinking about my dream, that is it is only a fragile comfort that men also pay a price for their superiority. The oppression of women costs far more. There are lots of reasons for my bitter bitch transformation and it has been going on my whole life, but nothing has been as painful, as terribly bitter bitch making, as that of becoming a mother. Of all myths it is probably the holiest, that of becoming a mother, which is the most untrue, the most painful.

  A NEW WAY OF MEASURING TIME (2002)

  I am pregnant and constantly worried about having a miscarriage. I dream about bloody clumps running down, out of my body, and I wake up sweaty and sad. I want this child so much!

  Johan tries to calm me down and feels my breasts. ‘They’ve changed. They weren’t this big before.’

  But it does not help. I read books which outline the symptoms of pregnancy and conclude that I do not have a single one. I do not feel sick, I am not tired, I have not lost my sex drive. I feel normal, completely entirely bloody abnormally normal.

  And I am not looking forward to childbirth. My friends who have had children talk about childbirth as though it is the most fantastic thing they have ever experienced. I listen with a wrinkled brow and a suspicious look.

  ‘It’s the greatest kick! Like running a marathon!’ Charlotte says enthusiastically.

  But I would never, ever run a marathon voluntarily, I think to myself. I do not have any desire to manage that kind of physical achievement. We rent a house on Gotland during the summer with some friends. We bike several kilometres to different beaches each day and I am strong and sunburned. I study my body in the mirror in our bedroom. Maybe my stomach has started growing just a little? I stop dreaming about bloody, slimy clumps and when we get back to Stockholm I start to believe that maybe there will be a baby after all.

  During the ultrasound we see our baby clench its fist. A victory sign, the sign of a fighter. A sign to us that everything is going to be fine. We start daring to joke about names and we start calling the baby Sue Ellen.

  One morning when I get up to use the bathroom I see that everything is red. At first I do not understand, I wipe myself and I see how the paper turns red from the blood. Bloody urine. It is almost orange.

  Sue Ellen has been in my stomach for twenty-two weeks, it is too late for a damn miscarriage! I cannot have a miscarriage now, not when I have just started relaxing! We call the hospital and they tell us to come in to the Maternity Ward to check things out. I am crying and Johan is quiet and resolute. Maybe the taxi driver cannot see that I am crying in the back seat, because when he drops us off he says: ‘Good luck!’

  Johan mumbles ‘Thanks!’ and pays.

  I am examined and when I hear our baby’s heartbeat I stop crying. Sue Ellen is OK! The doctor slides the ultrasound device across my belly and sees that the placenta is lying too far down, over the cervix.

  ‘That’s probably why you had some bleeding,’ he says, as he washes his hands.

  We stay in for two days for observation and another doctor tells us that we should prepare for having a planned Caesarean. She says it with regret and looks at us questioningly when we grin at each other, elated that we do not have to worry about childbirth!

  After a few days at the hospital we go home. We have been warned that there could be more bleeding during the remainder of the pregnancy. Every time it happens we must go to the hospital. I receive strict orders to take it easy from now on. No heavy grocery bags, no biking, and as much rest as possible. Yes, yes, yes, I say, relieved that my baby is OK. It is the only thing that matters.

  We have only been home for a few hours when the doorbell rings. It is a delivery man with a marzipan cake. It says Sue Ellen in chocolate letters across the middle. Johan’s sister and her boyfriend have sent it. We stand across from each other at the kitchen table and look at the ornate handwriting. The chocolate name, our baby! Johan’s eyes fill with tears for the first time and we cry and eat cake the rest of the night, sitting really, really close.

  My midwife wants me to go on sick leave but I refuse. I am afraid of the silence, the rest, the thoughts, afraid of stopping, of not having a job, an identity. I am afraid of becoming one of those – a pregnant woman on sick leave. A mother lizard. I tell her that work is fine and I do not mention the heavy tape recorder I have to lug with me to every interview. I do not tell her anything about the bustle, about the stress, about my need for achievement. How is she to know that my strength is my standard, that I despise all signs of weakness?

  I am working more than ever before. I have a full-time substitute position and I am also working on a documentary. People around me sigh and do not know that I interpret this as proof of my strength. Pretending to be strong makes me feel good. I almost get used to the bleeding, which comes now and again. I get used to going to the hospital every time it happens, being examined, staying overnight on a hard delivery bed and going to work the next morning. Straight from the Maternity Ward. I feel strong and able and, strangely enough, less and less afraid the more I challenge fate.

  This feeling continues until three days before the planned Caesarean. The night before I become genuinely terrified. It creeps up on me, that suspicion of the chaos, the ultimate defeat, a complete breakdown …

  Me.

  Nina Simone’s ‘I Shall Be Released’ is playing as Sigge is brought into the world.

  In the theatre room, ten fantastic women work on sewing me back together. I am lying on the table crying and I love all ten of them. Worn out, underpaid and yet the whole time they are friendly and filled with patience, comfort and warmth. I am so grateful!

  Johan gets to go with the midwife to the room next door where they wash Sigge before they come back and put him on my chest. We have the most wonderful little bundle of joy in the world! He does not want to open his eyes, instead he just lies quietly and I stroke his cheek, hands, feet and back. I love him deeply and earnestly.

  The Maternity Ward is wonderful and I do not want to go home. We have our own room where we live in a safe bubble with full support, full service. I do not sleep at all at night, completely absorbed in lying and watching Sigge, but the food is served regularly and there is fresh bread for breakfast. I do not have to think about anything practical, we can focus all of our energy, all of our emotions, unhindered on Sigge and each other. The only thing that does not really work is the breastfeeding. My breasts are swollen with milk which just runs and runs, but Sigge has a hard time latching on. Finall
y the midwife helps us with a nipple shield which you put on the breast and then he is able to suck a little bit.

  After four days we are forced to leave the safety bubble for home. We are in a daze and I cry and cry. I think it is from happiness, or it is exhaustion?

  When we have been home for two days a set designer comes over, one Johan is going to work with on his next production. It is Johan’s first job since he finished his stage management course at the University College of Film, Radio, Television and Theatre, and he is looking forward to it with expectation and anxiety. It means a lot to him. The set designer and Johan lock themselves in the study. I sit in the living room trying to breastfeed Sigge and it doesn’t go very well. My breasts are hard and swollen and small angry streams of milk are leaking out, wetting my shirt. They sting and burn and want to be emptied, but Sigge roars with fury every time I put him to my breast. I try and brace myself, I try to keep his crying from cutting deep into my insides. I try and sound calm, soft when I say, ‘There you go sweetheart … there you go … please try sweetie …’

  I stroke his head and back, I stroke his feet. I let his angry hand cling desperately to my index finger. His little body is tense like a bow and he is shaking with rage. His cries make me sweat, it runs from my forehead, down into my eyes, under my arms, over my stomach and down my thighs. I panic. I panic because I cannot defend myself against his cries any longer. I panic because it will bother the set designer and Johan and they will wonder why he is crying so much, because I am sitting here trying to be considerate of them when it should be the other way around. What the hell is that set designer doing here anyway? I need Johan here now, next to me on the sofa. I realize that I am alone. Am I supposed to solve this problem alone? I cannot get Sigge to take the breast although he is hungry. I start to panic because this baby has taken possession of me.