Charlotte Roche Two-Book Collection: Wetlands and Wrecked

First I stick a needle into the infected lump and squeeze out the pus. From my fingertip into my mouth with that. Then it’s the hair’s turn. I poke around in the wound as long as it takes to get at the hair. It always looks a bit stunted since it’s never seen the light of day and has had to grow in tight quarters. I grab it with tweezers and pull it slowly out with the infected root. Done. Often another little pleasure will grow in the same spot a few weeks later.

A magpie is hopping across the shortly cropped hospital lawn. In children’s books magpies steal shiny objects like bottle stoppers, aluminum foil, and rings. In reality they steal eggs from small songbirds. They peck them open and slurp them out. I always try to picture just how a magpie hacks a hole in the shell of a songbird’s egg and then uses its beak as a straw to suck out the egg. Or do they do it completely differently? Jump on the egg until it breaks and slurp the puddle of goop off the ground?

Eggs are a constant theme with me. Years ago kids would chant, “Go climb a pole, you egg hole.” For no reason; just because it rhymes. But I always read a lot into it.

I told Kanell once what I thought it meant, and one afternoon we acted it out.

The pussy was the hole, obviously.

Into it an egg. For egg hole.

At first we tried a raw egg. But it broke in Kanell’s hand at the entrance to the pussy. The pieces of shell didn’t cut me or anything. It’s just that everything was covered in goop, and it was cold.

So then we discussed whether it had to be a raw egg. Actually it didn’t. So we boiled one. Hard. Eight minutes. Very hard.

And inserted it. So I finally had the egg hole I’d always imagined from this playground rhyme.

Since then it’s been our inside secret. In the most literal sense of the phrase.

There’s one other thing I’d like to do with Kanell.

I’ve always loved to play around with the lymph nodes in my groin. I slide them around under my skin. The same way you can move your kneecap around. Recently I’ve had the desire for Kanell to trace them with a Sharpie. To accentuate them. The same way you accentuate your eyes with makeup. Is that a sexual fantasy? Or just a new form of body art? It would only be a fantasy if thinking of it made me hot. And that it does. What would happen the first time the fantasy were realized? He’s good about exploring my fantasies, just as I’ve supported his with every fiber of my being, right from the start.

Out on the lawn one magpie is fighting with another. Over what?

We humans think of magpies as evil animals because they eat the young of other birds. But we eat the babies of almost every animal that appears on our menus. Lamb, veal, suckling pig.

Outside, Robin is strolling with a female nurse. The magpies fly off. I look at the two of them, appalled. I’m jealous. No way. I feel a claim to him just because he’s taken a picture of my wounded ass and I gave him a titillating lecture about modifying my underwear. And because the nurse can walk and I can’t. Well, I can, but only very, very slowly. They’re both smoking. And laughing. What is there to laugh about?

I want to be able to walk again. I’m going to walk right now—to the cafeteria. There is one here, right Helen? Yes. The candy striper said something about it. I’m going to slowly go to the cafeteria and get a cup of coffee. Good, Helen, do something normal. Don’t think anymore about Robin and his fuck-pie or about my parents in bed boning each other. I have plenty of time. Good idea. I should have been capable of thinking of it without the two strolling strangers. Coffee always makes me have to go to the bathroom. I’d like to secretly have a bowel movement, without telling anyone here. Just for me. Just so I know I still can and that I haven’t grown together and sealed shut. I won’t tell anyone. That way I can still use this venue to try to bring my parents together. That way the things that are supposed to be together will grow together.

I roll onto my stomach and let my legs slowly drop to the floor. I grab a painkiller from my pill supply and slurp it down. I’ll get some use out of it along the way. Inside, I’m prepared for the long voyage. But not on the outside. I’m still wearing just this tree-top angel outfit, still gathered and knotted at the front. Nothing on the bottom. You can’t walk around like this, even in a hospital, Helen. Even as an ass patient. There are a lot of people running around the halls and in the cafeteria. I go at a snail’s pace to the space-saving, built-in wardrobe. Mom said she had left things for me in there. I open the door. Only pajama bottoms and T-shirts. I’ll never be able to manage that. To put on a pair of pajama bottoms you have to bend down and put in first one leg and then the other. Oh, man. That’ll stretch my ass too much. Mom didn’t think of a bathrobe or something simple like that. Now what, Helen? I walk slowly back to the bed and pull off the sheet. I wrap it around myself and tie it at the shoulder so I look like a Roman on the way to the public baths. This is fine for walking around a hospital. The two ass-piss stains could have been caused by something else. They could be the result of my drooling on the sheet while sucking on a Werther’s Original. Very believable, Helen. Nobody’s going to ask you about it. People aren’t like that. They don’t want to know.

Off we go. To the door. I haven’t left this room in three days. Am I even allowed to wander around? Come on, I’m not going to get in trouble for walking. But am I allowed to walk in the hall as slowly as a dying grandmother? If someone catches me, they can send me right back. Better not to ask in advance. Open the door. There’s a lot going on in the hallway. Everyone is busy doing something. They all seem to know each other here, and everyone is laughing and pushing things around. To my eyes it looks as if they’re doing things just to look as if they’re busy in case the supervisor happens to walk past. They don’t want to be caught smoking in the nurses’ station. Better to chat on the hallway while shifting something around. They can’t fool me. I creep past them. Nobody acknowledges me. I think I’m going so slow they can’t see me with their hurried glances.

It’s just as bright in the hallway as in my room. The linoleum reflects the light back up from the floor. It looks like gray water. I walk on the water. It must have something to do with the pain medication. I still know the way to the elevator. You retain that even over the course of several days. The escape route. I lie there in bed the whole time in pain and know exactly how to get out—without even being conscious of the fact that I know. Out and around to the left. There are bad religious paintings hung all over the place. The nurses probably put them up to please their parents. They all end up here sooner or later. The parents. Proctology unit. Oncology. Palliative care. Something will bring them here. Unless they care for them at home, which I think is the best way.

I bend over and hold my stomach because I can’t reach my ass in this position. It hurts. I’ve made it to the glass door of the central part of the building. I just have to pound the buzzer like Robin and the giant glass door will open automatically. I stand there and don’t go through. I have no money with me. Crap. Have to go back the whole way. No one acknowledges me on the way back, either. I guess I am allowed to wander around. I’m also allowed to take care of my wound myself. It’s in an extremely unhygienic spot. Pretty much the most unhygienic spot Robin can imagine. Room 218. Mine. Open the door and in I go. Back to peace and quiet. Thanks to my idiotic forgetfulness I’ve wasted a lot of energy. I look in the drawer of my metal nightstand. There are a few small bills in it. Mom must have put them in there while I was sleeping. Or did she tell me she had? Or did I dream it? My memory’s gone to shit. In any event, I’ve got money now. I hold it in my hand as I walk. They don’t make sheets with pockets yet. My ass is getting used to the motion. I’m a bit quicker now than on the first trip. Probably because the pills are taking effect. I stare at the floor the whole way. We’ll see how far I get before someone comments on my attire. I punch the button. The automatic door swings open and this time I go through. Beyond is a whole new world. Here different diseases mingle. Ass patients and ass nurses aren’t the only ones out and about. An old woman with tubes in her nose is walking around. The tubes run into a backpack that’s attached to a walker.

She obviously has something wrong with her head—not a proctology case. That’s a change of pace. She has beautiful white hair that’s in a long braid coiled on top of her head. And a nice bathrobe on. Black with three-dimensional pink flowers on it. And nice slippers. Made of black velvet. You can see the shape of a bunion through the slippers. Like a tumor on her big toe. It’s growing sideways over the other toes. And by doing that it pushes the joint of the big toe farther and farther to the outside. Until it’s quite far away from the rest of the foot. A bunion like that is a destructive force. It bursts out of all your shoes over time. It’s about to destroy those velvet slippers. The toes end up like teeth in a jaw, crowding and displacing each other and becoming crooked. But the big toe always wins the battle. I know it. I have a bunion, too. Everyone in our family does. Father’s and mother’s side. Very bad genes, all things considered. The big toe always wants to go where the other toes belong, so little toes keep having to be surgically removed. My uncle, my grandmother, and my mother hardly have any toes left. Their feet end up looking like devil’s hooves.

I want to think about something nicer so I try to find a pleasant end to my granny observations.

Okay, even her spider veins are pretty. I used to call these weblike formations varicose veins. But they’re actually called spider veins. Everything about her is pretty. Except for the bunion and the tubes. The tubes will soon be taken out, I’m sure. Hopefully she won’t have to die with them in.

I push the button for the elevator, cross my fingers for the handsome old woman, and say hello to her very loudly. In case she’s already hard of hearing.

Old people are sometimes startled when someone addresses them. They’ve already gotten used to being invisible to those around them. Then they get happy that someone has noticed them.

The elevator arrives from above.

I can tell from the red arrow. If I still remember correctly from my sterilization, the cafeteria’s in the basement.

The elevator doors pull apart from each other with a loud screech and invite me in. Nobody else in the elevator. Good. I push the button marked B.

Cafeteria is written next to the B. I use the ride down to hoist up my toga with the hand holding my money and pull out my homemade tampon with the other hand. Bloody and slimy as it is, I’ll put it near the panel of buttons, the most scrutinized place in this moving crate. Just below the button panel is a bar you can pull down, like a handrail. I yank the horseshoe-shaped bar down and balance the bloody, sticky lump right in the middle of it. Success. Toga down as if nothing’s happened. The doors open and two men are standing there. Perfect. Looks like a father and son. None of the important things in life are discussed much in this family, either. I look at both of their faces. The father is ill. His face is yellowish gray and he’s wearing a bathrobe. Lung cancer? The son must be here visiting. I greet them, beaming with joy. “Good day, gentlemen.”