Anger Is My Middle Name: A Memoir Read online

  Dad is the second of four children. My father’s mother was named Vonne, and my father’s father was Alfred. I’ve been told they both died at the age of forty-nine from alcohol abuse.

  Mom is the fifth of eight children; she had two other siblings who died at birth. According to Dad, Mom’s three younger siblings were all mentally handicapped, and they each lived at Ebberødgård, an institution, at various times as children. So my mother was often the youngest child at home. Mom says she was expelled from school in seventh grade for hitting the other children. My father is to the left in the picture.

  All of my brothers are bigger than me. René is three years older, Tonny is four years older, and Michael is five years older. They don’t play with me much, but I’m always somewhere near them. My brothers spend most of their time outdoors, and whenever I’m allowed to, I go out with them. The dogs have dug up Grandma and Grandpa’s garden, so there are small piles of dirt and holes in the ground. On one side of the garden is a large vacant lot where grass and weeds grow wild. Some old junk cars and a couple of mobile homes with people living in them are scattered around. A hillside where the train tracks run borders the area. When you’re sitting inside, you can hear the windows rattle as the train goes by. I like that sound. My brothers like to run close to the train, but I don’t dare.

  We live on Händelsvej in South Harbor with Mom and Dad. We sleep in two bunk beds in the apartment, which has two bedrooms and a living room. It smells like cigarette smoke, and the apartment is small and dark. Mom and Dad often have guests, and the adults usually get drunk. Then Mom and Dad fight.

  One night when there are a lot of people in the house, I can’t find Mom. I walk around looking for her. Suddenly I see Dad bent over Mom out in the hallway while he’s yelling angrily down at her. He’s holding the back of his head as if he’s in pain. Mom is lying totally still on the floor. I scream loudly and run over to her, but a woman I don’t know pulls me away from Mom while another closes the door to the hallway. I scream, hit, and bite to try to get to my mother, but the woman holds on tight. I can’t see my brothers, and I’m afraid my mother is dead.

  Shortly after that, my brothers and I are taken to an orphanage called Kastanjegården. I’m three years old. I find out that I’ve been in an orphanage before. Once when I was a baby, and then again a year ago. I can’t really remember it, but my brothers can. They look forward to it. They say you can play by the water, but first you have to crawl down a cliff.

  Kastanjegården is far out in the country, next to a large bridge, and it takes several hours to get there. Mom says that she lived there too, with some of her siblings, when she was little and that it’s a good place. And then she tells us that we’ll come home again soon.

  The drive there is exciting. Uncle Benny is driving. The place looks like a nice old farm, and you can see the sea right behind it. Mom follows us in and a woman greets us. The walls are all painted white, and just inside the door there’s an office with glass windows looking out to the hallway. Mom says goodbye and leaves, and all four of us wave as they drive away.

  René and I will be living with some girls in a dormitory, where René will be the only boy. Tonny and Michael laugh, which makes René angry, but there’s nothing he can do about it. There aren’t enough places in the boys’ dormitory, and he’s the youngest of the three boys. I’m glad he’ll be sleeping with me. The girls’ dormitory is bright and nice and it smells like oatmeal with sugar on it. They show us our beds, which have white sheets on them. The woman brings us some clothes. The boys have to wear blue overalls, and the girls red.

  After a few hours of being allowed to walk around on our own, it’s dinnertime. All the children gather in one big dining hall, where we eat at long tables. Best of all, there’s a TV hanging beneath the ceiling at one end of the room. So we get to watch children’s shows after we eat. I like the food, and I’m full and happy by the time they turn on the TV. While watching Ingrid and Little Brother, I fall asleep at the dining table with my head on my arms. A nice adult wakes me up and carries me to my bed.

  I lie still beneath the comforter and watch how the other girls and René go to bed. First they have to brush their teeth at a long sink with a lot of faucets. Then they put on their pajamas, and finally they have to pee into a pot in the middle of the dormitory floor. I have to also. I hop out of bed, tiptoe over, pee, and then walk back to bed. Then it’s René’s turn. He doesn’t want to pee in front of girls, but he has to. All the girls are sitting on their beds, cheering him on and laughing, until he finally sits down while he stares at the floor. After a very long time, we can hear him peeing into the pot. René cries while he pees, which makes me cry too. The next night, René pees on the pot without crying. I’m happy to see it.

  All the days at Kastanjegården are the same. I keep mostly to myself, close to my brothers. I don’t play with the other children, who are all bigger than me, but that doesn’t matter. I have my brothers, and I have games inside my head. I love breakfast, but my favorite time of day is dinner, when we watch children’s shows together. The only time I’m really sad is the day the orphanage runs out of red overalls that will fit me, so I have to wear blue.

  My brothers are not as happy. One day when it’s rainy, and we’re all outside with our blue and red raincoats on, Michael has to pee. He runs into the bathroom, but he can’t figure out how to unbutton his overalls. Finally he pees his pants. As punishment, he has to wear a dress that night, and they put his hair up in a rubber band. Then he has to walk up and down the boys’ hallway while all the boys laugh at him. Tonny and René think it’s funny, but I don’t.

  After some time at the orphanage, they tell us that Mom is coming to visit. We can’t wait. She shows up one afternoon when it’s sunny. We’re allowed to sit in one of the offices so we can be alone with her without the other children around. She’s carrying a big bag, and we can see packages sticking up out of it. Mom can’t wait to give them to us—and neither can we. So, before she gets coffee and we get juice, she starts to hand out packages. I’m excited as I unpack mine. It’s a mechanical monkey holding cymbals. When you turn the key in its back, it walks while banging the cymbals together. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I can’t get enough of making it walk and play, even though the others get angry with me because of all the noise. I don’t care. I love my monkey.

  After a few hours, Mom has to leave again. This time I cry loudly, as do my brothers. We want to go home with her, but we can’t today. Soon, she says. She gives each of us a hug before she gets into the car. Once the car is gone, we go back in to get our toys, but an adult tells us that children aren’t allowed to play with their own toys at the orphanage. The children destroy each other’s things, so she’s packed them into a box that we’ll get when we go back home with Mom. I start to cry again. I really wanted to play with the monkey Mom gave me. The adult takes me by the arm and leads me into the playroom.

  My mother with Michael, Tonny, René, and me. We are probably around three, six, seven, and eight years old—about the same time Mom and Dad divorced. I remember that this picture was taken right after all four of us took a bath. I eventually inherited the underwear my brothers are wearing.

  The big day arrives. We’re going home. Since early morning, we’ve been waiting in our own clothes. I’ve been standing with my nose pressed against the window for hours. We’re finally going home to Mom and Dad. Our things are packed and ready to go by the door—including the box with our own toys. We can’t unpack it till we get home. When Mom and Uncle Benny finally show up, we run into their arms. All the way home we’re speaking happily, all at the same time. Dad isn’t there when we get home. He’s at work. Some of Mom’s friends are visiting, and the living room is soon full of cigarette smoke and adults toasting each other.

  Because Dad works a lot as a waiter in the afternoons and evenings, we don’t see him very often. One evening while he’s at work, Mom wakes us up and tells us to get up and put on our clothes. S
he says we’re going for a drive and that a taxi is waiting outside, so we have to hurry. When we get to the car, we see a man standing there waiting. He has a lot of reddish-brown hair, long red sideburns, and eyes that sit deep in his head beneath big, bushy eyebrows. Eyes that burn. Mom says: “This is Jan—he’s going to be your father now. We’re driving to Køge, where he has a nice big house we’re all going to live in.”

  1971–72

  The sun is shining when I wake up the next morning. It’s summer and it’s hot. The row house we’ve slept in smells like wood and new paint. My brothers and I sleep in two bunk beds in the same room, and as usual René and I take the lower bed in each one. While I slept I forgot why I’m here, but as I slowly wake up, I remember the drive in the car with the strange man and Mom sitting next to him. They talked the whole way here. In a happy voice, Mom told us that she and Jan met through a personals ad and that we were going to start a new life with a new school for the boys and a house with a garden.

  My brothers are still sleeping. I tiptoe out of the room and, as quietly as possible, start to explore the house. It has two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a large living room. I walk out into the garden. It’s so nice that you can do that. There are small gardens on each side, separated by a high hedge.

  I go back into the house and open a door to a room where Mom and my new father, Jan, are in bed. I look at them for a little while and then go to wake up my brothers.

  Jan is a bricklayer, but he doesn’t work. He’s big and round. Not fat, but round. He has round cheeks, strong arms and legs with a lot of hair all over them, wide hands, a big head with sideburns that go all the way down to his chin, and deep-set eyes that stare out below very strong eyebrows. Both his sideburns and his eyebrows are redder than his big, unruly hair. He always looks like he’s scowling, and when he’s drunk, it’s even worse. I’m really afraid of his eyes.

  Soon we’re dealing with his anger every day. There are rules and they must be obeyed. If not, we get our pants pulled down and are laid across his lap for a spanking. I’m good at understanding the rules. My brothers are less good at it, especially Tonny, who breaks the rules quite often. For example, we’re not allowed to talk while we’re eating. We have to eat in complete silence. Mom and Jan don’t talk to each other either. It’s called eating in peace. The only sound we hear is from the TV at the end of the table. Jan sits at one end of the coffee table as we eat. He’s the one who decides what we eat—and how much of it. And we have to eat everything. It’s forbidden to leave anything on our plates. If we do, we’re punished and thrown into bed. Then we get served what we didn’t eat at the next meal.

  I cry when my brothers get hit. As we get to know Jan better, my brothers start to bargain with each other over who will take the blame for what Jan discovers. Often Tonny takes the blame—and the beatings. They usually agree to that, but more and more often René decides to blame Tonny, even when they haven’t agreed to it. Because René is good at explaining and Tonny isn’t, Jan usually believes René’s explanations. Michael is the one who eventually talks to René and Tonny about what’s reasonable, and he often gets René and Tonny to be friends again. Michael is a true big brother. He makes all the decisions, because he’s the oldest, strongest, and wisest. Mom never hits us. But she doesn’t defend us either.

  One day everything goes wrong. Tonny finds five kroner on the table in the living room and walks over to the grocery store to buy a big bag of caramels. René and Michael see him walking with the bag back to the house, and René runs home yelling that Tonny stole some money and bought candy with it. Jan and Mom get angry. Jan says that Tonny took his last five kroner, which he was going to use to take the bus to the employment center and sign up for unemployment. Tonny comes merrily walking down the garden path with the bag in his hand. Jan runs right up to him. He drags him by the hair into the house, and then I hear violent smacks as Jan’s hands hit Tonny’s rear end. It lasts for a long time—longer than normal. Tonny cries and keeps yelling that he’s sorry. After a while, Tonny comes back out, red eyed and sniffling, with the bag of caramels in his hand. He doesn’t look at us—he just walks back down the garden path. He’s going back to the grocer’s to return the caramels so Jan can get his five kroner back.

  Tonny is seven years old. He doesn’t look like the rest of us and he seems different. He behaves strangely, never thinks twice, and has a hard time learning anything. He has Dad’s smiling eyes, but otherwise he looks different. He has an egg-shaped head, and he’s usually smiling.

  Tonny returns happily with the five kroner. I’m surprised he was able to get all the money back, since he ate some of the caramels. Then Jan heads to Køge to sign up for his unemployment check.

  We’re always out of money, so Jan and Mom try to save on everything. For example, they bought three gigantic wine carboys that they keep in the living room. Now and then the bottles give off a sound. A plop. They’re brewing wine in them, so they have something to drink. And they roll their own cigarettes because that’s cheaper too.

  Mom makes cigarettes with filters, just like Grandma and Grandpa. But Jan uses a tiny machine with two rollers and a red mat that’s pulled down over the rollers. I think it’s fun to watch him do it, and once I was allowed to try. He sat behind me with his hands and arms around me to guide my movements. He smelled like wine and cigarettes, and his breath was hot and sour. His rough sideburns scratched against my cheek. I tried to do it quickly, so I could get away from him. The cigarette fell apart when I opened the mat and the rollers. Jan laughed and said we’ll have to practice some more. Now he always wants me to lick the paper while he holds the mat.

  I have no playmates, so I play by myself while my brothers are at school. One day they sprint into the garden yelling that some big boys from school are chasing them. I’m sitting outside digging in the ground with a spoon. It’s summer—I’m five years old and naked, except for the clogs I’m wearing. Mom and Jan are sitting outside on the patio. Soon a small group of boys is standing on the sidewalk, calling my brothers chickens and telling them to come out and get a beating. I don’t know why Michael doesn’t come out and make them go away. I get angry and want them to get lost. So I run along the garden path to the boys, and once I’ve reached them, I take off one of my clogs and hit the closest boy in the face with the heel. I get him right on the nose, which starts to bleed. That makes the boys beat it. As I walk back down the garden path, my brothers, Mom, and Jan are cheering.

  Mom and Jan get drunk almost every day. We rarely have guests, and Mom and Jan fight a lot. Sometimes our other grandma—Jan’s mother—comes over. She always cleans up when she’s here, and she makes wonderful food.

  At some point Dad comes to see us with his new wife, Anita. She’s eighteen years old and very beautiful. She has dark wavy hair, freckles, soft lips, and the whitest teeth you’ve ever seen. She has large, smiling brown eyes and she smells nice. Anita doesn’t drink or smoke—and she’s wearing really nice clothes. I’m crazy about Anita, and I can tell she likes me too.

  Anita is from South Harbor and she has four sisters. She’s the youngest. Her mother’s name is Nancy. They call her “Nangsy.” They have a mobile home they keep out in the country, and Dad and Anita take us there. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen the inside of a mobile home. It’s gigantic and totally new. Nancy says they have to attach it to a truck to move it every winter. A regular car can’t drive with it. Dad takes all of us on a fishing trip at the lake near the campgrounds. He shows us how to put worms on a hook and what to do if you catch a fish.

  It’s wonderful to be with Dad and Anita. I wish we could live with them. The only problem is that I don’t know what to call Dad. When I want his attention, I try to avoid calling him “Dad,” because Jan is my father now. My brothers don’t have this problem. They just call him “Dad,” but I can’t get myself to do it. What if Jan finds out? One time when I have to call for my real dad, I call him “Father.” He looks at me and says: “Why are you
calling me that?” I tell him I don’t know.

  Tonny and René pretend they’re in a rock band. I’m standing on the arm of our sofa, and Jan is holding me while we dance to the music. My clothes are filthy; the pants are too big and the shirt is too small. This scene perfectly illustrates the unpredictability that was our everyday life. Sometimes my brothers got beaten for making too much noise, but if Jan had been drinking and was in a good mood, he would dance with us. Notice the weapons on the wall behind us.

  In the fall Mom and Jan tell us that the whole family is going to move so Jan can get a job. We find out that Mom has to have her knee operated on first, because she has damaged cartilage in it. Once that’s happened, we’ll all move to Lolland. Mom says that we’ll drive over the bridge we could see from Kastanjegården. They’ve bought a white farmhouse with a thatched roof and there’s a big garden where you can grow vegetables.

  As we start to pack, I come across our red photo album and leaf through it. Suddenly I see a picture of Mom and Jan. Jan has on a shirt with a big collar. He’s smiling widely with his round cheeks. My mother is standing next to Jan in her white bride’s dress. She’s holding a beautiful bouquet and has a small crown of flowers with a short veil on her head. She’s also smiling. I can see her gold tooth, which she inherited from her grandfather and had melted down so it would fit her. Mom and Jan are married. I didn’t know that—but it explains why my brothers say that our name is Nygård now and not Andersen.

  I think I know which day they got married. It was the first time I was going to be alone at Grandma and Grandpa’s for a few days. Mom took me there. The next day Anita came. Suddenly she was standing in the doorway with Grandma. She and Grandma said it was a surprise for Dad and that I mustn’t tell Mom I would be sleeping at Dad and Anita’s. I really wanted to go with Anita.