Do you remember your childhood fondly? Selah doesn’t. In this week’s Translation Tuesday, the nonbinary protagonist of Luca Mael Milsch’s novel Seven Seconds of Air reflects on their childhood, on the inadequacy and guilt fostered by their constant separation from their working-class mother, on their inability to communicate with a parent whose ability to care for them is limited as much by the economic necessity of constant work as it is by moments of plausibly deniable cruelty. Brilliantly translated from the German by Han Smith, these sections, written only in the present tense, capture the mind of a child forced to grow up too quickly yet nevertheless committed to a sense of optimism. Writes Han Smith, “The word that I feel is central to Selah’s voice in this section is eigentlich, or actually / really, as in: ‘everything’s actually quite okay’ – it is an attempt at self-reassurance that surely things are fine, with the ‘but’ that follows often only implied.” Read on.
1995
She’s almost never there when I get home: she’s nearly always working late. So today I heated up a frozen lasagna and I sat with my apple juice and watched TV. The little bottles are really only for going on trips, and I’m not supposed to drink them at home. But still, I just like those bottles, and it means I don’t have to wash an extra glass. I sink right into the sofa sometimes. My mother says: melt into it. If I’m still hungry I go and check in the kitchen to see what else we have to eat, and today there was an open pack of crisps and ice-cream too, but my mother can always tell if something’s missing so it’s better to wait and see what she says. In the fridge there was a yoghurt, and I thought she might be fine with that. That was what I hoped, that it wouldn’t be too bad. Then I headed back to the living room.
Sometimes I like to touch the screen with my fingers, even if I know it isn’t allowed. I’m really not meant to go near it at all, because it isn’t safe and I might also somehow break it. But when I touch the surface, when it’s on, that is, it crackles out and I jump back with the shock. Even though I know it’s going to happen – somehow I just forget every time. I’ve actually thought quite a lot about falling through time or even disappearing completely, and I wish something could maybe pull me into the TV, into the programme I’m watching, and then I’d just be gone.
When I hear the keys, I have to be quick. Actually, I was prepared this time: I’d taken my plate and rubbish to the kitchen and I’d laid out my homework on the desk in my bedroom, and so all I had to do was run and sit down in front of it. But of course she could tell where I’d been the whole time anyway. The TV was still warm, after all. She isn’t stupid, obviously, and the first place she went – after she’d hung up her jacket – was into the living room to check, and then she came straight into my room and I was sitting there with the maths book wide open, staring at the page and I’d not written a thing.
I thought this time she might kick off, and it did seem like she was suddenly about to start shouting, but instead she just had this look on her face, the one that’s really only ever for me. I’ve never seen her use it for anyone else and I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who knows what it means. It’s so she doesn’t have to shout at all: she doesn’t have to say out loud that I should have at least started on the homework in advance, and I should have switched the TV off earlier and not treated her like some kind of idiot. I should at least have made an effort. Her eyes say it all and it’s clear enough.
It’s not like I’m even doing badly at school. In music I actually got the top mark, just recently, and Frau Donath announced it to the whole of our class. And I was proud, of course, but you can’t ever show it. So I felt good about it just secretly inside myself, and I smiled only a tiny bit. You can’t boast and show off when something goes well, or other people start thinking you’re annoying and don’t like you. That’s what my mother says. That’s just how it is.
Later, after she’d told me off without even really telling me off, she did come back to my room to say goodnight. And suddenly she was bringing up the piano stuff, because I hadn’t done my practice, again. Hardly anyone at school has to play an instrument, only a few quite geeky types, and they don’t live anywhere near where we do and they get driven to their lessons and don’t have to take the bus. I don’t like it but that makes no difference to my mother – she wants something to really become of me one day and I don’t even understand, she says. I used to think she wouldn’t know if I didn’t do my practice but now I’ve found out that she does always know. She asks the woman in the flat downstairs. By some strange coincidence the woman’s door always opens when I’m coming back from school, and then she asks me stupid questions or wants me to come in. I say no every time because I know she’s weird, and it also always stinks in her flat. My mother says she’s slightly crazy, but she still tells me everything the woman has told her, quietly so that she doesn’t hear it too. She has to come very close to me and I force myself not to pull a face, even though her breath smells and makes me feel sick. Our neighbour didn’t hear any music, she said this time, and only heard the sound of the TV on. She asked if I even understood that it will only really work if I practise every day, properly, and not just the right hand by itself, which is easier, but the left hand too and both together, and for at least a few hours or it’s all just pointless. And now of course I know the woman can hear through the floor, but on some days I’m just too lazy, or I’m too stupid, or I’m not even sure. And so right this moment I’ve just sworn to myself that I’ll never go into her disgusting flat in my whole life: she’s always had it in for me.
Another thing: I think I need to start hiding my diary better. I’m not a hundred percent sure, but when we’ve been eating dinner recently, my mother has somehow come out with things that definitely no one is meant to know, and that our neighbour can’t have overheard either. Maybe she can read people’s thoughts. Honestly, I just don’t know. And I never really say anything about it, or else she’ll get cross and start shouting. That’s what she does when she gets seriously angry, and it’s not enough just for her to come into my room and speak in the quiet voice right close to my face. So I’ve been trying to stop her reaching that point. The other thing I’ve thought about doing too is writing little messages in my diary for her, like maybe: Hi, Mama. How are you doing? I’m fine. But when I did do that once, I ended up getting scared. I tore out the pages and ripped them into shreds, and half of them I threw away in the bins outside on the way to school, and the other half I chucked in the bushes at the bus stop. And then I obviously got to school late, but it didn’t matter because we have maths first thing on Mondays, and we always start five minutes late anyway, because Herr Frank doesn’t have a car and comes in by train, and there are basically always delays in the mornings. My mother says he’s some kind of eco warrior, and she laughs while I’m making myself toast with Nutella, and she’s making a sandwich out of rye bread and cream cheese and cucumber for me to take to school. Rye bread is very healthy, she says. But mostly I don’t eat it, because I just don’t like it. My mother probably doesn’t even realise and she’s been making these sandwiches for two years now, every day. I get a lump in my throat from the second I see the bread, and just the smell of the cheese with those little herbs in it makes me sick. Really, just the smell of it.
The sandwich is always wrapped up in silver foil, because lunchboxes are just a waste of money, especially if you lose them, and I’m always losing things. I always shove the sandwich in the foil into the front of my backpack and then get on the bus, and I don’t take it off while I’m sitting there, and then I completely forget about the sandwich and it’s always squashed when I take it out at break. The bread clumps into a blob with the cream cheese and the cucumber and the foil: it’s disgusting. And at the same time it’s embarrassing too, because the others have their nice blue and red plastic lunchboxes. They have proper sandwiches, and some even have neat slices of apple. But that’s also because their mothers aren’t single parents. And don’t have to go out and do real work.
Now I’ve just been spying in the hallway for a bit. My mother was on the phone again, and I quite often try to hear what she’s saying. I knew she was speaking to one of her friends, but I couldn’t tell who it was at first. She does have a few, and they come over quite a lot, one at a time or all at once, and then they sit in the living room and smoke and drink prosecco or maybe white wine, and they talk and laugh extremely loudly together. It seems like they’re enjoying themselves, and I stay in my room or else I eavesdrop on them, even if it’s hard to actually hear their words because they mostly all talk over each other. One of them always gets picked up by her husband, and another one always drives home drunk, and the others live in our same building or nearby.
I think this time it must have been the friend who comes and cuts my mother’s hair, and mine. I heard her say something about street urchins, and my mother really only ever says that when she means our hair and it needs cutting again. And then I actually wanted to get up and go, because I was crouching there to listen in an uncomfortable position and I was getting cramp in both my legs, and my mother was mostly just going on about her job, saying that her boss is a total idiot and she’s always working her arse off for him and literally doing everything there, when she’s really only meant to do the accounts, and she doesn’t even get paid enough for that. And also that she doesn’t get proper child support for me, only the stupid basic child benefit, and obviously that’s not ever enough either. And since I know all this already, I wanted to leave and go back to my room. But then she started talking about me as well. It’s always the same, but for some reason I feel like I have to stay and listen. I already know I don’t help out enough and that children are basically really expensive. Even if I do try not to cost her too much. Sometimes, for example, I don’t even tell her when we need money for a trip with school, and I just don’t go in on that day at all. Or I only ask for something that’s just small on my birthday. Or I try not to always eat too much. But I’m not sure she even notices. All she notices is when I take one of the little apple juice bottles to drink at home, and she thinks I’m doing it just to annoy her. “Oh my, oh Meier,” is what she says then, and I don’t really know what she means.
It’s not like my mother can somehow work more hours: she’s already working the whole time as it is, and she doesn’t even like her job so she isn’t exactly going to want to go in even more often, just to sit in the office all day long and sort invoices and bills into files and always have to answer the phone. And the man who runs the company is an arsehole too, just like the man she had me with, who still doesn’t give her any money for me even if I really half belong to him. It isn’t fair and I actually hate him for it, because that’s why my mother can’t just stay at home and have a life that’s a little bit easier, instead of needing to cope with me all on her own, like my Oma had to cope with her all on her own. That’s what she says sometimes, and Oma says it too, when they think I’m not listening. Or when they say it without actually opening their mouths. They’re both very good at that, somehow.
I do really actually love my Oma, but when she’s around it can also be quite hard, because she and my mother are always arguing. Before she comes over, the whole flat has to be spotless, and my mother cooks especially for her, but Oma still always finds something wrong. Or else she starts on about my aunt again, and how she’s basically gone and done everything right, like marrying the man she had her child with, for example, and my mother can’t stand that, obviously.
It’s annoying because Oma can’t do as much as before now, because she’s old and I need to be careful with her. It isn’t her who says that, it’s my mother. And then this one time, when she was visiting, my mother said: “Oma doesn’t like it when you sleep with her.” Because I always used to come to her at night and slip under the sheets with her, and she would stroke my arm and I talked to her. And then since it wasn’t enough just to say it, my mother locked me in my room. At breakfast my Oma asked me why I hadn’t come, and I actually think she was disappointed. My mother looked at me and I knew I couldn’t tell her. So I just said: “I’m too old for that, you know, Oma.” I stretched out her name to be really long and she looked down at the jam on her toast and drank her coffee. And I wanted to hug her, but I just kept eating.
To be honest, I was glad that no one would know what had really happened in the night. I woke up and I desperately needed the toilet. I went to the door and I saw it was locked, and at first I didn’t even understand why. At the beginning I tried to hold it in: I’m actually not too bad at that. Sometimes when I’m watching TV after school and the adverts come on, I just switch the channel, because there’s always going to be something else on, and because of that there’s never time to go to the bathroom. So I do just hold it in and wait and wait, and it makes my stomach hurt but I can hold it just a little bit longer, and I think maybe I can also train my bladder that way, even if I don’t know really know why I’d need to, so I make myself wait until I really just can’t. Then I have to get to the toilet without suddenly wetting myself on the way. That’s what it was like that night as well. I’d drunk too much water before going to bed, of course, and I really, really needed to go, and I tried to hold it in because I couldn’t get out, and I obviously couldn’t fall asleep again either. And I’m not sure how long I was lying there, because I didn’t want to turn on the light, and without the light I couldn’t see the clock. Then at some point it was just too much. I was sweating and clutching my stomach because it hurt.
Then, since I couldn’t think of anything else, I just pulled some clothes out that I had in my cupboard, ones that I don’t really wear very much, and I shoved them together in a pile on the floor and I kind of squatted over them. At first I couldn’t go at all, just like I can’t when we’re somewhere in the woods, when my mother and I are out on a trip. She says I always make such a fuss about it, and something accidentally gets on my shoes or legs or even hers every time, or else I lose my balance and fall over. But by then I was properly desperate and it did all come out on its own and wouldn’t stop. I was worried it might spread to the carpet too. It was totally disgusting, of course, especially because my legs were wet and then I needed to clear everything up. The clothes I’d used were warm and soaking and now they stank a bit as well, but I was somehow also proud of my idea and the fact that it had actually worked. I just didn’t want anyone to find out. Oma probably wouldn’t have thought it was that bad, and she most likely would have slapped her knee and taken the cigarette out of her mouth and opened her eyes wide and said: “You did what?” And then she’d have thrown her head back and started laughing with her laugh that sounds a little bit like screeching, until there were tears running down her cheeks. And she probably would have told all her friends at the kiosk where she always buys her magazines. But my mother wouldn’t have found it funny at all, and I think Oma would have told her about it too even if she’d promised me she never would. For my mother it would be just one more typical-Selah thing, and I don’t like it when she says it like that, to me or to anyone else: “Typical Selah. You know what she’s like.” So I had to pick up all of the wet clothes, one by one, really carefully, and hide them back in the cupboard. When I woke up in the morning, the door was open, just like that, and I grabbed everything out of the cupboard and ran into the shower with it, and first I covered myself and the clothes with soap and then I scrubbed them all and I wrung them out too. It took forever and afterwards I had to hang them on the radiator back in my room, the one behind my bed so that no one would see. It really did take ages and I was freaking out that I was late for breakfast and might miss the bus too. But then it all somehow worked out. Whatever.
Translated from the German by Han Smith
Luca Mael Milsch is an author, translator, editor and curator based in Germany, whose work explores shame, guilt, silence and the intersection of identity with social oppression. Their debut novel, Sieben Sekunden Luft (Seven Seconds of Air), was published by Haymon Verlag in 2024. Milsch has also published several translations from English, including Selby Wynn Schwartz’s After Sappho, longlisted for the Booker Prize, and Claire Kilroy’s Soldier Sailor, longlisted for the Women’s Prize. Their own poetry and prose has featured in various literary journals and anthologies, and they curated the Literary Salon at the University of Hannover for five years, fostering dialogue across literary and artistic disciplines. Their writing often transgresses formal and thematic boundaries, incorporating queer temporalities and synchronicities as narrative principles. Throughout 2025, Milsch has been writer in residence at both mare-Künstlerhaus and Künstlerdorf Schöppingen, where they are working on a short story collection and their second novel. Visit their website here.
Han Smith is a queer writer, translator and adult literacy educator. She translates from German, Italian and occasionally Russian, with samples provided to a range of publishers and featured in New Books in German and an upcoming anthology of ‘Berlin stories’ from V&Q Books. Her translation work focuses on contemporary fiction and hybrid forms, often exploring themes of memory, resistance, bodies and queer identity. Han’s own debut novel, Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking, was published by John Murray Originals in 2024 and shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize; previous work has also appeared in Five Dials, Lunate, Cipher Press, Perverse, Litro, The Interpreter’s House and others. She has been awarded or shortlisted/longlisted for a range of prizes, and is currently working on her second and third novels alongside translating and teaching. Visit her website here.
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