Monika Fagerholm - The Glitter Scene

Rag doll . “Dance my doll while you are young, when you become old you’ll be no fun.” No, Maj-Gun does not sit there and hum that rhyme now anymore either, just sits, Maj-Gun, alone. I’m more romantically inclined. The Boy in the woods will come soon. And all my longing will be enclosed in my dream of love . Maj-Gun’s stories about love, Susette suddenly finds herself thinking on the dance floor: Why can’t Maj-Gun get them, fantasies or not?

But Maj-Gun disappears there, no thoughts any longer, out of sight in the sea of all the people on the dance floor. Susette who is dancing, dancing, with boys boys, all the boys and they do not call her the Angel of Death even though it feels that way. Because it is like this and it is inexplicable: “Such a beautiful little Angel of Death.” Her mother, her voice in Susette’s head in the midst of everything, and cuckoo of course because her mother who in and of herself had death on her mind those last years never spoke like that. But now, in any case, like from a dream: glitter glitter in her head in time with the stromblights , which Maj-Gun earlier in the evening had for sure incorrectly informed Susette that was what those blinking lights at the disco were called. Her mother, in a memory that in other words is not a memory even though it could have been one of course because in reality, during Susette’s childhood and also as a teenager after her father’s death when Susette had quit school and been working full-time at the nursing home for the elderly and infirm, she and her mother had done the same thing. Picked flowers and taken them to the cemetery, set them out there. On the Graves of the Forgotten: that is what her mother used to say and Susette thought it was beautiful. All of these graves that no living person took care of aside from the general grave maintenance of the parish.

“If you later come to wander in the valley of the shadow of death no harm will befall you.” Her mother had also said that. And in the church later, during Susette’s teenage years, her mother and funerals . Suddenly they had been there, for real, she and her mother at the very back of the church, together, her mother had sung along with the hymn. And afterward, at the funeral reception in the fellowship hall, organized addresses on the funeral table in alphabetical order, in neat fans with a grave and dignified hand about which her mother used to preach to Susette in silence. “The grieving have their own sorrow to think about.” These dead ones then, not exactly strangers but certainly often ones they had not known directly—for example, former patients at the nursing home, which was Susette’s place of employment at the time.

Her mother, glitter, at the disco: Susette small again, during her childhood. Her mother who suddenly, in the middle of picking flowers on the way to the cemetery, looks at her daughter and does not say what she says in reality, “What beautiful flowers you have in your bouquet, Susette,” but:

“What a beautiful little Angel of Death, my Susette.”

And it IS true: the essence of a development. The normalcy that disappeared and was obliterated. And she, Susette, could not say when it happened, just a peculiar transition from the one to the other.

The rug rags that suddenly piled up in the kitchen in the house: garments, garments, old garments and towels and worn-out sheets, you cut and cut but could not keep up. “It’s not easy living in a house of sorrow.” Her mother’s words, at the rug rag bucket, and later: all the death that was suddenly everywhere but rug rags were to be collected and cut up and wrapped in spools that would be placed back into the bags for weaving even though the weaver had been dead for a long time already. Her father who, while he was still alive, had built houses out of balsa, a fragile structure . Measured and cut out teensy pieces from paper-thin wood with a small saw, glued the pieces together carefully, and Susette had liked watching. One of her father’s hobbies in the living room in the evenings in the house during the time when everything was still normal and ordinary. That house, it had been standing there on the living room table later—

And buried in rags, crushed by the weight of rug rags too.

“Where is the weaver, Mom? And the loom, where is it?”

Gone from door to door, she and her mother, in the picturesque suburbs below the square where ordinary families lived in beautiful single-family homes, a lot of family noise and dogs and cats and neat gardens; apple trees, plum trees, and cherry trees in the gardens. Her mother and her, pushing a wheelbarrow in front of them over the cobblestones, over asphalt and on sandy paths. Rung doorbells, knocked and asked for, begged for, silk velvet rag scraps , everything that could be woven into rugs instead of being thrown out. And Susette who had been ashamed, gradually anyway: when everyone knew that the rug weaver in the Outer Marsh was dead and there was no other loom anywhere. Transported plastic bags home and washed garments, or not washed them, started cutting right away, long scraps that were called loom lengths, to roll up onto the spools later. But still, away from everyone’s eyes, easier to be there, in the house, the kitchen. The mother and Susette, just the two of them, each with scissors, each sitting on a stool at the bucket… and Susette who left her first love because of the grief, the death, her mother—or not left exactly, just walked away from the rectory once and then never went back. Her father’s death, which got in the way then; maybe she thought he, the boyfriend, would arrive as her savior, take her away from the house, her mother, all of it. On the other hand, furthermore, she had not thought that way at all: she knew of course Tom Maalamaa was not like that.

Her mother with the better scissors, the textile scissors, her dearest possession, you might think. Were kept stored in their own case in a kitchen drawer and were not to be used for anything other than cutting fabric so that the edges would not become dulled, her mother had been very careful about that. Her mother who had asked Susette to sharpen the scissors before using them, her eyes were so bad.

So no, you could not have lived there. Understandable. Gone away and stayed away too long, and Maj-Gun on the telephone: “Your mother. They buried her. Mydeepestcondolences. When are you coming home?”

“Calm down now,” Maj-Gun said again, when Susette had returned, her hand on Susette’s shoulder. “I understand completely.”

“Understandable.” The mess in the house when Susette returned after having been gone for three years. Her mother who had been a “collector” due to the war, that generation. And in the mess, Maj-Gun who had stood and said exactly that: “It’s the war, she told me. Understandable.” All the old rags in the plastic bags along the walls, everywhere, cut, uncut—and when Susette became better they had gotten the house in order. Thrown things out, dragged out black plastic bags filled with clothes, rags, glass jars for flowers, plastic yogurt containers for the flowers… which her mother had collected.

And so, still, in the midst of everything, in the middle of the cleaning, sat down there again. At the rag bucket in the kitchen, with the scissors.

“Your mother. She was for real.

“She didn’t give in.

“Such a cute little Angel of Death.

“We cut rug rags… we talked about you.

“Silk velvet rag scraps—”

Each on her own stool, Maj-Gun’s stories later, cloth in long strips that whirled down into the plastic bucket between them.

Who was Maj-Gun?

Still, so easy to blame it on Maj-Gun. Her silliness, stupid talk. Maj-Gun had been friendly too, for real. Comforted, in her own way, as best she could. And not held Susette responsible for her lies. Lied, could not stop lying, had to have another story, coherence, there has to be life.