Wetlands

by Charlotte Roche

  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.”

  And walk out with perfect posture. It takes a minute. The men have gotten in. The curtains close. I let myself slump back into my bent-over posture and hear from the elevator a weak, old voice, revolted: “What is that? Oh my God.”

  There’s no way they’ll clean it up themselves. They’ll never figure out that it’s just harmless menstrual blood. It looks like something that fell out of a wound. You can’t even recognize that it’s gauze. Soaked with blood as it is. It could even be a piece of flesh. Human flesh. These days everybody’s afraid to come in contact with blood. They’ll tell someone on the floor where they get out. The father will hold the doors open to keep my bloody clump from traveling onward. The son will have to go find a nurse on the hall. The nurse will then have to find a rubber glove and a garbage bag so she can remove the clump. And eventually a wet cloth to wash off the dirty grab-bar.

  She’ll thank the father and son. Showing such civil courage in the cause of hygiene. Then my masterpiece will end up with the medical waste.

  I’ve arrived at the cafeteria. The bills have in the meantime been passed between both hands and smeared with blood. The finger that was inside me also clearly has blood under the fingernail. Blood turns brown when it’s exposed to the air. So it looks more like crap or dirt. So my period-hands now look more like the dirty hands of a kid on a playground. I’ll nibble it all out from under my nails later. Cleaning your nails with your teeth in public looks as if you’re chewing your nails—and I hate that. Chewing your nails is considered by almost everyone to be a sign of psychological weakness. Insecurity. Nervousness. It’s something that belongs behind closed doors. Kill or be killed. Coffee, please. As a reward for the long trip here, I’ll treat myself to caramel flavor.

  I pay with a bloody bill. Pleased that this bill will sooner or later make the rounds. First it’ll be clamped under the spring-loaded plastic clip in the drawer of the cash register. Until it’s handed out as change. Then it’ll wander into a sick person’s wallet and, later, when that person is released, will be carried out into the world. Whenever I get a bill with blood on it, my first thought is always of a nose bloodied from snorting too much coke. A bit of blood often gets on the part of the rolled-up bill that was stuck into the nose. Bit of snot, bit of blood. Maybe I should rethink that. There’s more than one way to get blood on a bill. I take my coffee and my change to an empty table in the cafeteria. I’ve done it. I’m sitting here like a normal hospital patient drinking a cup of coffee. I have a long journey behind me, and I’ve disturbed at least three people through hygienic transgressions. A good day.

  While I’m drinking my coffee, I need to figure out how I can manage to stay in the hospital for a while longer. Somehow I need to inflict another injury on myself or else reopen the one I already have. But how, without it looking purposeful? So my parents don’t get suspicious. Not to mention the doctors. The cafeteria is slowly beginning to fill up. It’s teatime. Most of the people here want to get out of the hospital as fast as they can. I want to stay as long as possible. I think the only other people who want to stay in the hospital as long as possible are the homeless. In our town there’s Blind Willy. I don’t know why everybody calls him that, because he’s not blind. At least not when I talk to him. I always want to give him something. Mom says if you give them money they just drink themselves to death that much faster. Or they buy drugs. She has no clue. Whenever I was downtown without her I would talk to him and get close to his face so I could smell his breath. Not a whiff of alcohol. She was wrong on that count. And I asked him about the drugs. He just laughed and shook his head. I believe him. So I stole some money out of mom’s purse and put it aside. Then the next time I went into town without mom, I gave it to him and told him it was from my mother. She sends her best. I told him he shouldn’t ever thank her, though, because she wouldn’t want it to seem as if she were seeking a public show of gratitude. He took her for a generous, humble lady rather than a hypocritical Christian. I also stole a sleeping bag, food, and clothing for Willy from home. As far as he knows, it all came from her. Whenever I walked past him with mom, he and I would look at each other briefly and then lower our gazes with knowing smiles.

  Willy is probably happy when there’s something wrong with his leg or something so he can spend a night in the hospital.

  If I’m to have any chance at all of bringing my parents together, I need a lot more time here. I would pay to have any of these people’s diseases. But there’s no point in even thinking about that. It won’t work. Just like trading breasts with my friend Corinna. She has big breasts with soft, light-pink nipples. I have small breasts with hard, maroon nipples. Whenever I see the way her tits bulge out of a T-shirt, I want to trade. I picture the two of us going to the plastic surgeon and each having our breasts removed and then reattached on the other. I always have to convince myself to stop thinking about it because no matter how badly I want it, it’ll never work. It breaks my heart that something like that isn’t yet possible. And besides, I’d still have to ask Corinna whether she was cool with it. I couldn’t do it without her consent. Or maybe I could. But then I’d definitely lose her as a friend. But I can’t do it anyway because it’s simply impossible. Get it through your head, Helen! Quit torturing yourself by letting your mind wander down these hopeless cul-de-sacs. It’s just as much of a waste of mental energy to think about how much you would pay the people here for their various diseases. It won’t work.

  This is no place to figure out a plan to extend my stay here. I’m just too distracted by the other inmates.

  I also notice that the coffee is having its usual effect on me. My innards are starting to gurgle and rumble. I react to a cup of coffee the same way a native in the rain forest would to the first cup of his life. With symptoms of poisoning. Half a cup of coffee in the top, diarrhea immediately out the bottom. I did a coffee piss-test once. My dad taught me how. When you get up in the morning, you usually have to pee because your bladder has stored it up all night. So when you’ve pissed yourself empty in the morning, you can pretty much assume there’s basically no more pee left in your body. Now, if you drink a cup of coffee with breakfast, your body feels so po
isoned that it leeches water from itself in order to wash out the poisonous drink as quickly as possible. You have to go to the bathroom as soon as you finish drinking it and piss out more fluid than you just drank in the form of coffee. I’ve confirmed this by using the coffee mug as a measuring cup. The pee always sloshes over the edge. So to the delight of my father I proved the dehydrating effect of coffee. My mother wasn’t pleased, though, because she doesn’t think urine belongs in a coffee mug.

  I’ve got to get back to my room. It’s go time. My body is starting to fend off the coffee. There’s no way I can use a public toilet down here in case I have to crap. I’m scared of that and need peace and quiet. It might also hurt so badly that I have to scream. This isn’t the place for that. That’s something I’d want to do on my own. Quick, back to my room. Though it’s not like me, I don’t take my cup to the cart at the exit for dirty dishes—despite the fact that I want to be a model patient. In an emergency you can leave your cup. Just stand up and make your way slowly to the elevator. And cinch closed what’s left of your sphincter muscle so nothing ends up in the sheet.

  Just in the nick of time I remember that I got rid of my do-it-yourself tampon for the sake of a prank. I’m squeezing everything down there together as best as I can. In the front, too. A Roman with a bloody toga walking around the cafeteria. That would create quite a sensation. Don’t want that. Thanks to my pussy’s good musculature, I can hold blood in for quite a while. Then, when I sit on the toilet and relax my muscles, it all sloshes out of me at once. At the elevator I tell myself I’ve already made it halfway. Once I get on the elevator I’ll just have to stand still and then when I get out on my floor I’ll only have to make it the same distance I did from the chair in the cafeteria to the elevator.

  Ding. It’s here. I immediately look for what I left behind. Nothing. As I thought. Tampon gone. Not even a hint of a drop of blood. Drops of blood have a very short half-life in a hospital. When the doors have closed, I stick the tip of my pointer finger into my blood-holder and dab an oval of blood—like a potato print in school—in the exact spot where my goods were. They won’t catch me. The doors open. I walk to my room so fast it hurts. The pressure is building. I’m worried about what’s going to come out and how. I stand over the toilet bowl with my legs spread apart, pull the gauze plug out of my ass and let nature take its course. I don’t need to paint a picture, but it takes a while, hurts a lot, bleeds heavily, and now I’ve done it. The thing everyone here is waiting for me to do. But they’re never going to know. I make a new plug out of toilet paper. Air this place out. The telltale scent has got to go. First I turn on the shower full blast. Somebody once told me the water pulls bad smells down the drain. I leave the door to the bathroom open and walk even more buckled over than before to the window next to my bed and open it as wide as it goes. I walk gingerly because of the postfecal pain. But I’m in a hurry. Back to the bathroom door. I open and close the door, fanning the air in the direction of the window. I don’t smell anything anymore. But that will need to be confirmed. I go back out into the hall and close the door to my room. I take a few deep breaths in and out until I have only fresh, stench-free air in my nose and lungs. Then I go back in, just as any nurse would, and sniff. The smell is gone. Everything’s clean. No evidence. Mission accomplished. I turn off the water and make a new homemade tampon to handle my menstrual blood. Done. Calm. What should I do now? I’ll lie down and close my eyes. Let’s simmer down—or at least get worked up over something else.

  I’m thinking of Robin. I undress him. Lay him totally naked on my hospital bed and lick him from his tailbone all the way up his backbone to his neck. He has a lot of dark moles. Maybe he should visit the skin doctor. It would be a shame if he died of skin cancer. He’s a nurse, after all. A nurse shouldn’t die of something overlooked. A nurse should get run over by a car or kill himself because he’s fallen hopelessly in love with someone. Like me, for instance. I lick each vertebrae all the way back down. To his butt crack. I spread his cheeks apart and lick his asshole. At first just in a circle. Then I make my tongue pointed and stiff and bore into his tightly closed sphincter. My left hand makes its way underneath to his cock. It’s so hard it’s like a stone column wrapped in warm skin. I shove my tongue deeper into his ass and hold my closed hand against his bell-end. I want him to come so hard into my pressed-together fingers that it streams out the other side. Which is exactly what he does. There’s nothing else he can do. I don’t let go of the tip of his cock. Hold it tight. I open my eyes again. He’s a pig, this Robin. I have to laugh. I love my emergency sex fantasy. I don’t need TV to entertain myself.

  A knock at the door. With my luck it’ll be Robin and he’ll instantly figure out what I was just picturing. Nope. A female nurse. She asks whether I’ve had a bowel movement.

  “No, have you?”

  The nurse gives a pained smile and leaves.

  Helen, you wanted to be a good patient. Yes, but with the constant questions and the phrase “bowel movement” it’s tough to be nice. And now. I’ll combine two things in one trip. I’ll pee and go out into the hall to get mineral water for my hidden avocado pits. I slide out of bed backward, as always, dropping my feet to the ground until they are both solidly planted. Twinges of pain are beginning. The anesthesiologist warned me about this. It’s on the way. I waddle to the washroom, lift my hospital gown and piss standing up, just the way an ass patient is supposed to. No need to flush. Nobody else is going to use it but me. Drives hygiene-freaks nuts. From the sink I grab the glass you’re supposed to use to rinse your mouth out after you brush your teeth and fill it to overflowing with water. Dad taught me that water can stay in a glass even if you fill it above the rim—because of the surface tension or something like that. I can’t remember exactly anymore. I’ll ask him again when he shows up. Now I’ve already got a conversation topic prepared. You need to do that with him. And this is just the sort of thing he loves to talk about for long periods of time. There won’t be any embarrassing pauses in the conversation.

  I drink the entire glass in one go. Nice change. Still water instead of sparkling.

  I leave my gown gathered and tied in front. I’d be ashamed to have any of my schoolmates visit me, but I don’t care if everyone here sees me undressed all day long. They’ve seen it all here, that’s for sure. From the bathroom I don’t go back to bed but out into the hall. I stand there for a minute and look around. On the way to the cafeteria I saw a little seating area for visitors. Where you can make tea or get coffee out of a big urn. And right there was a tower of stacked water-bottle crates. Surely they’re self-serve. I’ll try it out. Because to fill the pit glasses I need more than one bottle. And the nurses only bring a new bottle once the last one is empty. It’s too indulgent for me to make a nurse take several trips back and forth. I head for the seating area. There’s a family sitting there speaking to each other very quietly. The nurses should follow their lead. One of the men in the group is wearing pajamas and a bathrobe. That signals to me that he’s the ass patient of the bunch. I don’t feel like saying hello. I take three bottles out of the top crate and head back. I can hear that my rearview has created a stir among the family. Have a ball. I walk as quickly as I can back to my protected cave.

  I squeeze into the far corner between the windowsill and the bed without letting my ass brush up against anything. Back to where I’ve hidden my avocado greenhouse with the Bible. Shielded from the view of the doctors and nurses and from Robin. Although Robin’s allowed to see them. I’ll show him at some point. He’s already seen a lot. Come to think of it, he could take some pictures of the current condition of my ass.

  I lift up the Bible carefully and refill the glasses. In the sun here on the windowsill the water evaporates pretty fast. Don’t think you have nothing to do, Helen. There are living things depending on you. You can do a better job keeping them watered. Some of the pits are already out of the water, and here you are saying you’re bored. Tsk, tsk. They all look to be doing oka
y, though. Sometimes one here or there will start to mold and I have to part with it despite all the effort I’ve put in. The roots aren’t yet sticking out of most of them. But one has started to split, and another has a root growing out of the bottom. Things are going well with my pits. All healthy. I put the Bible back and shield them from view again.

  I think I’d like to stand here for a minute. The room looks completely different from here.

  Up to now I’ve mostly looked out from the bed. From here the room looks bigger. Of course. I’m in the farthest corner. With all my power I push the bed a few inches into the room and then let myself slide down into the corner until my ass touches the floor and my legs are bent so much that my knees touch my breastbone. I feel the cold linoleum on my peach and ass cheeks. I don’t even know if it is linoleum, but that’s what people always say is in a hospital. This position is straining my ass too much. I need to straighten out my legs under the bed. I can hide here. If I can’t see the door, nobody who comes through the door can see my face either. My legs yes. But they’d have to purposefully look under the bed first. Nobody who comes in will have any reason to look under the bed. Everyone will just look at the bed and, if it’s empty, think that I’m wandering around somewhere or that I’m on the toilet. I feel between my legs with my hand. I stick two fingers in and use them like tweezers to pull out my homemade tampon. I put it on top of the shoulder-high radiator. The tampon wobbles back and forth unsteadily so I press it down between two ribs of the radiator. I don’t want it to fall on me. I don’t want to have any bloodstains in strange places on my back or wherever that nobody can explain—and that I can’t either because I can’t even see them. As soon as I’ve positioned the tampon securely—it’s a bit sticky now, too, which helps—I take my middle finger and put the tip of the nail directly on my snail tail. I press on it with the edge of the nail. That must make an indentation. Nobody sees it though. It’s the fastest way to get wet. My pussy immediately begins to drip with slime. One hand is busy with the snail tail—I alternately press on it and rub it; I need two fingers of the other hand to shove into my pussy. I spread the two fingers apart inside my pussy and make a twisting motion. Normally, as I get more and more into it I stick my pussy fingers in my ass. That’s not going to happen, though. The ass is fresh from surgery and already occupied by a plug. I could try to feel that, though. I move the pussy fingers inside me toward the back. It feels like a very thin dividing wall between pussy and ass. I can feel the plug. Even though I’m in the pussy. I know this feeling. But not from a plug, of course. From shit. It’s often lined up at the exit before it’s allowed to leave. And if you’re in the pussy you can feel the log of crap through the thin dividing wall. I wonder if men have ever felt one in me when we were hooking up?