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cupboards. ‘Not a book is going to enter this house until
you’re more grateful for all the things I do for you!’
Ragna lets out a pretend sob. She even snuffles.
‘The bloody harridan,’ Johan says under his breath, then
gets up and walks over to comfort her.
*
Johan is sitting in my chair. And it’s my place at the kitchen
table he takes all day long. He’s taken over my time in the
toilet, and steals much of the attention and care I otherwise
had from Ragna.
Johan has got things as he wants them. I have been
banished to my bedroom, thrown out and reduced to a
gaping hole that has to be fed and emptied, while my head’s
hunger, my need to read and write, is ignored and
ridiculed.
I’m shaking, my jaws are in the process of crushing each
other in anger the likes of which I have never felt before. Of
course I can move out, become a piece of furniture at a
nursing home. But! And at this
but
! I feel my jaws press
together even harder: I would never have had the idea of
leaving this house, my own particular spot in the world, if