Five Years Earlier…
~~ELSA~~
An itch to scratch
[then]
Anna jogs off onto the field with a spring in her step. Her green and yellow soccer kit glints in the sun. Girlish plaits flapping about happily. Thick socks holding shin-pads in place, already starting to fall down, and a mouth-guard that makes it look like she's missing a few teeth. All safe and padded and protected from the world's sharp corners. She huddles in the middle with her teammates, talking strategy or something (though in all honesty, there probably isn't all that much strategy in a grade six co-ed game), then they do the thing where they all put their hands in the middle and lift them into the air as they shout 'gooooo froggies!'
'Look at her go,' her dad says.
'Mhm.' Mum mumbles, after a bit of silence. 'Champion.'
'Absolute champion,' Dad repeats, as if it wasn't clear the first time.
Mum's eyes glisten, like she's watching baby's first steps, and Elsa rolls her eyes.
'Geez, can we just act like a normal family for five minutes?'
'Oh, I'm sorry, Elsa.' Agnarr whips around and his face is all hard angles. His voice drops into a low, hollow tone, 'Are we making you uncomfortable?'
The muscles in his jaw twitch as he stares, and Elsa forces herself to stare back and feel the shame. To let it wash over her like a slightly too hot shower.
Susan approaches, walking uncomfortably over the mud in her classic suburban mum-jeans, pink lipstick stretched into a big, tight smile. The family is briefly united in their collective internal eye-roll.
'Iduna! We missed you at the Parents and Friends meeting.'
Iduna hides her sigh impeccably well. To the untrained eye, her smile and lighthearted apology seems incredibly genuine. Not forced or over-the-top at all. 'Oh, Suze. You know I'm not coming any more. I've just got so much on my plate at the moment.'
'It's not the same without you!'
'I'm sure you all manage just fine.'
The two women smile aggressively, if that's even possible, oozing with fake cheer. Susan is the one to break the pretence, contorting her made-up face into deep concern, and inching forward. 'Well if you need anything, just shout out. We're all here for you.'
'Thanks. But we're fine.' Iduna's words are sharp, despite her steadfast smile. It almost makes Elsa vicariously embarrassed for poor Susan. It's possible she is really, genuinely, just trying to be nice, in her own busy-body kind of way. But this family has no time for nice. They are a fortress, walled high to keep intruders out and secrets in.
Elsa says nothing more all morning. Just hangs over the chainlink fence, plasters on a smile and cheers at all the right times. The game lasts hours, with all the fouls and free kicks, and she bakes under the sun in her singlet. Her alabaster skin turns from pale to flushed, then to salmon pink.
She should have worn sleeves. Actually, her whole outfit is unsuitable for the environment. Her trackpants are too warm. Mud is sinking into her white tennis shoes. Her mind scrambles on Saturday mornings before games. Little things slip away from her. Big things, too. The whole family falls into a silent panic, spinning in circles like mismatched socks in the dryer.
There would be sunscreen in her mum's handbag. There usually is. She could ask.
But she doesn't. She has an itch to scratch. A tension inside, like a rubber band pulling so tight that it's cutting off her blood supply. The pressure is unsustainable and something must give. Either it will squeeze until she is lifeless and dead, or it will snap.
Salmon pink turns to coral. By evening it will be red, raw like an open wound.
After the game, Anna wants to get ice cream from McDonalds, so they do that. It's a simple enough request, and it will make her happy. Elsa hates McDonalds ice cream - it always makes her feel a bit queasy - but she eats it anyway. The whole thing. Even the cone. Gets it over with nice and quick.
There's lots of deliberate mmm noises and finger licking. They're like a creepy puppet family sometimes, with tight, wide smiles and careful intonation. It adds to the queasiness.
'Great game today, kiddo!' Dad says.
Anna's ice cream has dripped all down her arm, onto her shorts, and even onto the seat. There's even a little bit, somehow, in her hair? Looking at it makes Elsa feel sticky and gross inside, and she starts looking for wet-wipes under the seats, in nooks and crannies of the car, but finds none.
'But I didn't even score any goals, and I made heaps of mistakes.'
'Well it's not always about scoring goals, honey.' Agnarr lies. He knows damn well she's a forward. Her job is to score goals. And today, not only did she not score any goals, but she missed lots of passes and fell on her face at a critical moment. She had an off-day. She has a lot of them lately. 'You made some really important passes. Real… um, strategic!'
'Huh?' The confusion on that little freckled face is almost cartoonish as she looks up at Elsa for some explanation. She would make a good stage actor. Great expressions.
'You did your best and you had fun,' Elsa chooses her words precisely and gives her sister a big fake puppet smile. 'It's okay to make mistakes, it's how you learn.'
As soon as she says the words, she knows they were not the right ones, and feels her throat closing. Mistakes are a tricky topic in this family. Elsa mostly manages to avoid them. But she is only human. She is only fifteen. Still learning
Sometimes she still needs her nose rubbed in it, like a dog that's made a mess on the rug.
'Well, Elsa knows all about that, don't you?'
The words come in a light and playful tone. A very I'm-a-fun-dad tone. An attempt to exclude Anna from the constant standoff the three of them are stuck in. But the meaning behind them is like a slap to the face. A reminder that she has lost his love. Maybe she never had it. Maybe it was just a game they played.
'Dad, please, I just meant-'
'You just meant to undermine me.' His voice crackles like an electric shock and everyone quiets. Iduna breathes loudly through her nose. Anna's ice cream falls into her lap and she looks like she might cry. She reaches out for Elsa's hand and squeezes. It is unclear who is comforting who.
The silence presses in on them, thick and stifling, with all the things they want to say but can't. Everyone feels it. Anna even opens the window and leans out, sticking her tongue out like a dog. That's a new weird habit for Mum and Dad to get neurotic about.
'Sorry.' Elsa shouldn't have said anything. There was no need. It's not like Anna isn't perpetually confused anyway in this dumpster-fire of a family. Saying something just made it worse. She always makes everything worse. She's like a walking curse.
The feelings are back again. In her chest, in her throat, behind her eyes. They roll in like an unexpected storm. Thunder in her heart, wind knocking the breath from her lungs. A spray of hail and sleet against her vision, muddying her thoughts, bursting to get out, rattling the windows. A splitting pain in the eyeballs like lightning, the kind of lightning that sounds like a car being ripped apart above your head.
She holds it in.
By the time she gets home, the storm is so bad, Elsa is way past counting to ten or playing piano or what-have-you. She can barely see straight as she locks herself in her room and bangs her head against the wall for a while. Screams into her pillow. Punches the floor. Punches herself. And when all that doesn't work, yes, she cuts herself high up on the thigh where no one will see. She's quick and tidy about it, with as much dignity as someone can really have when doing something so desperate and vulgar. She isn't proud of it, but she needs that instant clarity and calm. To get herself under control, because Anna is knocking at her door.
She has been knocking, periodically, for a while.
Elsa has ignored her, because she is selfish, and she is weak.
She slaps a bandaid on her cut, pulls her trackpants back up, and takes a final deep breath as she smoothes her proverbial mask into place. Then she plugs headphones into her keyboard and turns it on, watching the rainbow of electronic lights glow in the dim room. A piece of sheet music, too, for good measure.
'Hey! Sorry, I didn't hear you knocking.'
'Aw, that's okay!' Anna hasn't bothered changing. She's still got ice cream stains on her kit. Her eyes move over the glowing keyboard. 'Are you practising piano?'
'Nah, it's time for a break. What's up?'
'Well if you're sure you're done, um, can you help me? I'm totally lost and so confused!' Her voice is high and pressured, she flails her arms around while she talks, 'And I don't know what to do! I don't know what I've done wrong, this time, either!'
Elsa's heart shatters in her chest, and she tries not to panic. She breathes deeply and strains to keep her voice steady, 'Of course I'll help you. What's happened?'
Anna grabs her hand and leads her into the lounge room, 'Well, I finally built a nether portal, but then I got lost running from piglins, so I hid and built another portal, but…'
Her words blur into something indecipherable as Elsa's body unclenches. She's talking about Minecraft. She's lost and confused in Minecraft. Oh, the relief! Like a backwards time-lapse, where shattered pieces all fly up off the ground and turn back into something whole again. This is a problem with a solution. Something Elsa can fix, instead of breaking.
'Well first of all, you always need to wear a piece of gold armour in the nether. That stops the piglins from attacking you.'
'Ooooh,' Anna plonks down on the couch and unpauses the game, 'So gold is useful for something?'
Elsa carefully settles in next to her and pulls a cushion onto her lap, looking up at the hot, dry, cubic wasteland on the screen. This simple world where her sister spends so much time escaping from her growing pains. 'It's useful for a few things, actually...'
Anna knocks again that evening, after a whole afternoon of Minecraft (even Elsa has her limits with that game) and the door isn't locked so she lets herself in and whines, 'Elsaa! There are skeletons in my house again! They keep spawning, I don't know how-' She gasps with such force it makes a high whistling sound, 'Oh my god, you're so sunburnt!'
Yeah. It's fucking agonising. Feels like she's literally on fire. Like a Minecraft character who accidentally stepped in lava, just casually walking around while on flames. No big deal.
She kind of likes the pain.
'Oh, yeah,' Elsa looks up from her phone. She's been typing and deleting the same reply text message for the last hour. It's Honey, of course. Still asking how she is. How her family's going. If they can maybe meet up and, just, like, talk about things. Elsa hasn't responded for weeks. She probably never will. She glances at her crimson shoulder (even though her whole body is pretty much bright red), 'A little bit.'
'A little bit? Elsa, you look like a lobster! You need some lotion.' Anna thuds down the wooden hall on fast but heavy feet, and returns with a bowl of water, a cloth, and some sunburn lotion - the good one with lidocaine in it. Then she settles on the bed behind Elsa. 'Take your top off.'
'What?' It's the bossiness that catches her off guard. Is that normal?
'Take your top off!' Anna seems to think so. 'Please, it's hurting me to look at you!'
Of course it's hurting her. Elsa didn't think about that when she stood there roasting in the sun. That it might affect her precious, kind, empathetic sister. The one person in the family who isn't a self-absorbed asshole.
'Fine,' Elsa slips her T-shirt off, grateful to her past self that she's at least had the self-restraint not to mark her upper body and give Anna another worry beyond her years to carry.
'Wow, your boobies are getting big. Like planets!' She pokes the padding (they're mostly padding, really) of the polka dot pushup bra, 'Boop!'
'Anna!' Okay, that's definitely not normal. She can't go around acting like that at school. 'Don't be weird or I'll have to complain to HR.'
'I can't help it! I was born weird!' No arguments there. 'And I don't know who HR is so they can't stop me.'
Elsa's rare moments of comedy are lost on this family, and Anna's are completely unintentional.
'Now hold still…'
The cool water is so soothing on her parched, raw skin, like rain after a drought. Delectable and life-giving, it feels like it could bring bones back from the dead. Elsa finds herself relaxing into it, drinking it in, and admitting to herself that while she likes the pain, she also kind of likes the not-pain as well. Or the less-pain. If only there was a lotion that could sooth this whole family.
Anna's hands apply the lotion so tenderly. Her little hands that Elsa usually associates with clumsiness and mud and sticky playstation controllers move carefully, aware of the sting, rubbing in the goopy gel without aggravating the angry layer of heat simmering under her skin. It's such a simple and loving action that Elsa tears up a little bit. She doesn't deserve it.
'You're a good little nurse.' She says absentmindedly 'Just like Mum.' Anna loves being praised and told she's good at anything. And being just like anyone in the family is still a good thing in her black and white world. Elsa can practically feel her sister beaming with validation behind her.
Agnarr opens the door without warning, 'Oh, there you guys are.'
Both girls look up. Elsa's chest tightens, like she's been caught out in some ambiguous crime. The crime of receiving comfort. Not punishing herself for five minutes. Forgetting her place.
'D'ya lose a bet or something, princess?'
'Huh?' Anna's hands stop still on Elsa's back. She knows "princess" means her. 'What do you mean?'
'Looks like a queen and her servant in here! What next, are you gonna give your sister a pedicure and feed her grapes?'
His hands are in his pockets and he sticks out his lower body, leaning back in that awkward way men do when they're trying to be fun and casual. He pulls his mouth into a tense smile underneath his moustache.
'No, Dad, look!' Anna says, 'She's rotisseried like a chicken!'
'What does that make the rest of us, then? Chips and salad?' Agnarr says, again with that fake jovial tone. Such a funny dad with his funny, funny dad jokes. Ha. Ha.
Anna actually laughs, though. She's too generous. 'I'll be the bottle of Coke!'
'Time for bed, Anna, come on.'
'Can I sleep in here with Elsa tonight?' She always looks so excited, with big, hopeful eyes, despite always receiving the same blunt answer.
'No.'
'But why not?'
'Because,' He takes a long pause and swallows, 'You're a big girl. You can sleep in your own room. Off you go, now!'
'Fine.' Anna pries herself off the bed with slow, stubborn movements and pads off down the hall in mismatched socks, leaving Elsa and Agnarr to stare at each other in a brief moment of shared restraint. Because Anna's happiness is the only objective anyone can agree on. It's what binds them together. And what drives them apart. It is the well of endless leverage each of them draws from to hold over each other's heads.
Elsa pulls her T-shirt back on. It feels slimy and gross as the lotion soaks into the fabric, but she's not going to sit here in a bra in front of her dad. His eyes flick over her bedroom like a security guard casing the aisles of a store, and she feels utterly exposed. It's like having him stare into her soul. The unusual mess on her desk, dirty plate and pile of clothes on the floor is too telling. It shows that she's off her game. Not okay. She can't see any way that showing weakness will help her now, so she slinks past him without cowering, keeping her dignity, and closes the door.
It's quiet in the kitchen. Mum is probably in bed. Or staring at a wall or something. Agnarr skulks around, big and grumpy like a bear with a thorn in its paw. This could be the end of it. She could choose to just let it go.
But she can't.
Elsa has an itch to scratch. A scab she can't stop picking at. 'Would it really be the end of the world if she slept in my room?'
His footsteps stop in the hall. They pause for a second. And then make their way back to her. He speaks with little emotion. Dismissive, like a boss correcting an employee. 'You should be modelling appropriate boundaries.'
'Appropriate-' This is getting ridiculous. She's only twelve. She has nightmares. Elsa knows it breaks his heart as much as hers. But he's stubborn to a fault, and so is she. Despite her wobbling legs, and the voice inside telling her she has no right to argue, no right to say anything, to stand under this roof, to breathe at all, she shoves her hands into her pockets to hide their trembling and persists. She can't help herself. The scab itches. 'Is locking us up like prisoners modelling appropriate boundaries? Taking away the things she loves?'
'How dare you?' He spits through closed teeth. Shoulders squared back, chest rising and falling, nostrils flaring though he tries to hide it. All the signs are there. The pressure gauge rising. The proverbial steam spouting from his ears. 'What gives you the right to tell me how to parent my daughter?'
He doesn't know how much those words sting.
My daughter.
Because Anna is his. His very own. And Elsa is just… there. Hanging around like a bad smell. Like a bad memory. Like a mistake.
Because Anna is his. Not hers.
'Hm,' Elsa feels her lungs constrict. A twisting knot pulling at her gut. She wants the ground to swallow her up, but it won't so she stands tall and gives him her best mean-girl smile. The one that never fails her at school when somebody is pestering her. 'Maybe the fact that I've been doing it since I was, like, ten, because you're too-'
The back of his hand makes sharp contact with her cheek, tidy and efficient, like everything in their family, and itch is more than scratched - the scab is ripped off. It always stings more than she thinks it will, leaving hot, red shame spilling under her skin, but it's a relief as well. The tension is broken.
Elsa likes knowing where she stands.
Mum is behind her. You don't hear her coming, these days. She is like a ghost. Silent and hollow, just floating around the house without any life inside her. Her hand reaches around to grasp Elsa's jaw, softly, beckoning her to turn around. Her eyes move over Elsa's face without emotion like an electric scanner reading a barcode.
Elsa feels exposed. And grateful that her mum doesn't make a big thing out of it.
Despite keeping her noble demeanour, and despite knowing she willfully provoked him, it's still humiliating. Like something rotten she has chosen to swallow and now has to keep down, though the taste lingers in the back of her mouth.
Mum's pursed lips are enough to say that she knows, and she doesn't approve.
Elsa flicks the kettle on and sets two mugs on the bench with tea bags in them.
'This can't keep happening,' Iduna says more to herself than to Elsa.
'That's what you said last time.' Elsa's words are likely lost in the rising buzz of the kettle.
It's hard to know whether her mum hears anything these days. She always takes a long time to respond. Like she's at the bottom of a lake and she has to swim against heavy water to get to the surface every time she wants to interact with you. She takes the ice-pack out of the freezer, wraps it in a tea-towel and presses it to Elsa's cheek, then lifts Elsa's own hand and urges her to hold it in place. Fix herself. Soothe herself.
'I'll leave him.' She says, all foggy like she's just woken up from a confusing dream. Not like a woman with the strength to actually go through a divorce.
'No, you won't.' Says Elsa.
'I will.'
'Mum, don't be silly.' Elsa drops the icepack on the bench. Her face is going numb, anyway. 'He'll take everything. He'll win. You know he will.'
"Everything" only means one thing, and they both know what, or rather who, that one thing is, without it being said. He will take Anna away from them.
Iduna pours water from the kettle into the two mugs without looking at them, gazing out the window into the darkened sky. Doing impossible calculations in her head. Questions without answers. She jumps back and curses under her breath when the boiling water overflows and spills onto the bench.
She makes these little mistakes a lot, lately. Elsa worries for her patients, sometimes. The last thing this family needs is a medical malpractice lawsuit on top of everything.
Elsa continues, 'I'll just stop provoking him.'
Iduna sighs, 'Are you going to punish yourself forever? It's not helping anyone. It's not fixing anything. It's got to stop, Elsa.'
Probably true. But Elsa doesn't know how to stop. She doesn't know how to move forward. Or sideways or even back to how she was before. She's stuck. She's frozen inside.
'He hates me.'
There are layers to those words, and she hopes her mum can pick up on them. She is bearing her soul, here, because even saying it is admitting that it matters. That she doesn't want to be hated. She wants to know she is loved.
She needs warmth.
She wants a hug.
'He just needs time.' Iduna picks up the ice-pack and again tries to make Elsa hold it in place. 'We all do. We're still raw.'
