Marion Munch awoke not knowing where she was. She normally woke up at home, but the last few days had been different, and recently she had awakened in two strange places. A small apartment. And then a big apartment. Now she was in yet another new place.
“Mom?” she whispered tentatively, but there was no reply.
She sat up in her bed and looked around. The room was very nice. It was clearly a child’s bedroom. The other places had been just for grown-ups—no toys, nothing belonging to a child anywhere.
“Mom?” she called again as she climbed out of bed and started to explore the room.
The walls were white, bright white, so white that she almost had to shield her eyes with her hand, and there were no windows in the room. Marion felt a little sorry for the girl who must surely live here. No windows, what a silly idea. From her bedroom window in Sagene, she could see all sorts of nice things. Cars and people and so on. The girl who lived here could not see anything at all. The strange thing was, there was no door in this bedroom either.
There was a desk in one corner. With a lamp. And a pad of paper and some pens and crayons. Her mother had promised her a desk like it now that she was starting school, and that was soon. It was in . . . well, it was soon anyway. On one wall there were small posters with letters of the alphabet. One had an A and a picture of an apple. Another had a B and a picture of a banana. She could not remember the next letter—oh yes, C. She remembered it now, and she recognized the drink on the picture, the one her mother disapproved of but that her granddad let her have, cola. She couldn’t read yet, but she also recognized a few words: “cat,” “ball,” “car.” Her mother had taught her a song about it, the ABC song; it was quite good, and it taught you the letters. The alphabet. She knew it was called that. Her mother had always stressed the importance of learning to read, and she did want to, but then she wondered what her teacher would say if she started school already knowing how to read, because then the teacher would have nothing to teach her and perhaps she might be bored. So she might as well wait, mightn’t she? She could swim. Not everybody could. And she could ride her bicycle almost without her training wheels. She was the only one she knew who could do that. And she couldn’t be expected to learn everything at once, now, could she?
It was then that Marion discovered that she wasn’t wearing her own clothes. How very strange. Hadn’t she had been wearing her light-blue nightdress earlier? The one with the tear in it, which her mother wanted to throw out but Marion refused to let her. She liked putting her finger through the hole, feeling the soft fabric around her finger; it made it easier for her to fall asleep now that she had stopped sucking her thumb. She had done really well, stopping that. It had been very hard to begin with, she had missed the thumb terribly, had lied to her parents a few times and sucked it after all. But then Christian at nursery school had told her that only babies suck their thumb, and that had made her stop. Because she was no longer a baby. After all, babies couldn’t swim, could they? Indeed, could any of the others swim? Oh, no, they could not. But perhaps that wasn’t surprising, because none of them spent as much time in Tøyenbadet Swimming Pool as she and her mother did; she had certainly never seen anyone she knew there. She glanced down and almost had to laugh. She looked as if she were going to a costume party. She was wearing a big, old-fashioned dress that made it hard to move around, Then she discovered the dolls on the shelf. There were five dolls sitting up there, dangling their feet. Not new dolls, not cool ones like Draculaura, but old-fashioned ones with hard white faces, the kind of dolls her grandmother had up in the attic. One of them was even wearing the same dress as the one Marion had on. A bright white dress with all sorts of bits of lace, or whatever it was called. Marion climbed up on her bed and took down the doll. It had a sign around its neck. Marion knew what the sign said. It said MARION. Her name. She recognized her own name. She knew how to read and write it. It was on her peg at nursery school where she hung up her coat. She looked up at the other dolls, which were also wearing dresses and had signs around their necks. She could not read any of the names—oh, yes, Johanne, she knew that one, a girl at her nursery school was named that. Her peg was right next to Marion’s.
“Mom?” Marion said, a little louder this time.
There was still no reply. Perhaps she had gone to the bathroom? Marion realized that she needed the bathroom herself. Now, where was the bathroom in this place? She walked up to what could be a door—grooves in the wall but without a handle—and ran her tiny fingers along the grooves but could not open it.
“Mom?”
She really needed the bathroom now, she really did. How strange that the girl who lived here had a sign with her name on it. Perhaps she was really nice. Perhaps she had known that Marion would be staying here for a while, and maybe she’d made the sign to say that it was fine for Marion to borrow her room, that she was welcome, like it said on their neighbors’ doormat, WELCOME. I welcome you, I live here. Go ahead, do some drawing and learn the alphabet if you like.
She was close to bursting now.
“Mommy?” she called out at the top of her voice.
Her voice flew around the room and slammed back into her ears.
No, she could hold it no longer.
Suddenly something happened to the wall. A buzzing noise and some squeaking. Then it fell silent again, only for the sound to resume, coming closer and closer, almost as if someone were banging two saucepan lids together, like they did at nursery school once when they made an orchestra out of the things they already had.
Marion kept staring at the wall where the noise was coming from. She noticed a handle on the wall that she hadn’t seen before. She reached out and grabbed the handle. It was a hatch, which opened. Marion pulled open the hatch and jumped when she saw what was behind it; she got goose pimples all over. Inside the hatch was a small monkey. A wind-up toy that banged two metal discs together to make a noise. There was a note with the monkey. She waited until the monkey had stopped moving before she stuck in her hand and quickly snatched the note.
It had letters on it. Some repeated more than once. E. She knew that one. A. She knew that one as well, they were in Elsa’s name—she worked at nursery school. And O. She definitely knew that one. She really needed to pee now. She pressed her legs together and tried to read the note.
“Peekaboo.”
She had no idea what it meant.
“Mom! I need to peeeee!”
She shouted louder, but there was still no reply. She could not hold it anymore. She lifted up the heavy dress. She was wearing strange underpants, really big ones. She looked around the room. There, under the desk. She pulled down the big underpants as quickly as she could and peed into the wastebasket.