Monsterhuman

By Kjersti A. Skomsvold

When Kjersti A. Skomsvold was seventeen years old and about to start engineering studies at college, she found herself almost unable to move. "Laid out like a relic" in a nursing home, she listens to an old woman dying, watches her boyfriend drift away, and makes compendious lists of her worries (that she will have to go speed-dating in a wheelchair, that she will be afraid and in pain for the rest of her life). She also begins to compose a novel on Post-it notes that she sticks on the wall above her bed.

Monsterhuman is an autofictional tour de force--a funny, sad, astoundingly energetic novel about suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, the power of writing, and twenty-first-century literary life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Release date: Sep 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781628972641

Kjersti A. Skomsvold

Kjersti A. Skomsvold was born in Oslo in 1979. She published her first novel in 2009, Jo fortere jeg går, jo mindre er jeg [The Faster I Walk, the Smaller I Am], which won the Tarjei Vesaas' Debutant Prize and is available in English from Dalkey Archive Press. She is the author of several novels, plays, a poetry collection, and a children’s book.

Book preview

The Old Folks’ Home

THE SOUND OF COWBELLS keeps me awake at night, but I fall asleep eventually, I suppose, because the same sound wakes me again in the morning. Clink-clank, all day long. I’ve gotten up several times to look out at the dark, windswept landscape, straining to spot the cows beyond the white painted flagpole, in the light of one of the building’s windows. The night guard’s shadow passes within the square of light. But there’s never a cow to be seen. So I return to bed, snack on potato chips to quell the worst hunger pangs before creeping once more beneath the white institutional sheets, I lie on my right side, and instead of cowbells I listen to the woman who is dying in the room next door. She gurgles and moans, empties out the remaining sounds of her life and suffering into my ear.

We sleep side by side, like a married couple, but with a thin wall between. I pity myself mostly, who cannot sleep, I haven’t seen her. Perhaps that’s when I get the feeling, I often have this feeling, of lying upon my own deathbed, time passes so swiftly. But not yet. I will see the woman for the first time tomorrow, my last day here, she is a heap of clothes on a gurney, but so far I’ve only seen the nurses who go in and out of her room with skillets. Bodil, who is the closest thing I have to a big sister, tells me the skillets are bedpans. The woman is dying in the mornings too, and at midday, when I am forced to rest on my bed, or on the floor with my legs on or beneath the nightstand, for the sake of variation. This is the lesson I’ve learned here: the importance of balancing rest and activity. The dying is worst to deal with at night, maybe because sleeping reminds me of the same thing, of resting in peace.

I’m awakened by a crash, open my eyes, in the half darkness I can make out the contours of knots in the wood paneling. Did you hear that? I say, not daring to move, a friend sleeps behind my back, on the other side of the little room, two other friends are in the room across the hall. No, she says. But why, then, is she so wide awake in the middle of the night? I turn over onto my left side, hesitantly, switch on the lamp. She is lying at a tilt, her head down at floor level, legs in the air, and gazing up toward the ceiling, the bed has collapsed on one end. She acts like nothing has happened, her hands are folded across her blanket. But.

This is not happening now, I’m not a little girl with her friends on a sleepover at Mimmi and Grandpa’s summerhouse, I’m laid out like a relic in a nursing home, in the westernmost edges of the country. I should be a young student in another city, I should be more in the middle of everything.

The cows have been up for a long time by now, shouldn’t the radio switch on soon, I would like some noise to dampen death’s onslaught next door. A voice strains out through the speakers, it’s talking about a new Jewish museum, despite their tragic history, Jews have a fantastic sense of humor, it’s helped them greatly. What is the difference between a Rottweiler and a Jewish mom? The Rottweiler will eventually let you go. But.

This is still so far off, I will wake up each morning longing for death, I am not sick, only ugly, soon the world will see how ugly I am, and I wish I were a Jew in a concentration camp, hungry for life. Schopenhauer, who got so angry at a man, an unknown man, simply for being ugly, a punishment for nothing, his whole life. He stood up from his café table, went right over and knocked the man over. But.

I get up and turn off the radio, I can’t face it, don’t dare to listen, I must protect myself from noises, I will be just as diligent as the other patients here, they’re always careful not to crochet too much, have too-lengthy conversations, take too many steps, read too much at once. I’ve been granted time off from my studies to recover, I’m supposed to be getting so much better while I’m here, and I don’t understand why I get sicker with each passing day. I phoned several times in the fall to be sure I would have a spot, and the support group lady said yes, and that I didn’t need to ask anymore. She told me about the stairs up and down to the dining room, there was an elevator, but it was so noisy, and a portion of the program would take place in another building, fifty yards away, would I be able to handle that? I think so, I said. Besides, it’s a while until November, and I’m sure I’ll be much better by then. From her silence I understood that she thought I was suffering from delusions, and I remembered how, before soccer practice and matches, I’d call up the coach, each time apologetic about not being able to come. But I’ll probably make it next week, I’d say. In the end, the coach asked me to stop calling, as this lady did too. I felt dumb, wondered whether they missed me. Just come when you can, Kjersti, he said, that was years ago.

I’ve been daydreaming about playing on the men’s national soccer team, I say over breakfast in the dining hall, when I finally fall asleep I dream so much and can’t help but tell it to the others, it’s so strange to see people every morning. No one is interested in other people’s dreams, only those who believe that dreams mean something, that they say something about your personality, and those are people that you have to watch out for. But now I’ve been dreaming it at night too, I continue, the daydream followed itself into sleep. When I need comforting, I intentionally daydream that I’ve scored a goal and that I’m being hoisted by muscular men, they carry me around, Mathea will have the same dream, that she’s being carried around on a grass field, she’s always found the idea of being carried so appealing. But.

I haven’t yet discovered who Mathea is, and I don’t know whether these memories of mine from the old folks’ home are reliable, the nausea and the hunger, the pain like a nail in my eye, the old women who want me to pull up their tanned stockings, the old men who ask me to buy them porn magazines, the smell of decaying bodies and jars of medicine concealed behind a haze of accordion music and cakes for dessert and the deafening noise of the television that is suspended in the air, old people have to turn the volume up so high so they can hear all of the news from the real world, the world is another place and so infinitely far away. Aren’t all of my memories rather the fear that this won’t help, that I’m not good enough, that I will never become a computer engineer?

I received a letter stating that bathrobes were mandatory, Mom bought me a long yellow one, and I walk from the showers to my room like an Easter chicken. I shut myself into what looks like a prison cell, this stay marks the unmistakable beginning of isolation, my disappearance from the outside world, the lonely grave of Paula Schultz, a coma she was going to lie in for four years. My re-emergence into the world will also begin with a prison stay, but somewhere other than this.

I find the birthday gift for the woman who I’m too old to pretend is my big sister, whose birthday is a day before mine, tomorrow is my birthday. I hope Bodil remembers. She knocked on my door, after I’d been sitting alone for hours there in the room. For fear of arriving too late, I arrived one day earlier than the others, and I could tell at once that Bodil was sick and that I was going to be very fond of her.

She was already something more, something more than this first meeting. She gave me a poem by the lumberjack poet, to comfort me when I just wasn’t able to attend the evening accordion performance. There are moments when all words are gray, when sorrow is an autumn sight: a withered grass-blade frozen fast in creek-ice. Years from now, following my first real interview, I will send this poem in desperation to a journalist, so he will know that I’m a human being. But.

Before I came here, I read about paragliding and rafting, the surrounding area is a mecca for extreme sports. I’ve rafted before, I am not really the type of person who lies utterly still with my legs on or below the nightstand, I am a person who rafts. The splash of water on my face as I sat balanced on the edge of the rubber raft, paddling for all I was worth, the Australian guide who shouted left! but Erik, sitting opposite me, thought the guide yelled right! and when he slammed into my shoulder with all of his might and weight, I fell over the starboard side and plunged into the river, I vanished down the rapids, on my back, legs out ahead of me so they wouldn’t catch on the rubbish heaped along the bottom, bicycles and prams that folks have thrown away, a person could drown like that. I wished it’d been me whom Erik knocked overboard, it should have been me, I was the one he loved, and I should have been the girl who was underwater. But it was another, a heart-friend, her name is Hanne.

This will probably do the trick, my dear, Erik’s mom said, it was November and I stood with her words inside of me, luggage in hand, at the train station. Several hours later and I had arrived, I was no longer thinking about rafting and paragliding, only about how I was going to get to the old folks’ home, there weren’t any taxis at the curb. I am strong, and had a map, but this was much further than the path to the mailbox, and I thought about the long, rickety train ride I’d just taken, all of the words on the audiobook, with each word I grew more and more afraid that they had become too many, and I thought about how little I’d slept that night, I’d gotten up at five o’clock to arrive on time, I thought that everyone else was probably already getting acquainted.

My worry drove me onward, like a whip, and I pulled my suitcase behind me, across the gravel toward the main building, a large taxi was parked outside and there were ancient people inside. The man in a wheelchair, who had been left on the stairs, the fear on his face was like a mask one could peel off, his hand waving like a broken twig in the wind, but wordless, why didn’t I go over, say that they hadn’t forgotten him. You are not forgotten.

The others are coming tomorrow, the lady at reception said. There’s nothing happening today. On the way up to my room I saw shriveled people drowning in oversized chairs, carcasses that crept, hunched over, along the corridors, one palm flat against the wall as though to assure themselves they were still there. I shouldn’t really be here, I was so glad to be here, why am I always so sad.

Anne Mari and I could have been twins, if not for the fact that, in reality, I only have two younger brothers, she studies in the city nearby, but she still isn’t able to visit me. She has a life that’s almost overflowing, our lives have become near opposites, and maybe that’s why I have to call her my twin sister.

I sat on my bed, I didn’t know if it was the white walls, or the much-too-colorful curtains, or those who were dying, as we all are, or if it was just that no one was happy to see me, it doesn’t take much to knock me off-kilter. I had to explain to the lady at reception who I was, that I was going to live here, at first she thought I was someone’s relative. She gave me the key to my room without looking at me, and when I asked about whether there were meals throughout the day, she said that dinner was over, they eat so early out in the country. Dad, who calls me a bottomless pit, Mom, who says, my hungry daughter, I turned around, but the receptionist was already looking in another direction.

Despite all of the disappointments in my life, I continue to believe that the most fantastic things are yet to happen, that I will most likely get better sometime during the fall vacation, at least around Christmas vacation, or Easter vacation, it’s like the disappointments haven’t taught me anything, and that summer, a long time from now when I’m lying there, chained to the bed as they say, I will still firmly believe that Erik is going to come back, several times it’s almost as if I can see him rounding the cabin corner, hear him voicing his regret. But.

I will have to pack my suitcase soon, I’m going to leave this place, it’s been far too long since I arrived and unpacked my suitcase, and in the innermost compartment there was a small gift, painstakingly packaged with so much tape. Erik must have hidden it there when he was over the evening before I left. Two CDs for me to play on the portable CD player he lent me, and so I wasn’t completely abandoned at death’s gates after all, on my first day at the old folks’ home, now it is my last day at the old folks’ home.

It will be better when Ruth comes, the lady at reception said, each morning the first week, when I walked past her to and from the cafeteria, it didn’t take long before she was nice to me, and I didn’t have to worry about whether she liked me or not. Everything will be better when Ruth comes, she said, even though I hadn’t said anything, and I didn’t know who Ruth was.

Painkillers and migraine tablets by day, potato chips by night, I’m so hungry even with all the food I’m eating, morning to night, I told Mom over the telephone. I wake up, sick with hunger, and have to run to the bathroom to gag. That’s not normal, Mom said. Isn’t there anyone there you can talk to about it?

I asked the doctor who comes by to check on the old folks if he could take a blood sample, because maybe I’d caught something in addition to everything else that’s wrong with me. He asked what the abbreviated letters stood for on my diagnosis, and when I said that one of the letters meant that something was wrong with my muscles, and that the other meant that something was wrong with my brain, he said I was lucky to have gotten a diagnosis with such a great name. Another doctor said that I was lucky not to have cancer, and I agree with him. Names are important, but I’m not so concerned about names at this point in time, later I’ll realize how much names mean. I’ll also discover something magical about the letters in my diagnosis that my subconscious must have understood before me, if there is such a thing as the subconscious. But.

I lie down with my legs on the nightstand again, listening to the woman dying, thinking about why I know so little about my ancestors, feeling guilty about it. After all, they’re the reason I exist here on earth, which I don’t wish to leave regardless of how miserable I think everything is, and in order to remember them better, I position them in my thoughts around this dreadful place. Konrad Engelbert could sit in a car out in the yard, Dad was supposed to get Konrad’s car if he had named me after him, a large green Datsun with automatic gears, but I ended up being a girl.

I don’t like it that I’m the sickest of everyone. And you, who are so young, said the woman who I had thought was the sickest, so I decided to accompany them to the center of town, though I could barely even handle myself. From the very beginning, the old folks had asked if I wanted to go into town for them. They still think that I work here. I pick up their crutches that fall like soldiers at war around me, hand them back to the old folks, who stand swaying like spikes of corn in the wind. They give me shopping lists for weekly magazines and hard candies, and fish around for coins in their wallets. Why don’t I feel happy to help them out, why do old people make me anxious, is it because they are proof that the world abandons us long before we abandon it?

Bodil shopped for yarn and needles for us, while I ran errands for the dying and demented. Is there anything in particular you’re looking for? the man behind the counter asked, I’d been peering at the magazine stand for a while. This is going to be the only story that I tell about the old folks’ home when anyone asks, it’s the only story harmless enough. Ah, so you’re looking for some porn, the man said. He helped me to get it down, I couldn’t reach high enough on the shelf.

Good morning, the receptionist lady says, even though everything has gotten so much worse, but fortunately it will all be over soon. I walk into the cafeteria and put my arms around Bodil’s neck.

It’s an elephant’s ass, I tell her after she’s unwrapped the gift and asked me what the picture is supposed to portray. If I had wanted it to portray anything other than an elephant’s ass, I would have drawn something else. I wish I had drawn a deer, but at this point I still haven’t seen the three roe deer that will flash across the parking lot at dusk.

The delicate woman in the wheelchair is rolled into the cafeteria by her caretakers, it’s been several days since she’s come to eat, I could fit her into my pocket, she’s so close to death and the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I look at her, I look at her almost the entire time, even though I can tell that she can tell, I am embarrassing her, but I can’t stop. She doesn’t smile, and I want her to like me, she reminds me of my middle-school Norwegian teacher, with lovely clothes and well-kempt hair, I think she must be waiting for death, longing for death, and I know that I am she.

That fearful, old face may be my strongest childhood memory, the unfamiliar voice that echoed in the stairwell. I am going to write about this at some point, because my writing teacher says that my memories aren’t trustworthy, this won’t take place for many years, he says that my memories aren’t sad enough, he asks me to write about something he can believe, and that’s why I will write about being in a blockhouse stairwell, surrounded by strange smells and shoes belonging to unknown people behind their doors, this is enough to put a lump in my throat. I had just joined the school band, and around my waist I had a fanny pack, and in my hand I had book of raffle tickets, and at the very bottom floor, in the stairwell near the mailboxes, I had Dad. I knew that if anyone tried to kidnap me, he would call the police. He nodded, signaling that I could buzz the first door. I stretched up toward the doorbell, the ringing sound from inside the apartment sounded far off, as though there were mile after mile of rugs and lamps and coffee tables back there. My gaze fixed on the peephole, I could see it darken, the anonymous last name stared out at me, and I tried to smile back. A long time passed and then I heard someone working the chain lock, and a wrinkled face peeked out, slightly, through the crack in the door. I held up my book of raffle tickets, as an excuse: Would you buy a raffle ticket to support the school band? Her small eyes flickered, like a beam from a pocket flashlight looking for something worth stealing, before she shut the door again quickly, without a word. I looked at Dad, he shrugged his shoulders, said that I could go buzz at the door across the hall instead.

The man gave me some coins which I put into my fanny pack, I drew the zipper shut again, making sure that he saw it. So, I said. Behind him, a small girl rode around on a toy tractor, the rug was her field. I handed the man the raffle book and a pen, now he and his heiress were among the lucky contestants eligible to win a twenty-pound turkey. This last part isn’t important, and in addition to that it isn’t a part of my memories, but just something that I came up with, I think it must have been a writing exercise.

Then the door behind me opened up again, and I turned around, saw the old lady, her face will always remain in the present tense. She is so afraid, and it makes me afraid too. There is a man standing down in the stairway, she said to the neighbor, her voice trembling, before she slammed her door shut.

Dad and I kept going, to stairwells in other blockhouses, I sold the entire book of tickets. I didn’t say anything about the lady, I didn’t want Dad to feel bad about it. When I came home, I hung my fanny pack on the hook in the hall before going into my room, where I lay down on my bed, with my head under the batik-patterned pillow.

The old lady who was afraid of Dad. I don’t know why it upset me so much. I wrote the detail about the batik-patterned pillow because I wanted to include something about Mom, but really the only thing I remember were those fearful eyes, the voice that said, as if it was the devil himself she had spotted: There is a man standing down in the stairway. Maybe all of our fears, everything awful that happens in life, is about death. I think someone said this, it was probably a wise person, too bad it wasn’t me. But.

I wish the old lady would smile at me, she is more beautiful than Erik, it’s meaningless comparing her to him, her frailty, I could kiss her crumpled lips, remove her fine clothes, hold her naked, thin, dry bird body into mine, listen to her heart beating inside her chest, then it doesn’t beat anymore. I wonder whether death will be apparent in her large pupils, I give her my pupils, which are too large, they are black as licorice, and therefore taste like salt from tears. The old lady’s husband is a ninety-year-old barber, you almost can’t tell that his hair isn’t real, and he wears a brown mottled wool suit and a white wool tie, with the stories he tells he’s the centerpiece of the old folks’ home. He and the woman have never stopped loving each other, they haven’t stopped dressing up, maybe that’s why, I wonder if he’ll remove his toupee when she dies. Maybe she’ll die before dinner tomorrow, or after I’ve left, her bearing leaves such an impression on me that I start to think our existences are both mutually dependent on one another.

Have any of you seen the cows? I ask, buttering the special slice of bread. The food we eat is different, we do everything we can to get better.

The cows? Bodil says. I don’t think there are any cows here.

But I hear them all the time, I say.

The others don’t understand what I mean, and they have binders, and I don’t have any binder. I have database binders and physics binders and statistic binders, but they have binders full of sicknesses that are thicker than any of the binders from my years of studying, with research documents and articles and activity charts, I told Bodil about my computer engineering studies, I’m halfway through, she hasn’t said much in response, she just continues to crochet in silence. But one day she showed me a text she had found in a journal that had been tossed somewhere, it was about an author. He did well at school, but his illness meant that he had to do less demanding work, such as crafting wooden boxes and brooms. His poor health would plague him his entire life, with weak lungs, heart, eyes that could not tolerate sunlight, and bouts of depression. That’s me, I will think, brooms and eyes that can’t tolerate sunlight. Bouts of depression, if nothing else. And I have strings of pain in my head, which will later become other types of threads, webs of skin.

It’s as though the binders are their proof, and the boyfriend of one of the girls doesn’t believe she is sick, she reads articles about what it’s like to have children with this illness, but she should rather read articles about what it’s like to have children with someone who’s a jerk instead. I don’t really get why I don’t have a binder.

What have you learned, what can you say about your residence here? the special interest organization lady asks me, we’re sitting on the large black leather sofa, black leather sofas will haunt me in the following years, maybe for the rest of my life, and I lean my head against the backrest, think about how to get myself home. I try to keep my tears from seeping out, I don’t know how on earth I’m going to drag this aching carcass of mine all the way over the mountain.

Everyone is so diligent, I say, and I say that I am going to be just as diligent as everyone else. Tomorrow I am going home, and I’m going to log everything that I do on a chart, I’m going to get myself a binder, a pedometer, a stopwatch and soon, by the time it’s summer, I will probably be able to return to my computer engineering studies. But.

Maybe you should write, Bodil said, I don’t know why she said that, I acted like I’d forgotten about it at once.

It’s my turn to say goodbye to Ruth, Bodil has come out of the therapy room for the last time, I have gone in. The first time I went to see Ruth, I was lying on a mattress on the floor thinking about my body, Ruth guided me through all the parts of my body, but I don’t like to think about the parts of my body, they’re so painful, and the last thing I will write about Mathea is that she thinks about her body. But.

What’s that under your blouse, Ruth, what is that bulging out? sang Erik when I told him over the phone that Ruth had come. His humor is sometimes simpler than I prefer, but it’s easy to be influenced by those around you, and so I repeated the song to the other patients, even though I knew better, deep down. The one who was sicker than all of us, besides myself, looked at me like I’d said something very embarrassing, which I had, actually.

Ruth started to yawn, and I felt uncomfortable, because Bodil had told me that this was something which Ruth did to check how receptive I was to the treatment. Ruth wanted me to start yawning too. But even though I’m amenable, and in addition, I wanted to please Ruth, I thought it would seem fake if I started yawning. So I didn’t, I just lay there, acted like I didn’t hear her, like I was nearly dozing instead. But Ruth kept on yawning and yawning, and I didn’t think that everything had gotten so much better even though she had come.

She took us to the swimming pool. We weren’t really supposed to be out for more than ten minutes, because that could make us sicker, the water pressing on our bodies put stress on us. I floated with enormous foam rubber pieces below my head and knees while Ruth whisked me around, pulling me through the chlorine and urine from the old folks. Instead of thinking about what Ruth told me I should think about, which was how relaxed I was, I thought about how the pressure in my lungs would rise, and how the volume of air would decrease if I held my breath and Ruth pushed me deeper and deeper under water. I forced myself to think about this to ensure myself I wouldn’t become artistic, but rather scientific.

I feel obliged from a bad conscience to try out various treatments, on recommendation from friends and acquaintances, even the most distant relatives call to give me advice, and I’m afraid to seem like I don’t trust them, or what’s worse, that I don’t want to get better if I don’t give the treatments a try. The clinician in his shiny tracksuit asked me questions as I lay there on the bench, before he asked me to close my eyes, and I could feel that he was covering my entire body with something, on my stomach and thighs and arms. In the end, I had to open my eyes to see what it was. Are those old floppy disks? I asked. Yes, the man said. Why? I asked. They’re programmed to make you better, he said. But.

The others are going swimming with Ruth, it’s the last chance for a dip, Bodil wants to swim a lot, she’s all fired up about it. I return to my room, lie down on the plastic floor with my legs beneath the nightstand, listen to the woman dying next door, why am I certain that she is much too heavy, and I put on the CD from Erik—Sugababes—I will see him again tomorrow. I miss Erik now, but the worst thing is that in the future I will miss him so much, I’ll think my body is going to split, for a long time, and then it will pass and I will start missing him the way that you miss a hole in your head.

She’s much older now. She’s aged. I suddenly understand, and say: You are tired. The You hides under the blanket, and I think about Erik coming to pick me up at the train station tomorrow, I’ll stay in bed for a week, at home with Mom and Dad, so that I can go to a concert with him, there are threads being drawn in my head, a web of pain that pulls my wits out through my eyes, ears, mouth, but I’ll nonetheless remember this as something good later on, us sitting on the stairs. Erik is sitting behind me, I have my head under his chin, and he tells me that he has to go dance a bit with that one girl, because she’s standing over there alone and we can’t just be absorbed with each other the whole time. He’s the loveliest person in the world.

By the time I manage to become sleepy, I’ve gotten hungry again, and my earplugs can’t shut out the dying behind the wall.

I’m going insane! I say so loudly that I’m bashful again before I’ve finished the sentence. But still, I hope the lady next door heard me. I get up, cross over to the window, eat some potato chips, an entire bag, while looking out across Vestlandet, which by now is nothing but a large dark mass. I shiver, peel my eyes for cows, in the light from the windows, behind the white flagpole. That’s when it hits me, the rope that’s flapping against the flagpole, clink-clank, clink-clank, there aren’t any cows, it’s only a rope.

A knock at the door, and it’s Bodil just as it was on the first day, only now she’s not smiling.

I pushed the button, she says, but they haven’t come.

I put my arms around her, because she’s trembling, and we go into her room, she lies down on her bed and I run out and down the corridor. I don’t think to worry about running, that’s how occupied I am with doing what needs to be done. I try not to be proud about the task I’ve been given, that I am the one chosen to save Bodil!

But the night nurse doesn’t grasp the gravity of the situation.

She pushed the emergency button, I say. "A long time ago."

I run back to Bodil, she’s lying on her bed shaking, and I don’t know what I should do to get her to stop. I grip her legs firmly and say her name in a loud voice. You have to stop, I think, please. But she’s not doing it on purpose.

The night nurse finally comes, and tells me to let Bodil go.

I think we have to call the doctor, I say.

She looks at Bodil, tells me that maybe I should go out.

I turn back in the doorway.

It’s her birthday and everything, I say.

In my own room, I peek through the crack of my door, out to the hallway, I only dare to open my door a tiny bit. The other evening nurse walks down the corridor, carrying a bedpan.

Maybe you should write? It was Bodil who said that, out of the blue, I don’t know why she said it, maybe because I told her about my dreams each morning at breakfast, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. I asked if I could read her what I’d written, she was crocheting wrist warmers, and I read. I read about how my life started out so well, I didn’t have any ambitions other than don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t swear, at the age of seven I already knew that I didn’t want a challenging job, I wanted to sort decks of cards, someone has to take care that they come sorted according to color and number. Besides that, I was good at peeling back the tissues on a new roll of toilet paper so that the paper wouldn’t tear, I could go around to people’s homes and help them out with this. I don’t recall when things started going wrong, but the specialist said it’s often ambitious people who develop this illness, and I’m lying here on the floor with my legs under the nightstand, wishing that I’d stuck to the low ambition level that nature had apparently supplied me with. Maybe I had a low ambition level because I feared I wouldn’t measure up, yes, that was most likely it, for as long as I can remember, I’ve been filled with an immeasurable fear of not being good enough, and I couldn’t possibly fail as a card-deck-sorter, toilet-paper-roll-starter. But then something must have clicked, because suddenly I was never good enough, and when I was seventeen, my new year’s resolution was to exercise two hours a day and get the highest grades in every subject. Just a few weeks into the new year, I got a virus, the way that computers get them. That was seven years ago, and I wonder when things will all be right again.

I’ll read my writing out loud to Dad when I get home. His expression, he’s so worried I am going to drop out of my computer studies, start taking drugs, freeze to death under a bridge. Or maybe it’s only me who’s worried about this. At some point in the future, strangers will talk about an old woman called Mathea who starts off toilet paper rolls without ripping the paper, Dad will sit next to me, clap me on the shoulder so I won’t notice how touched he is. But.

I’ve packed my suitcase, and I close the door to my room behind me, don’t take the elevator, I can’t picture an elevator without hearing a nonexistent rattle.

Happy birthday, the lady at reception says, as I check out of the old folks’ home, twenty-four years old.

How did you know? I ask, and give her a hug, I’ve already forgotten about what a disappointment she was when I first arrived. Then I drag my suitcase behind me across the gravel, past the ambulance parked in front of the entrance, a stretcher is being hoisted in, the old lady in the room next door is nothing more than a heap of clothes. And I myself will die, much too soon. But.

West of the River

I FIND IT STRANGE THAT my body continues to awaken each day. There is morning traffic outside, I close the window latches, shut the world out, it’s only me and the electric bed frame here inside the study, and the watch on the shelf next to that, a gift from Erik, the battery died several months ago, so I don’t wear it anymore. I have to check if Erik has overslept and so I get up, it’s hard to think about anything other than this thing clamped around my head, pressing into my temples, and the nausea bunched heavily in my stomach that stretches up my throat, out to my arms and legs, my nervous system, which screams at me as I cross the floor. I try simply to breathe, to forget. But this thing reaches everywhere, all throughout my body, into my thoughts, into my waking hours, when I sleep, constantly, it’s just outside the door, up next to my skin.

Sleep still blankets our bedroom, the curtains are drawn and the comforter is crumpled on the new double bed, dangling halfway down to the floor, as though trying to escape. I would like to escape too, but I lie down next to Erik, with my face toward his pillow, I breathe in his smell, I can’t make myself pull the comforter around me, convince myself that I’m making up for not being able to sleep here with him at night, I’ve tried so many times, but I end up lying there, wide awake, listening to his heavy breaths, and I can’t handle anything other than myself right now, my own breaths. So it ends with me leaving again, slipping out, as if it would make the whole thing less painful, whispering that I need to sleep otherwise I’ll get worse, and I don’t dare get any worse now. I’ve turned into a terrible person, I’ve turned into Bjørn Dæhlie, the cross-country skier, concerned only about my body and food and sleep.

I shut my eyes, tell Erik I’m sorry, because I’m no longer his girlfriend, I’m no longer Kjersti, and I can’t talk with him when he is here, I can’t cope with the fact that he has to cope with this ME-monster that I’ve become. So it’s good that he didn’t oversleep, that he’s at work and not lying next to me, he sees me cry enough as it is, and the day has only just begun.

Twenty steps, I have to add twenty steps, I forgot to turn on my pedometer when I walked into the bedroom. I keep it attached to the jogging pants that Mom bought for me, I don’t remember the last time I was in a clothing store. But I was in the supermarket once after we moved here, there was too much snow to use the wheelchair, so Erik carried me on his back, back and forth, past the trophy store and the hair salon, I didn’t know that it looked like this here, on the west side of the river. I have more trophies and medals than Erik, even though he’s done sports a great deal more, but nothing beats the school band when it comes to handing out metal. With the exception of Mom, who thought for a while that we would be better at helping with the housework if she gave us a ski or handball medal for cleaning out the dishwasher or washing the stairs with soap. The trophy store doesn’t check on how their medals are being used.

I wonder what Erik’s mom and dad think about the fact that I’m always indoors and no longer dress up. Poor Erik. His green wool jacket is much too large, even though I think I’ve gained some weight from adopting his diet. My tits have gotten so big, I say to Erik, but I can never get him to agree, he just laughs it off.

You have three sons? people said when I was out with my family, it was probably because of my hair, I wasn’t very old. No, that’s a girl, said Mom and Dad, pointing to me. So I began wearing tights on my head so it would look like I had long hair, and I wore my summer dress over the top of my snowsuit. After persistent requests, I was also given a white faux-fur hat, Mom sewed on two rabbit ears, to be sure that I would only wear it to costume parties, but I put it to everyday use as well. Why did my hair have to look like a boy’s, it was Mom who wanted it that way. Dear God, I implored, please let me grow my hair out really soon, make me into a woman again.

Mom keeps asking if we have any painful childhood memories, she has so many herself, and the hair ribbons she had to wear is the worst.

I pull my hair back into a ponytail, it’s completely lopsided. My hair had grown so long and ugly, and maybe it was a feeling of decay that came over me in the wee hours of that Sunday morning not long ago which made me go in and wake up Erik. Wouldn’t you rather go to the hair salon tomorrow? he asked, his voice was tired and hung over, he goes to parties like other people, the next day I make him tell me everything that happened, I think he likes telling me. No, you have to cut it now, I said. I don’t know whether I might be able to go out tomorrow, and I have to get rid of this awful hair as soon as possible. But it isn’t going to look nice, I don’t know how to do this, he said, standing behind me in the bathroom in only his boxer shorts, scissors in hand. It’s not difficult, I said, my hair is very thin, just imagine you’re cutting a piece of paper. I often cut my younger brother’s bangs, I would stick a piece of tape straight across, cut along the tape edge, it was straight as a rail. Stop laughing, Kjersti, said Åsmund with his husky whisky voice, he got a knot in his vocal cords from screaming so much.

I’m looking something up in the almanac, which I seldom do because there’s hardly anything in there, but it reminds me of an opportunity I once had. I have to check when the in-home caregiver is coming, I’m already dreading it, she’s pretty mean. I’ve had the same almanac for the last two years, so the day times don’t exactly line up with the dates. But the days are almost all the same anyways, so it isn’t hard to pretend that Thursday is actually a Friday. I will have time to listen to my relaxation CD and rest for an hour before the caregiver arrives.

I gulp down several large, strong pills at breakfast, which have helped the son of a TV hostess to get better, something which she declared smilingly from the front of a magazine. The pills are expensive, but Mimmi and Grandpa pay for them, they trust the TV hostess, and what if the pills could help me, we can’t afford not to try. The first time I was going to swallow the thick capsules, I almost choked when one of them got stuck in my throat. But fortunately my older younger brother was there, Espen has taken a first-aid course, and he did the Heimlich maneuver on me. The spittle flew straight out of my mouth, Åsmund got shot by pale red juice, I had been eating strawberries just before.

It’s discouraging to look up at the bread machine sitting on top of the kitchen cupboard, Mom gave it to me after we gave it to her. I should bake a healthy loaf of bread, I’m going on a strict diet and can’t eat sugar or yeast or any of the other things that the alternative doctor told me I shouldn’t eat. When I’m at his office, we mostly discuss how exhausted he is. But I can’t bring myself to climb up onto a chair and stretch to reach the bread machine, I just think of all of the muscles and energy it would require. Maybe Mom can brig me a loaf of spelt bread, she tends to do that, I should go lie down instead now, and listen to the relaxation CD after the caregiver has left. It ruins the whole schedule, but there’s nothing to be done.

Resting has been easier these last few weeks, since I’ve had something nice to think about. After listening to an audiobook by Erlend Loe, I got it from Erik one Saturday when he was going out on the town, I thought it couldn’t be so hard to write something just as good myself. Then I came across a notice in the newspaper that said: Do you have an author in your belly? and my head started buzzing. I have all my Post-it notes, with the keywords about the little sparrow lady that I took home with me in my thoughts from the old folks’ home, I didn’t want her to disappear. On the train ride over the mountain, I named her Mathea Martinsen, because if you have a name, you don’t disappear, and the notes that I’ve scribbled about her are hanging on the wall above my bed. But I’ve no idea what I should do with them, so I got excited at the idea of having a concrete task, and the newspaper announcement said that a publisher was looking for submissions for a children’s anthology. I was able to write down a few sentences each day, which ended up becoming a story, put down on paper, and folded into an envelope. Now, as I lie here on the sofa, I practice how to inform Mom and Dad about my debut as an author, should I call them up at work so they can brag about me to their colleagues, maybe send them a fax that they can pin above their desks? They’ll finally be able to be happy about their daughter, who until now has given them nothing but worry and sorrow.

The doorbell lurches me out of daydreams. I almost can’t look the caregiver in the eye. I stopped taking my birth control pills, for the sake of my health, like everything else that I do, maybe this is why I’m a hormonal mess, my skin has become so unclear and I feel like I’ve lost so much hair. I might also be getting a double chin like Dad, but maybe that’s only due to my constantly recurring sore throat.

I hurry to grab my jacket and a wool blanket and Erik’s computer. I don’t need a winter hat and mittens anymore, but before I can get out onto the veranda, which is my safe haven—the caregiver can’t follow me here with the vacuum cleaner, she’s managed to make me even sadder than usual—she says: If it weren’t for your boyfriend, you would be institutionalized, and smiles, as if that were something nice to say. You’re lucky to have him.

It’s been one year since we bought the apartment, Erik fixed it up while I lay at Mom and Dad’s, I’ve barely done anything else since leaving the old folks’ home. But I was the one who found the advertisement and I was also at the walk-through. The apartment was dilapidated, there wasn’t a single nook or cranny that didn’t need fixing up. In the residential flyer, it said that the former owner was named Mathea Martinsen, and the son told us that Mathea was old, just like my Mathea, so then we simply had to buy the apartment. For my and Mathea’s sakes, Erik said, and it was all so strange that I almost couldn’t believe it was true, it feels like I’m lying each time I tell that story. When Erik had finished fixing it up, I moved in, it was my birthday, I like it when situations work out to seem so serendipitous.

It looks really nice with that bookshelf, Erik’s mom said, his dad was also there. Kjersti did that, said Erik, he said it in a kind of proud, bragging way, like it was a big deal, which it was, being me.

Haugerud, Lutvann, Trondheim, and here, Sagene, I said. I’ve lived in four different places in my life, five if I count the old folks’ home.

But the only thing I’ve done since moving in is to put my books on the bookshelf. An old man lives in the apartment next door, and a family with small kids lives in the apartment on the other side of the hall. Erik has gotten to know them, but I don’t talk with anyone, I’m nothing but a green wool coat, I look through the peephole before opening up to get the newspaper in the morning, they must think I’m a social case, if they even believe that I exist at all, they see me so seldom, like a shadow in the doorway, maybe they think I’m an optical illusion, what would I say if they asked me something?

The old man and I watch TV together, I can hear his TV through the wall, even though Erik built an extra, protruding wall on top of the original wall, and during the Olympics we don’t do anything but watch TV every day, the entire day, I’m living the life of an old man, he is waiting to die, I am waiting to live.

Hanne called from the parking lot, said that her boyfriend didn’t have to come up, that she could just come up alone with a Christmas gift if I couldn’t handle a visit. I realized that that would be silly and I said of course, that her new boyfriend had to come up too. Erik and I gave him six stars, internally I gave the evening six out of six stars, it was the nicest evening in a long time. Later, Hanne will tell me how awful it was, seeing me like that. It wasn’t a nice evening, she will say.

The tsunami that came right before New Year’s Eve was perfect timing, because I couldn’t handle a party, and when anyone asked, I said that I didn’t think it was appropriate to celebrate New Year’s Eve now, with regard to the tsunami. Erik and I just stayed at home, and ate Thai food.

I try as hard as I can to obey what the relaxation guy instructs me to do as I lie there on the floor, beneath the pink orchid on the windowsill, and Erik’s fan scarf hanging above that on the wall. He attends all the home games, the soccer stadium is just across the street, I’ve never gone with him.

I picture sky and ocean while paying attention to my toes, from the innermost depths to the outermost surface, up my legs, and I blush every time that the relaxation guy, in his deep, Danish voice, and with seagulls screaming in the background, fervently urges me to relax my pelvis. But at this point there fortunately isn’t much more relaxation left, and I know that I’ll be done soon, so I begin instead to think about whether the orchid on the windowsill might ever shed its blossoms.

I switch the telephone back on, see the text messages telling me to get ahold of Dagbladet, is there something about me in the newspaper? On top of that, the TV hostess has called, there’s too much happening today, everything is starting to spin around me.

What is it, Kjersti? says Dad. I try pulling myself together to talk to him, and I fill him in on my phone conversation with the TV hostess. I told her about my hair and skin, and I asked if it might be due to the strong pills. The TV hostess didn’t think so, but she thought it was strange that my condition has deteriorated so much this last half year, and when I told her that I thought maybe I should stop taking the pills, she was quiet at first, and then she said, ‘But … have you tried papaya bark?’

I hadn’t realized how much hope I’d invested in those stupid pills, that I would be so disappointed if they didn’t work, and I think about how sad Mimmi and Grandpa are going to be, about how much money they’ve spent on them.

What kind of help should I hope for now? I say to Dad. He doesn’t know what to say to comfort me, the only thing he can do is ask if Erik is going to be home for dinner, Dad says that he can always come over and bring us some good fish.

I wipe my snot and tears on the arms of my sweater before I look for my charts, cross off that I’ve done my relaxation exercises and rested for four hours, I only have one more hour of rest, and I see from my pedometer that I am allowed to take 100 more steps today, the plan is to increase the amount at the beginning of the month, I think that should go well. The physiotherapist who was here this winter said that I have to be more careful, that I can’t keep going like this, doing too much all the time and going from one blow to the next.

She had ME too, but fortunately for her, she was born with a sleeping disorder that made her have to rest a ton without wanting to, she would fall asleep all the time, at the drop of a hat, and that’s why her ME had almost gone away. Another physical therapist came here a few times, a creepy, hairy man who massaged me and never said a word.

I’m waiting for Erik to come home from work, and when I finally hear his key in the door, and he’s standing there in the flesh, I have to run over and jump up on him. Erik laughs, probably because I’m usually lying in bed when he gets home. He was at the mailbox, I don’t dare go down to the mailbox, maybe it was overambitious of us to buy an apartment on the third floor. Erik puts everything except for a letter down on the homemade chair. I can feel his anticipation as I open the envelope, although he pretends not to be excited. I look at the publishing logo at the top of the page.

Hmm, I say, reading the few lines, the one line.

What does it say? asks Erik.

I look up at him.

Thanks, but no thanks, I say.

That’s too bad, says Erik, walks out to the kitchen.

And that they received a lot of submissions, I say. Really, really a lot.

He doesn’t respond, I follow him.

I think there must have been a mistake, I say.

He shuts the refrigerator door, crumples up the shopping bag and puts it in the cupboard.

My story was so good, I say.

It was about a girl who sucked so much on her thumb that it fell off, that’s what Dad told me would happen when I was little. I told my parents that I would stop if they gave me an umbrella, each time they nagged me about it I would tell them