by Tsen Ee Lin
Trust in the universe; everything happens for a reason. These are mottos I swear by, and in this instance, if I had gotten on the right bus and stayed away from the cold, I would never have met Linda—the 58-year-old Norwegian who came to America on a three-week holiday but ended up spending 38 years of her life under California’s summer sun as she watched society run around in circles chasing the all-American dream.
This is Linda Monika Schzule’s story.
It was a cold Monday night, and it was freezing. I had just finished dinner with a friend, and just as we were a few feet away from the bus we planned on catching, it sped by us and rudely ignored the passersby who tried feverishly waving it down for us.
Crumbs, I thought. It was 13°C; I was wearing a skirt and not dressed for the weather. Shivering, my friend suggested we get an Uber or wait for the next bus to arrive. Being the broke college student I was, I obviously chose the latter.
13 minutes passed in 13°C weather and the second bus finally arrived. As we got off at our stop, we were promptly followed by another lady who seemed to be heading in the same direction. It was 10 PM. The streets of Santa Monica were still bustling as traffic raged on, and the night was clearly just getting started as a car full of girls zoomed by karaoking and blasting Rihanna’s “S&M”.
“Only in America, right?” The lady chuckled and we all laughed as we continued walking in the same direction.
“After 38 years, I’m happy to be finally saying goodbye,” she stated.
Curiously, we asked where she was headed. By chance, we had caught this lady at a turning point in her life. Her entire life was packed away and set to get on a plane to Norway in a few days.
Linda and I turned out to be neighbors. She was just a 3 minute walk away from me, and as we sat opposite each other in her homely apartment on 2241 Virginia Ave, surrounded by her drawings and paintings as she shared how everything unfolded and why she has spent years dreaming of this moment.
Bright, confident and a killer on the dance floor, Linda was just 20 when she came to America to visit her father, who had just moved from Norway after a divorce.
Her three-week holiday began on December 14th, 1984, and turned into a lifelong citizenship as Linda found work at the famous Ye Olde King’s Head in Downtown Santa Monica (the British restaurant which to this day continues whisking American tastebuds to the land of tea and scones), rented a roof over her head from her restaurant manager, and found the right people who granted her a green card.
“I was working for $4 dollars and something cents an hour. I had to be 21 to be working at the bar, and because I was only 20 I had to wait till my birthday. But because of my passport, we put the date first before the month—they thought that my birthday was March 6th instead of June 3rd, so I got to work at a bar 3 months before my birthday.” Linda chuckled as she added that that’s where the money was.
“Working at the King’s Head, there’s lots of people and you get to know them. A guy called Fisher asked me when was the last time I went home and I told him I haven’t been back since I last got here, which was 1984. ‘I know someone from immigration,’ he said, and told me to give him my immigration numbers. I wrote it down and forgot all about it. Time went on and one day he said, ‘Linda you’re free to go. You’re free to go home.’”
A green card was not the only thing that fell into Linda’s life as an English man named Mark and two red lines on a pregnancy test changed her life forever.
“Because I was initially only here for three weeks, I didn’t expect anything. I just wanted to see my dad, get my helicopter license and go back to Norway, and work as a transporter who flew people from the mainland into the old platform.
“Mark knew I was pregnant before I even knew, which is quite funny; I didn’t even get any morning sickness so I had no idea. Life was so busy that when I didn’t get my period, I didn’t think anything of it. My ex-boyfriend who came to Santa Monica all the way from Liverpool was at the bar and he said, ‘Hey Linda, your boobs are fucking massive,’ and I said ‘I know! I know! I don’t know what’s happening.” So we just laughed and then I told my friends about it, who then all looked at each other. Long story short, one of the girls ran up to the liquor store and bought me a pregnancy test. I took it in the bathroom and didn’t dare to go inside, until someone else did and came out with a big smile.
“The same way I knew that someone was going to ask me about my life, I knew at a young age that I was going to be a single mom; it was going to be before I was 30 and I would have one kid. So when Mark went to England on a three week ‘vacation’ and didn’t come back, of course I was sad, because where the hell did that come from? But I accepted the fact that I was a single mom. It didn’t bother me and obviously that was quite selfish, because I had a son who would have liked to have a father in his life, but I enjoyed motherhood very much. Pregnancy was the happiest time in my life.”
As a woman, a foreigner, a single mother at 27, a waitress living paycheck to paycheck on minimum wage, America’s pristine white walls began chipping away, and Linda began seeing through the systematic potholes—the racism, sexism and oppression beneath its carefully plastered walls.
“I should have been smart and raised my kid in Norway, but I didn’t because you get caught up in everything. When you’re here in your twenties the sun is shining everyday, and it’s a great place to be when you’re young, but you got to be sorted to not have to worry about later on in life.”
January 17th, 1994 was the first time Linda’s heart ached for home as she feared for her life during the Northridge Earthquake, which crushed 54 lives and cost millions in damages.
“All my windows fell in, everything was on the floor except for my stereo and TV. My son Levi was thrown from one side of the bed to the other. That was the first time I wanted to go home. That was the scariest shit I’ve ever gone through. It was so loud, it lasted for so long—it was fucking terrifying.”
Collapsing houses weren’t the only thing that frightened Linda, as the scarcity of affordable healthcare wore on her when she was at her most vulnerable and cradling her newborn.
“I had Levi at 9:16 PM and I was out of the hospital the next day. I thought to myself, ‘What the fuck do I do?’ I’m going home with a baby, but there was no talk about breastfeeding, and my nipples were so small that my son couldn’t latch onto them. The first week was a nightmare, and I even had to pay to talk to some breastfeeding specialist who would give me some advice. It was so ridiculous. In Norway, you’re there for a week and they’ll go through the whole thing; you get the care and information.
“People there only pay $350 max a year for any medical stuff and my friend in America pays $1,000 a month for him and his wife; that’s $12,000 a year. Then you got the deductible on top of that which is probably around $5,000. That’s $17,000 you have to come up with if you end up in the hospital for a long time. In Norway, it doesn’t matter what you go in for; it’ll never be more than $350. Everyone will say you can just go through Medi-Cal, but I’ve been through that route and I don’t want to again. It’s intense. They want to know everything about you and there’s so much paperwork. I don’t mean that there shouldn’t be, but they just really make you feel like a piece of shit. In Norway, they will do anything to help you with a smile on their face. There is no attitude, and they don’t make you feel like you’re beneath them when you ask for help. Here, they really do. So I go 12 years without insurance because I don’t want to go through Medi-Cal. You stop roller-skating, you stop skiing, you watch where you’re walking, and you just hope you stay healthy.”
“Shit like this is why I’m happy and relieved I’m going home.”
“I can finally go to the doctor for the first time in 12 years. I can finally live and not have to worry about losing my job, whether I would be able to find another or simply end up on the streets. I worried enough when Levi was young and we didn’t have enough money. I was a single mom, working minimum wage, and you don’t have a shit load of money to just start saving. Of course I could have started saving, but my baby gets everything he wants and you make sure your kid’s fed, fucking clothed and you put yourself second.”
For an entire year, Linda survived on just $83 food stamps every month, fell asleep to her howling stomach, and rationed her son’s milk powder.
“My son didn’t eat much the first two years because we didn’t have much money. I got fired the same time I lost my babysitter, who had to go full time caring for her grandma who had kidney failure. I went to the unemployment office but the lady kept asking me if I could start work tomorrow, and when I replied that I needed to first find a babysitter, I was told to move and within moments, I was out of line. Later I was told by someone that you can’t tell them no and you have to just say yes, so I guess I said the wrong answer. That’s how I ended up on welfare, which lasted a year. I lived on $83 every month and survived not eating dinner everyday; and while it didn’t last very long, I still think it’s good when everyone ends up on the bottom. I believe that everyone has to be at the bottom at some point in their life so they can appreciate the little things and do things differently.”
Outspoken and opinionated, Linda has always been one to speak her mind, but there have been moments where now looking back, that she should’ve said something, but in the moment felt like she couldn’t.
“There was a time when I walked out of my job and my son said ‘Mom, that was the stupidest thing you had ever done, how can you just quit your job without another one?’ and I said it’s easy—you just walk out. You think you can get another one because you have experience and there should be no reason others won’t hire you, but you’re wrong. This is America. If you’re not a woman of 21, 22, 23, they won’t hire you in the service industry. And I get it, but it comes down to wanting the youth and being able to treat them however you want to treat them because that’s what people; what men like.”
“For 18 years—almost half of the time that I’ve been here—I’ve gone through sexual harressment at work. It was only when the ‘Me Too’ Movement first came out that I realized it was not normal. My first job at King’s Head was to bring the cash register up the stairs to the office. We all had to wear skirts and as we were walking up, the manager would always take his hand and put it in between my legs; as a joke, though not all the way up.”
Linda explained that she brushed off her manager’s actions as he was a harmless 500-pound man who was always making jokes and was nice to everyone. The manager wasn’t the only person who harassed her however. Another co-worker expected a favor in return for dropping her back home one day.
“One of the bartenders gave me a lift back home and for me that was great, or else I would have to wait for the first bus at 4 AM for 2 hours in the morning. But he expected a fucking blowjob when he dropped me back home and he said it like it was normal and like he’s done it a thousand times before. Then I got a job at Cafe 50’s and they touched me as well and did funny things—they’re all fucking married, every single one of them. It’s the ego, that South American thing that they don’t like others telling them no, and you just put up with it. It’s a good thing that the ‘Me Too’ Movement came up as it empowers women to speak up, and it comes down to how they treat women in America like we’re second-class citizens.
“If we are not going to allow abortion, make sure the kids are going to be okay then. Give them their preschools, give them fucking lunches at school for crying out loud. I just don’t understand what they want…” Linda expressed frustratedly as she continued ranting. “They just want lots of workers, lots of white people to work two jobs, to feed them so they can do all their criminal activities; and all the workers will be too busy to even think about what’s going on. That’s when I realized early that that’s why people are working minimum wage and working two or three jobs.
“I don’t think they’re happy with their jobs, it’s just the wrong people in the wrong jobs here. People shouldn’t be living on the streets; someone is not doing their job right. Today I saw a woman sitting outside on the grass, she had on a shirt, no underwear, no bra—filthy, short orange hair and couldn’t speak properly because she had a speech impediment, and I just thought about why she was on the streets. That’s when I go dumbfounded and quiet because it’s still unreal to me.”
“Downtown L.A. is really cool, not Skid Row though. I used to go downtown once a week to dance, and when Trump became president I started raving to techno. That’s why my boots say ‘Fuck Trump’ and ‘No Justice No Peace’ as a way to get it out of my system. That music was exactly how I felt, and it just made sense.
“There’s so much other stuff I’m not going to have to worry about, but it’s a give and take. I’m going to go through the winter, the cold, the darkness; I’m not going to wake up everyday to the sun like I do here, but I’ll gladly give that up.
“I’m looking forward to not getting irritated, losing a marble, getting anxiety, feeling stomach pain from all the shit that is going on here. There’s nothing here for people to look forward to but they just have to keep going. When I had my son, it made it a hell of a lot more worthy to live, and that’s why it’s important we give each other care and support.”
Bidding farewell to America has been on Linda’s mind for years, but her love for her son bound her to the free nation and as she watched her son, Levi, now in his 30’s, entangle himself in the music industry as a manager for A-list artists (you may know one of them as the artist who sang his heart out by a burning payphone), her loath for America and its hustle culture grew.
“When I wanted to go back, of course Levi didn’t want to as he had a good job, making good money and surrounded by famous people. I didn’t just want to leave him because I didn’t want to be like my mom, in Norway, leaving the only kid you have in America. I don’t feel good at all about leaving my mom in Norway and keeping her grandchild in America. When I was in Paris at 19 and still a fucking virgin, my mom was already asking if she was going to be a grandma.
“Whenever I saw him he was always working; the phone would be right there and it was demand, demand, demand. Famous people like stuff done and it comes with the job, but when you’re in your twenties and you have just one day off in 5 years of working—that’s not normal. Who does that? It wasn’t even like he started work at 9 and finished at 5 as he would fucking work the hours, have a little break, then have to go to some concert and help with whatever the artists needed.
“My son had to fly to Mexico and give the artist’s wife her medicine which was in the cabinet—he had to fly to Mexico to give the medicine.” Linda exclaimed in disbelief as she showed how tiny the bottle of medication was and that her son dropped everything for that trip.
Finally, Linda’s son snapped like a rubberband stretched beyond its elasticity and while her son was never one to swear, he literally said: “Fuck America.”
So that was it. They decided that they were finally leaving.
“When I went to Norway I was very depressed, because I didn’t like the living situation.”
When Linda returned to Norway and looked at her new home-to-be, she strangely began missing her American life as she felt suffocated within her tiny home space. The entire kitchen and living space was squeezed into half the size of her quaint American living room. Of course it was modern and minimalistic, but as an artist, Linda dreadfully missed her large cement walls where she scattered and hung up her art.
“I cried everyday, thinking that this was the worst mistake I’ve made. After a week I turned on Apple TV to distract myself and began watching the live broadcast from ABC News. After three minutes of watching the news and all the bad shit that’s been going on in the U.S. I felt at ease, and when I told my friend he joked that I had Stockholm Syndrome.”
Although having heard about Stockholm Syndrome, Linda confessed she never knew what it was until her friend explained it and it made her realize how badly she needed to get out of the States.
“I went a whole week without bad news and when I got it my body went normal, how sick is it that I have to have bad shit being told to me all the time. That made me realize how bad it was and that it’s time to go.”
“Sometimes I get mad seeing people from the right say stupid shit online, but I just say ‘I’m sorry you didn’t get enough love growing up’. People here aren’t used to hugging and don’t realize how much a hug means. We hug when we see people and when they leave—that’s at least two hugs; sometimes I ask the fucking mailman for a hug!
“So it’s easy to see that the people here aren’t getting enough love, and it’s not just their parents’ fault, but also their parents. My dad told me he loved me for the first time when I was 55 and I could tell it was really awkward for him, but it was okay because I know what his parents were like. You can’t expect someone who didn’t grow up in a loving home to be that loving.
“Those online haters are complaining rather than fighting for it and that’s why I am very glad for the younger generation. They’ve had enough, they will fucking let you know that they’ve had enough, and will do anything to change it—and I love it. I can actually go home knowing that someone in America has a fucking spine, the guts, the willpower and what it takes to get changes done.”
I was meant to keep in contact with Linda but since she left on May 19th, 2022, she’s retired her +1 country code for +47 and I’ve lost contact with her, but I am hopeful that we will one day meet again and this time talk about her new life in Norway.