Higher Ground by Anke Stelling (ap literature book list .txt) 📕

sloppy of me, yet again. I’m a fucking slut, which is obvious from the moment you set eyes on me.

Shame

Friday morning, the last day of school before the holidays.

Bea going away with Ulf now seems like a distant dream. Not that he’s tarring us all with the same brush, but how’s he supposed to ask her without me getting in the way, or at least being in the picture? How is Bea supposed to ask him without me knowing; I’m her shadow, just like Frank and Co. are Ulf’s. What did he say yesterday? ‘To muck out the past?’ Did he really say that?

I steady myself by holding onto the worktop. There are three lunchboxes to be filled; Lynn doesn’t need one because the parents take turns in buying snacks for childcare. Everything goes black in front of my eyes, but that’s my circulation and low blood pressure. A glass of champagne for breakfast is supposed to help. Perhaps it would help too much, though, and lead to misunderstandings — a weed-smoking father, an alcoholic mother? Let’s muck them out, sweep them away, disinfect their place, gas it.

Stop it, Resi, that’s not what he meant. He just chose his words awkwardly. But why am I saying that of Ulf, of all people, the eloquent mediator? Why should I protect him, a self-appointed defender, from his own words? So that he takes Bea off my hands for the holidays? Perhaps I’ll never let him see Bea again.

Dear Ulf,

I’m pretty appalled by what you told me last night.

Things have taken a direction that I wasn’t aware they would. I assumed we might have different attitudes and opinions, but that we would, of course, agree on fundamental human rights — together. Now I realise that none of you even see my family or me as people anymore, but as muck to be gotten rid of. And that makes any argument impossible and this letter I’m writing to you absurd: muck can’t write, and it doesn’t need to forbid you to see its daughter, because that daughter isn’t a person either, but is also muck, which the piece of muck has somehow managed to produce because people couldn’t muck out, mop, and disinfect the place it lives in fast enough; Ulf, my dear, what’s that I see? Are you still clean?

You dirty old Nazi, stay away from my daughter.

No best wishes,

Resi

I just about make it into the bathroom, which is luckily empty. Bea is still asleep, and the boys never wash. I throw up in the toilet bowl. It hurts, but it’s also good. The last time I vomited was five and a half years ago, while giving birth to Lynn; at every birth, just before the final contractions, everything I had in me came out. There’s something nice about being so close to the edge, not being in control of whether the baby comes or you throw up.

Disgusting, acidic red-wine puke swims in the toilet: I flush it away, rinse my mouth out, drink water from the toothbrush mug with Miffy on the front, a rabbit without a mouth. If you don’t have a mouth, you always look surprised and cute. What an excellent idea to draw Miffy without a mouth and just give her a cross instead, whatever that’s supposed to be — a muzzle, whiskers? I imagine it’s the secret of Bruna’s success.

‘Mum?’ Jack is outside the door.

‘I’m coming.’

I make endless sandwiches; cut apples into slices; soak oats.

Pull yourself together, Resi. Hide your fangs, stitch up your mouth with a cross — that’s what it is! A stitch! A cross-stitch! Anyway, you literally took something Ulf said the wrong way. It wasn’t his intention — and it’s out now.

I stand at the living-room window and watch my kids walking off to school. Feeding them has set off those pacifying phrases in my head, and I sing the Miffy song for Lynn: ‘Miffy, Miffy, we love you / you always know just what to do / two long ears and button eyes / and just my size / Miffy, Miffy, oh so true / we do love you.’

Sven gets up, and I take his side of the bed; try to fall back to sleep. I had a late night last night, and it was surreal. I don’t even know what it was.

I want to fall asleep, keep my mouth shut, and be loyal, like Miffy: I’m a decent person, I know what’s expected and how to behave.

Sometimes I might want sex to defy death and loneliness, or because I can do it myself and it doesn’t cost anything. But this will be a well-kept secret. I won’t share any emotions anymore, and I won’t wash my dirty laundry in public. I will wash silently, be respectful, provide for my children, and feel shame.

Like my mother. My grandmother. My great-grandmother.

None of us are worthy enough to give ourselves airs. Normal, modest, and ashamed, private parts hidden. We keep ourselves covered and have no obvious needs, let alone ones we can write down.

‘Ate way too much again.’ That’s all, and it’s already more than enough.

I hear Sven in the hallway with Lynn, then the front door shuts.

I want to know how my parents divided up the jobs in the morning. Who made the breakfast and who did the lunchboxes?

But there weren’t any lunchboxes: my brothers and sisters and I never had them. There was no real breakfast either. When Raimund got up, he brought us rusks in bed, two on a saucer, which he waved in our faces; a bit like at the zoo, I now think, but at the time, I thought it was completely normal. I was able to stay in bed a bit longer, nibble my rusks, and reach for the bottle of fizzy water next to my bed. We all had bottles of fizzy water next to the bed, and no one drank from glasses. I later found out that friends of mine thought it was strange: no breakfast