Charlotte Roche Two-Book Collection: Wetlands and Wrecked

“Mothers know everything. The doctors told me outside the operating room. They had never encountered anything like it before. So I know what a liar you are.”

At least I knew it was out. Before that conversation with my mom I figured the doctors had opened me up, seen it wasn’t infected, and left it in. So I had always worried I might really get appendicitis. And what could you say then, when you’d supposedly already had appendicitis? So that’s what had happened. Good to know. A lot of needless hours of worrying. Right after you’ve had your appendix taken out, it hurts incredibly badly to laugh, to walk, to stand, to do much of anything, because it feels as if the stitches are going to rip open. I tensed and curled up just like now with my ass. Is it possible the doctors recognized my name? Did it cause a sensation in the hospital back then—that a girl would endure an operation just to trick her teacher? Did they go out of their way to make this operation particularly painful—oops, I slipped—as payback? Am I paranoid because of the pain? Because of the painkillers? What is going on? It hurts so bad. Robin. Bring the pills.

Here he comes. He hands me two tablets and says something. I can’t concentrate. I’m writhing in pain. I slurp the pills down. Please, let them work fast. Now. To calm myself down, I put my hand on my pubic mound again. I always did this as a kid, too. But back then I didn’t know it was called a pubic mound.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s the most important part of the whole body. Nice and warm. Perfectly positioned for your hand to reach. My center. I stick my hand into my underwear and run my hand around. This is the best way to put myself to sleep.

I root around like a squirrel down there, and just as I’m falling asleep I have the impression there’s a log of crap poking out of my ass. The bandages feel exactly like that. I dream that I’m walking across a wide field. A field of parsnips. I can see a man in the distance. A Nordic walker. One of those guys who hikes with a pair of ski-pole-like walking sticks. I think: Look, Helen, a man with four legs.

He approaches and I can see a giant cock is hanging out of his form-fitting sports leggings. I think: Nope, a man with five legs.

He walks past me and I turn and watch him go. It pleases me to see he’s pulled his pants down in the back and a huge log of crap is hanging out of his ass, bigger even than his cock. I think: Wow, six legs. I come to and I’m thirsty and aching. The hand on my pubic mound wanders to the back to feel my wound. I want to see what they did back there. How can I have a look? I can look at my pussy if I bend way forward, but I’ve never been able to see my own ass. A mirror? No, a camera. Mom needs to bring me the camera.

Will she be here when I wake up? Message.

“It’s me. Can you bring the camera when you come? And can you wrap up the bulbs in my room without breaking the shoots? And bring the empty glasses, too, please. But hide them when you come in, Okay? You’re not allowed to have anything but cut flowers here. Thanks. See you soon. Oh yeah, can you also bring about thirty toothpicks? Thanks.”

I grow avocado trees. Besides fucking, it’s my only hobby. As a kid avocados were my favorite fruit or vegetable—whatever they are. Cut in half with a dollop of mayonnaise in the hole where the pit’s been removed. And a bunch of hot paprika powder sprinkled on top. I would play with the pits afterward. My mother would always say kids didn’t need toys—a rotten tomato or an avocado pit did just fine.

At first the pit is shiny and slimy from the avocado oil. I like to rub it on the backs of my hands and up and down my arms. Spread the slime all over. Then you have to dry the pit.

If you leave it on the radiator it only takes a few days. Once the moisture has dried, I run the soft, dark-brown pit across my lips. When they’re dry they feel so soft. I like to do it for minutes on end, with my eyes closed. It’s like when I would run my dry lips across the greasy leather cover of the pommel horse in the school gym—until someone would interrupt me. “Helen, what are you doing? Stop that.”

Or until the other kids would laugh at me. Then you spare yourself the embarrassment by doing it only during the few moments you can sneak into the gym alone. It’s about as soft as my ladyfingers when they’re freshly shaved.

You’ve got to peel the brown shell off the pit. To do that I stick my thumbnail into the shell and keep cracking it. Just be careful not to let any pieces of the shell jab under your nail.

That hurts and it’s hard to get the pieces out even with a needle and tweezers. And trying to finish ripping open the shell with splinters under your nail hurts worse than the initial pain of them getting jammed in there in the first place. It’ll leave ugly bloody marks under your nail, too. The blood doesn’t stay red, either. It turns brown. It takes a long time for it to grow out. In the meantime your nail looks like a sheet of floating ice with a piece of driftwood frozen into it. Once the shell’s completely removed you can see the pleasant color of the pit—either light yellow or sometimes pale pink.

Then I hit it with a hammer. But not so hard that it crushes. After that I put it in the freezer for a few hours to simulate winter. Once you’ve had enough of winter, you pull it out and insert three toothpicks into the pit. Then you suspend it in water in a glass, using the toothpicks to hold it at the right height.

An avocado pit looks like an egg. It’s got a thick, round end and a more pointed end. The narrower end has to stay above the water. About a third in the air and two-thirds submerged. It’ll stay this way for a couple of months.

A slimy film grows on the part of the pit in the water. I find it very inviting. Sometimes I take the pit out of the water and put it inside me. I call it my organic dildo. Obviously I only use organic avocados for my starter pits. Otherwise I’d end up with toxic trees.

You definitely want to take the toothpicks out before you put it inside you. Thanks to my well-trained pelvic muscles I can shoot it back out afterward. Then it’s back into the water with the toothpicks stuck back in. And then you wait.

After a couple of months you’ll see a crack in the round end. It’ll get wider, a deep crevice in the pit. It looks as if it’s about to split in half; then a thick, white, taproot will start to grow out of the bottom. It curls into the bottom of the glass—there’s no other direction for it to grow. Once that gets pretty long, if you look closely at the crack on the top side of the pit, you’ll see a tiny green sprout starting to grow. Now’s the time to transfer it to a pot full of potting soil. Soon a stem grows with big, green leaves.

I’ll never get closer to giving birth than this. I looked after that first pit for months. Had it inside me, pushed it out. And I take perfect care of all the avocado trees I’ve started that way.

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to have a child. There’s a recurring pattern in my family. My great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother, and me. All first-born. All girls. All neurotic, deranged, and depressed. But I broke the cycle. This year I turned eighteen and I’ve been waiting for that moment. One day after my birthday—as soon as I didn’t need parental approval—I had myself sterilized. Since then the thing my mother says to me so often doesn’t sound so threatening: “How much do you want to bet that when you have your first child it’s a girl?” Because I’ll only be having avocado trees. Apparently you have to wait twenty-five years for a tree to bear fruit. Which is also about how long you have to wait to become a grandmother. These days.

While I’ve been lying here thinking happily about my avocado family, the pain has subsided. You always notice when it begins; but you don’t notice when it stops. That moment doesn’t grab your attention. But I realize the pain is completely gone now. I love painkillers and try to imagine what it would have been like to have been born in another era when there were no good painkillers. My head is free of pain and now there’s room for everything else. I take a few deep breaths and, exhausted, fall asleep. When I open my eyes I see mom leaning over me.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m covering you up. You’re lying here totally exposed.”

“Leave it the way it is. The sheet’s too heavy on my wounded ass, mom. It hurts. It doesn’t matter how it looks. Do you think they haven’t seen it here a thousand times before?”

“Then stay that way. Good God.”

That reminds me.

“Can you please take down the crucifix over the door? It bugs me.”

“No, Helen, I won’t do that. Stop being so ridiculous.”

“Fine. If you won’t help me, I guess I’ll have to get up and do it myself.”

I start to move one leg off the bed, bluffing that I’m going to stand up, groaning with pain.

“Okay, Okay, I’ll do it. Please stay in bed.”

No problem.

She uses the lone chair in the room to reach the cross. As she’s climbing onto it, she speaks to me in an artificially friendly, sympathetic tone. I feel sorry for her. But it’s too late.

“How long have you had this condition?”

What is she talking about? Oh, right. The hemorrhoids.

“Always.”

“Not back when I used to bathe you.”

“So I got them sometime after I was too old for you to be bathing me.”

She climbs back down off the chair, holding the cross in her hand. She looks questioningly at me.

“Put it here in the drawer.” I point to the metal nightstand.

“You know, mom, hemorrhoids are hereditary. It’s just a question of who I got them from.”

She closes the drawer firmly.

“From your father. How was the operation?”

We learned in health class that divorced parents often try to manipulate their kids into taking their respective sides. One parent will bad-mouth the other in front of their kids.

What those bad-mouthing parents fail to realize, though, is that they are always insulting one half of the child. If you consider a child half the mother and half the father.

Children whose mothers constantly insult their fathers will eventually take revenge against their mothers. It all comes back like a boomerang.

So for years the mother has tried to get the child on her side only to have the opposite happen. She’s just pushed the child closer to the father.

Our teacher was right.