A Woman’s World Behind the Lace Curtain

A Woman’s World Behind the Lace Curtain

(An automania of a strange visit to the old country)

I cannot sleep in this whirl, night remains an impossibility.

The first day (departure).

Departure in Swinoujscie, the borderland populated by drunk Poles and insecurities. My stomach doesn’t sink; it feels like it’s high up in my throat. In the backseat, there’s a book called Acute Stress Reaction and Burnout. Dad and Dolores are sitting in the front seat and singing me yellow&blue beats. No taxes have been paid on the car, which is commonplace. The long arms of the law stretch beyond us, once again we’re in dangerous waters, fugitives. Hidden from view, we sit in a Mercedes, comfortable with our electronics. Dad usually has a new girlfriend. However, this time his girlfriend became a wife.

The second day.

There are snakes everywhere, tall deciduous trees, a jungle of unreasonably green trees. Long fingers stretch across the road, not just the road, even the vegetation, a green reassurance thanks to our lawless world. Obsessive compulsive disorder: dermatitis. I broke the skin of my arm, a blood vessel burst and pain spread sharply through my arm. It’s fine though. Hiding puncture wounds. Nobody sees my true face, not in this country, nor during the night when masks are usually my only friends. This is my stepmother’s country. She comes from a majestic landscape: green, soft, wild. A country that hasn’t been ransacked, a dry, sloping grassland that reveals something else. Romeo on the radio, then Roxette.

Troszyn.

We head along the rusty rails. A short-haired man cuts through a flower garden. His hands are in his pockets, work clothes. Maybe he’s on his way to work. Men are out and about racing along the roadway. Then the road becomes congested. I need to wash my hair. It’s climbed up my scalp. It’s been chopped off on the left side, at the waist, toward the back, above the hip. The left side is forever fucked. Should I amputate my hand? It’s still itching. And my face, my hair. My arm doesn’t itch anymore. The landscape is changing now: tall pines, scarcer, better views, a shift in focus. Despite visiting her country, I’m still trapped by what I left behind. I once again wish that death would take him. Him, the one I left behind at home. I wish he would be swallowed up by death as I make my escape. I can’t take it anymore.

Choszczno.

I’m sitting in the kitchen. I’ve been sitting here throughout my visit. There’s also four other women here, four generations ranging from ages eighteen to seventy-eight. They speak a language I don’t understand. I glow against their faces. I glow against their breasts. They’re all loud, with enormous breasts, and shiny cheeks. W pours salt into her beer. G has a deep cleft beneath her clavicle. A crucifix sandwiched between her breasts. She lights a candle the shape of a pale, yellow penis. It’s supposed to remove tobacco smoke residue. Dolores smokes cigarette after cigarette. It’s eight o’clock. We don’t eat dinner. Today, we drink beer and ägglikör with Läkarsprit. We have donuts, chicken pie, and beer. All of the windows are fitted with side curtains; the rooms are filled with a soft light. Later, everyone is too full to realize that the ceiling light should be turned on. No one notices the darkness, that the curtains no longer let any light through. We’re just happy to be together.

The third day.

I woke up, went upstairs, but W got my attention. E was missing, had gone into another room to sleep. The first thing E does when she wakes up is look in the mirror. I’ve seen her from my bed. She does the same before she leaves: checks her reflection. A mirror always rests on the desk beside her bed. G takes model photos of E on the toilet, of E sitting and pissing, or lying on the floor—strangely enough, the photos aren’t really sexually motivated. We visit supermarket after supermarket. Aside from sitting in the kitchen behind the curtain drinking alcohol, it’s our only occupation: Netto, Lidl, Albert, Plus, Supermarché etc. Dolores is at the dentist. We sit out in the waiting room, listening to the sound of the drill. She suffers. Dad pays. He himself has gotten his teeth fixed in this country. It’s cheaper than in Sweden. Last night when everyone was too drunk, E and Dolores got into a fight. E went to sleep. Dad thinks Dolores looks like a Romani, but emphasizes that that’s better than someone from Thailand or Africa. Dad pays for prostitutes, even when me and my sister are with him. He speaks in great detail about their skin color, hair, and vaginas. In his house it is forbidden to lock doors, all doors must remain open, no secrets are allowed. I grew up with no locked doors and my gangster brother. My gangster brother and his gangster friends oversaw my physical development. They would come in and watch me when I showered, discussing what had changed since the last time they’d seen my teenage body. The women’s role in this household is to feed and satisfy my father. I have had a glass of sherry; Dolores has started drinking beer again. It rains behind the lace curtain. We’re watching an American soap, thought to be Polish. We’re considering taking the car to the nearest town, to Stargard, to look for shoes for Dolores’ son. His feet have grown a lot. He is fourteen now, a teenager. I saw a cuckoo clock I would like to buy. It costs three hundred fifty zlot. It’s way too expensive, maybe the pants I bought yesterday were enough. All the women in Choszczno wear diamond-studded jeans, fake Victoria Beckham jeans with crowns on their butts. Above the golden butts are golden belts worn around the hips. And the tops are too tight, too short, too underdressed, vulgar compared to Swedish sizes. They wear a lot of makeup in clashing shades. The pale, yellow penis is lit again. I drink instant coffee and try to hide my face behind the lace curtain. I am in a vacuum; I belong to no one. Just listening to the Polish babbling, nonsensical and annoying, these female mouths, their cats. They have settled in my mind. I still can’t write, the wax tablecloth is irritating, the pale, yellow wax penis is irritating, Dolores’ cigarettes are irritating. I smoke, too, because I can’t write. And I drink, because I’m bored. I do everything I can while my skin heals, soon there’s no visible signs, just itchiness and blood infection. The women get ready, put on makeup, penetrate the mirror, change clothes, spray strong perfume. We’ll drink vodka tonight, out in the country, at a resort in Dominocow at Dolores’ dead father’s brother’s. The sky outside is a white, milky yellow compared to the color of the lace curtain. The leaves are cold, the branches outside the kitchen window are bare. I’m still sipping sherry.

The fourth day.

A fire burns all night, even after it starts to rain. We sit in the yard in armchairs and moist-fabric sofas crawling with insects. We grill onion and sausage. One of the sofas resembles a lion’s head. Later, when we’re back on concrete, we eat homemade pizza, watch American movies. Sex is power. I get my taste, bites of the West, of stripes & stars. Dolores smiles with a cigarette behind the lace curtain, fingers on the wax cloth. “I’ll show you,” she suddenly blurts out. Her outburst instantly puts me at ease. Any sense of familiarity makes me feel warm and fuzzy. She grabs some photographs, shows me her life, her children: E, her son, her brother, her cousins. Shows me her younger self, with pressed pants and pencil skirts, photographs of her children’s father, her ex-husband, with stonewashed jeans and Nike shoes. Then comes W. She always comes. Soon we’re all in the kitchen. Even Dad. This is a woman’s world. Even though Dad forbids locked doors. W shows me her photo album. She shows me black-and-white photographs of beautiful, smiling people. No clenched faces, no rigid poses or stiff collars like in Sweden. W shows me photographs of happy, living people, in embroidered vests. And even later: in the car on the way home from Stargard, Dad listens to Gloria Estefan and Europe. A homeless person is eating from a garbage bin outside the dining area where we’re also sitting and eating. I lose my appetite. He has sauce all over his face.

The fifth day.

It’s still raining. I sit and draw with a little child, a relative of Dolores. I draw deer and children. The child draws pictures of war. I sip the äggtoddyn left over from breakfast. My dad smacks his lips, chews with his mouth open, gobbling it all up, self-satisfied. I’m disgusted. I wish he could show a little more decency now that he has a wife. These days it’s like watching aliens on television.

The sixth day.

Outside a disco in Choszczno. I’m sitting outside the car and waiting, my ugly self, boring self, corpse-like self. I feel ugly in this country. The women are so sexy, simulating sex with their hips on the dance floor. I am ugly. The only thing on my mind is drugs. The city’s men look through the windows of the Mercedes, where I’m still sitting, alone and sore. I almost got us killed at the intersection with no traffic lights. I don’t know if that was my intention. I’ve lost all direction. In the morning I stay in bed until the others get up. W and G get up early, make some breakfast, solve crossword puzzles. By the time I reach the kitchen, the slices of cheese and meat have turned hard at the edges. Dolores is as cool as any morning in her wine-red robe, as though she hadn’t been ashamed the night before. Good morning, dzień dobry. She shakes at the breakfast table, just like her mother. They shake from dehydration, poisoning, and intoxication. The only cure is alcohol, and restitution begins right after breakfast, carefully with ägglikör, then beer. They sit in the kitchen around the wax cloth behind the lace curtain and laugh. Dolores chain-smokes. Soon the shaking subsides. Relaxation, tranquility. It’s strange how we move in the apartment, as if after a given pattern, one that doesn’t hurt. We are seven people in a three-room apartment. We move painlessly, like ants all at once. We barely bump into one another, except for sticky situations. They like to kiss and fondle. A woman fell from her balcony this morning. The ambulance has already been here. It’s raining now. The rain never ends, except for brief moments when the sun dares to show its bright snout. There are floods all over Europe. A drowned world. The city is dressed in jeans and glass diamonds. And plastic flower wreaths of glaring colors. All the girls’ and women’s breasts are covered in English text. The other day E had a tight jumper on with a gold inscription: DADA, followed by a list of French poets that reached down to her navel. Misspelled. She promised that it would be mine one day. Paula Abdul on the radio. Do you really want to love me forever? Hit and run. I do everything I can to forget. I’ve already forgotten. The rites consist of lemon, of raising shot glasses. Again and again and again, just like Grandmother’s pissants, just like the apartment at home. To put your hand in something that is healing, to save it.

I can’t follow W to the catholic church for worship service. I’m too apathetic. I’ve been stuck in this apartment, behind the lace curtain, sinking into the sofa, in front of a screen speaking a language I don’t understand. It doesn’t bother me, yet I’m paralyzed by the experience. It feels like I’ve taken pills. My head feels heavy and lost. Because I don’t know the language, I stare like a cow, into their faces, trying to read wrinkles and pillows instead, like a stupid fucking cow. Dolores spit at the dining table today. Her mother mentioned the word “mask.” Dolores has worked in a shrimp factory before. She gets nauseous from eating seafood, from all shellfish. But not my father’s cock. The last night, we go back to the disco. The room is full of foam and shame. I meet a man named Robert. I don’t feel ugly anymore, or boring. Robert thinks I’m good-looking. He likes my breasts, he stares at my cleavage. I ask for drugs, he declines at first, but next thing I know there is a pill between my fingers—as fast as I get it, I lose it: it disappears into the foam floor. I become possessed, hateful, hysterical; how could I be so damn clumsy, I need more, I need much more, idiot, give it to me! I go cold, everything dissolves, satisfies my appetite. Nothing more. I’m returning home, licking my fingers, lying still, relieved by what was anything but a mistake, in a deep sleep next to E, my new half-sister, my fake sister, this final night, then home to the apartment and the city and the language I haven’t lost yet.

On my way home, I wear E’s DADA shirt. I kiss her. I have no idea if it’s for the first time or the last time. Next time, I hope my father has found himself a different wife, and my newfound fake sister won’t be lost as usual.

Image by Thomas Colligan.