“It’s complicated.”
“Yes, until someone explains it to you! But when I asked Granny about it, she always changed the subject. And when I ask Dad, he says, ‘Eh . . . eh . . . what do you want? You want an ice cream? You can have an ice cream!’?”
Mum suddenly laughs explosively. Elsa does a mean impersonation of her dad.
“Your dad doesn’t exactly like conflict.” Mum giggles.
“Was Granny a vampire or not?”
“Your granny traveled around the world saving children’s lives, darling. She was a . . .”
Mum looks as if she’s looking for the right word. And once she finds it, she brightens and smiles radiantly.
“A superhero! Your granny was a superhero!”
Elsa stares down into the cavity in the door.
“Superheroes don’t leave their own children.”
Mum is silent.
“All superheroes have to make sacrifices, darling,” she tries at last.
But both she and Elsa know she doesn’t mean it.
The car behind them beeps its horn again. Mum’s hand shoots up apologetically towards the back window, and Kia rolls forward a few yards. Elsa realizes that she’s sitting there hoping Mum will start yelling. Or crying. Or anything. She just wants to see her feel something.
Elsa can’t understand how anyone can be in such a hurry to move five yards in a traffic jam. She looks in the rearview mirror at the man in the car behind them. He seems to think the traffic jam is being caused by Elsa’s mum. Elsa wishes with every fiber of her being that Mum would do what she did when she was pregnant with Elsa, and get out of the car and roar at the guy and tell him enough’s bloody enough.
Elsa’s father told that story. He almost never tells stories, but one Midsummer Eve—at the time when Mum was looking sadder and sadder and going to bed earlier and earlier and Dad sat on his own in the kitchen at night and reorganized the icons on Mum’s computer screen and cried—they were at a party together, all three of them. And then Dad drank three beers and told a story about how Mum, while heavily pregnant with Elsa, got out of the car and went up to a man in a silver car and threatened to “give birth here and now on his sodding hood if he honked at her again!” Everyone laughed a lot at that story. Not Dad, of course, because he’s not a big fan of laughing. But Elsa saw that even he found it funny. He danced with Mum that Midsummer. That was the last time Elsa saw them dancing together. Dad is spectacularly bad at dancing; he looks like a very large bear that has just got up and realizes its foot has gone to sleep. Elsa misses it.
And she misses someone who gets out and shouts at men in silver-colored cars.
The man in the silver-colored car behind them beeps again. Elsa picks up her backpack from the floor, gets out the heaviest book she can find, throws the door open, and jumps out onto the highway. She hears Mum shouting for her to come back, but without turning around she runs towards the silver car and slams the book as hard as she can into its hood. It leaves a big dent. Elsa’s hands are shaking.
The man in the silver car stares at her as if he can’t quite believe what just happened.
“ENOUGH, you muppet!”
When he doesn’t answer right away, she slams the book down again three more times, and points at him menacingly.
“Do you get that my mum is PREGNANT?”
At first, the man looks as if he’s going to open the door. But then he seems to change his mind, and watches in amazement as she pummels the hood with her book.
Elsa hears the click of the doors locking.
“One more peep and my mum comes out and gives birth to Halfie on YOUR BLOODY HOOD!” roars Elsa.