Kinder Surprise
Lea Horvat
One of the first things I truly wanted was a collection of small, hard pieces of ectoplasm glowing in the dark—a complete set of Kinder Surprise ghosts released in 1996. Fittingly, I, too, was a “Kinder Surprise,” as jokesters liked to call unplanned children.
By the time I met my father for the first time at the age of eight, I had already collected all the ghosts. He took my mom and me on a fishing trip to the artificial lakes around the castle of Trakošćan. I wore my best sports suit; I was tidy and expectant. Would one of his grand announcements delivered to my mom—a golden retriever! Inline skates!—come true this time? He acted as though we saw each other every day. After that, I didn’t see him for years. My father ghosted me.
I was the first in my class to get Alberto Trema, a trembly ghost curled up in an orange armchair, holding onto a book. He was a rare find, but I wasn’t excited. I preferred the happy-go-lucky figurines, like the one with the suitcase whose ghostly body clumsily wrapped into a knot.
The second time I saw my father, I sat in the living room, frozen, while our short version of a longcase clock ticked in the background. We didn’t have cozy armchairs to sink out of sight. I was twelve, my father was drunk, my grandmother was throwing him out, and I knew I wouldn’t tell anyone.
Templates demand father's presence. In my radosnica, a notebook meant to capture joyful childhood moments, “father’s name” was written down, only to be later crossed out and replaced with “I don’t have a dad” in my shaky handwriting. “Was ist dein Vater von Beruf?” my German textbook relentlessly inquired about my father’s occupation. I knew what the official documents stated, but my lips were sealed, determined not to share anything unless I was forced to. Usually eager to provide the right answers, I kept my head down throughout the chapter on occupations, suddenly very busy with the state of my pencils. When asked to declare “first name (father’s name) last name,” I ignore the instruction in parentheses and write my mother’s name, relieved that we share a last name.
There were other fatherless kids whose fathers died or disappeared. At school, no one bothered us for being fatherless—except ourselves. Even the German teacher was a single mother. Later, when researching my dissertation, I learned with some relief that as early as 1957, one-parent households (unfortunately referred to as “incomplete families”) made up more than 16% of all families in socialist Yugoslavia.
Being fatherless begs for an explanation, preferably short and succinct. You might even feel compelled to make it more comprehensible, as one friend did by replacing a car accident with war—a story that elicited instant compassion in Croatia. My story was a televisa presenta mess, the same kind of implausible drama my grandfather and I watched in Mexican telenovelas.
At university, we opened up to each other with ease, like the plastic shell inside a Kinder Surprise. I learned about free legal aid for children deprived of alimony from a friend with villainous father. I was ready to sue my father, but he slipped away one last time, leaving me with the looming threat of inheriting his debts and making me sound heartless (“My father is dead, but I don’t care” is how I introduce him when someone asks). I was grasping at air just like frustrated Duško Suško, forever stuck with a drying rack.
My father keeps avoiding me, even in the hereafter. I forget about his existence for months at a time. I have confined him to the role of a nameless character in a short story. I am not trying to make sense of the “poor rich”—their Mercedes, yacht, alleged corruption, gambling, and debt—people from whom I couldn't expect a single Kinder Surprise. No me interesa nada is not suppressed shame but freedom.
I grew up with my grandmother, grandfather, mother, aunt, and great-aunt—modest workers-peasants with the highest moral standards, whom I continue to look up to. As an only child, I basked in the attention of five adults. Incompleteness was never so abundant.
When I’d wake up in the middle of the night, worried about everyone in the house, I’d pass through the living room on my way to the bathroom. On a shelf of an elaborate dark wood cupboard, there was a phosphorescent light: all my Kinder Surprise ghosts lined up—friendly rather than scary companions—the first and only set I ever completed.
