Wetlands (6 page)

I eat my pizza by myself.

I don’t like eating alone. It scares me. When you stick something in your mouth, you should be able to tell someone else what it tastes like. My ass begins to twitch. What have you learned, Helen? Don’t suffer any more than necessary. Ring the emergency buzzer. Peter comes in and I tell him I need painkillers because the pain is starting up again. He looks confused and says there’s nothing about overnight pain medication on the chart he’s been given. With a big piece of pizza in my mouth I say, “There must be, Robin said all I had to do was ask and I’d get them.”

This can’t be happening. I finally ask before it gets bad and now I can’t get any for the entire night? Help. Peter
leaves to call the doctor at home. He says he doesn’t have the authority to do anything that’s not specifically listed on the chart. I’m feeling sick with fear. I was operated on today and I can’t get any pain medication on the first night? I open both beers with the handle of the fork. I’m one of the few girls I know who can do that. Very practical. Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work I go. I drink the beers down as fast as I can, one after the other. My ass is getting worse and worse, and my insides are cold from the beer.

Peter, Peter, Peter, hurry up. Bring me medication. I close my eyes. The pain is getting stronger and I’m beginning to cramp up. I know this drill. I cross my hands on my chest and I’m nothing more than my ass.

I hear him come in and, with my eyes still closed, ask whether I’ll get something.

“What are you talking about,” says a female voice.

I open my eyes and see
a woman in a nurse’s uniform but one that’s a different color from all the others here. The others all wear light blue and she’s in light green. Maybe she had a laundry mishap.

“Good evening. Please forgive me for disturbing you so late. The rounds took longer than usual today. I’m a candy striper.”

What? She must have broken out of the psychiatric ward. I just look at her. She must be crazy, I think, and I’ll leave her to believe what she wants. My ass hurts bad. And it’s getting worse. That’s the only thing I could possibly say to her. That would be a great conversation: “I’m a candy striper.” “Yeah, and my ass hurts.”

I watch her with tired, half-open eyes like a grandmother. It seems to me she talks very slowly—each word seems to echo.

“That means I’m a volunteer. I try to make things more comfortable for the people here in the hospital. We candy stripers”—there are others!—“run errands for patients, get them phone cards, pick up their mail, that sort of thing.”

Very well.

“Can you get me painkillers?”

“No, we’re not authorized to do that. We’re not nurses. We just look like them.” She snorts. It’s supposed to be a laugh.

“Please leave me alone. I’m sorry, but I’m in pain and I’m waiting for a nurse and some medication. Normally I’m nicer. I’ll call you if I need anything.”

As she leaves, she asks, “Where would you call?”

Get out. I need peace and quiet.

I’m not going to be able to keep it together much longer. I take deep breaths. And blow them back out loudly. My hand wanders down to my pubic mound and I pull my knees up toward my chest. Although this position hurts, I stay in it. Into the pain with you, Helen. The other hand I put over my ass crack. This is bad. The kind of pain that makes you feel extremely lonely and scared. I think to myself, no patient should have to be in pain in a country as rich as this; I think, there’s enough medicine for everyone here. I ring the buzzer. Peter comes running in. He apologizes that it’s taken so long. He couldn’t reach the doctor at first. He found out that the day shift had made a mistake. I was supposed to get an electronic device so I could self-administer pain medication. They were supposed to have the anesthesiologist attach one that would allow me just to click with my thumb to get doses of the medicine
through the catheter in my arm. They forgot. Forgot? I’m at their mercy. Forgot. And now?

“You can have strong tablets upon request all night long. Here’s the first one.”

I pop it into my mouth and wash it down with the dregs of the beer. Peter clears away the pizza box. He’s probably forgotten he’s responsible for the medical waste. Hospital of the forgetful. My painkillers forgotten, my rectal goulash forgotten. We’ll see what else gets forgotten. The half-eaten mushroom pizza sits on top covering everything. My goulash ends up in the normal trash. I like that. I don’t say anything. He also throws out the beer bottles, very carefully so they don’t bang against each other. Very delicate, Peter.

Because of the pain, my shoulder muscles are pulled all the way up to my ears, stretched taut like rubber bands. Now, after taking the pill, they begin to slowly relax and I can breathe more easily. I need to piss from the beer, but I can’t get up. No worries. I fall asleep.

When I wake up it’s still dark. I don’t have a clock. Wait, my camera has a clock in it. I turn it on and take a picture of the room; when I view a shot, it always says when it was taken, right? 2:46 a.m. Too bad. I’d hoped the pill would allow me to sleep through the night. Did Peter leave more pills here?

I turn on the light. It’s terribly bright and white. I’m dizzy. I guess these tablets they’re giving me are pretty strong.
I’m having trouble thinking straight. My eyes adjust to the nightmarish light. Why did I bother with the clock in the camera? I have a mobile phone. You’re funny sometimes, Helen. It must be the medication. I hope. I see a tablet in a little plastic cup on the nightstand. Down the hatch. I can do it without a drink. It tastes disgustingly chemical. It takes a long time before I have enough spit to swallow it. Gulp. And it’s down. I turn off the light and try to go back to sleep. Can’t. My bladder’s full. Very full. At least it’s my bladder bothering me and not my ass. There’s a noise bothering me. It’s a loud hissing. From outside, I think. Sounds like the exhaust pipe of the hospital’s air-conditioning system. They must have moved it right outside my window while I was asleep. I refuse to go to the bathroom. You’re going to have to fall asleep with a full bladder, Helen, or not at all. To block out the hiss I put the pillow on top of my head. Top ear blocked by the pillow, bottom ear by the mattress.

The hiss in my head is now as loud as the air conditioner outside. I press my eyelids together and try to force myself to sleep. Think about something else, Helen. But what?

I smell something.

I fear it’s gas. I sniff and sniff again. It still smells like gas. A gas leak. I can almost hear it. Sssssssss. Just to be sure not to make a fool of myself, I wait a little while longer. I hold my breath. I count a few seconds and then take another
deep breath. It’s definitely gas. Turn on the light. I stand up. The motion hurts. But who cares. Better to have your ass hurt than to get blown sky high.

I go out into the hall and call.

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

Mom always forbid us to call out “hello.” She thought it sounded as if you were talking down to handicapped people.

I’ll make an exception. It’s an emergency.

“Hello?”

It’s silent in the hallway. Hospitals are creepy at night.

A nurse comes out of the nurses’ station. Thankfully it’s not a man. Where’s Peter?

“Can you come check this out? It smells like gas in my room.”

Her face becomes very serious. Good, she believes me.

We go into my room and sniff around. I can’t smell it anymore. The strong gas smell. It’s gone. No gas, no nothing. It’s happened again.

“Oh, no, I guess it doesn’t. My mistake.” I exaggeratedly raise the corners of my mouth.

I’m hoping to make it look as if I was joking.

I don’t pull it off very well. I can’t believe I’ve fooled

myself again. For the hundredth time. Approximately.

She looks at me full of disdain and leaves. She’s right—it’s nothing to joke about. But it wasn’t meant to be one.
The worst gas incident so far—except for the real one—happened at home. One night when I was trying to fall asleep I was sure I smelled gas. The smell just kept getting stronger. Because I know gas is lighter than air—even though it’s hard to believe—I thought I was well situated lying there in bed. It’s not far off the floor.

I also know it takes a long time for all the rooms of a building to fill with gas and for the gas to slowly descend from the ceiling and spread out. I was sure my mom and brother were already dead. Whether the leak was in the basement or the kitchen, their rooms would be full by now.

I lay in bed a long time with my eyes nearly closed—because of lack of oxygen, I thought, though it turned out to be from sleepiness—thinking about what I should do.

I thought if I got out of bed I might cause a spark and it would be my fault if the apartment blew up and I died. The others were already dead—it wouldn’t matter to them if the place exploded.

I decided to climb out of bed very slowly and inch my way outside on the floor.

The apartment was silent. If I made it out alive I would still have my father, who, luckily, didn’t live in that deadly building. That’s the one advantage to having divorced parents.

Lying on the floor I reached up for the handle of the front door and opened it. It took a long time to make it down
the hall, snaking my way across the carpet. As soon as I was outside I took a few deep breaths. I’d made it.

I walked away from the building so I wouldn’t be hit by any flying bricks if the place blew up.

I stood on the sidewalk in my nightgown, lit up by the only street lamp on our block, and looked at the tomb of my mother and brother.

There was a light on in the living room. I could see mom on the couch with a book in her hand. At first I thought she had suffocated and was frozen in that position. Rather improbable.

Then she turned a page. She was alive, and I realized I had fooled myself again.

I went back in and flopped down in bed. Real hard, to cause sparks.

There’s no way for me to know whether I’m imagining it or not when I smell gas. It always smells strong. And it happens pretty often.

It’s actually a pleasant smell.

Fear makes you tired. Painkillers, too. I lie down in the hospital bed and fall asleep.

I sleep through the rest
of the night. Only two tablets. Not bad. I convince myself that’s a small amount of pain medication. To be honest, yesterday evening I had pictured a more difficult night ahead. In a shotglass-sized plastic cup on the nightstand is a pill. Another one. Very generous, Peter. Pain medication, I assume. I slurp it down. Today I’ll try to stand up. I also need to go to the bathroom. Bad. It doesn’t smell good in here. It’s not gas this time. It can only be my ass. What else?

I feel around in back and find it wet. Blood? I look at my fingers. Not red. A hint of light brown. I smell them. Definitely crap. How did that get there, inspector Helen?

From the container on the windowsill I pull out gauze bandages and wipe myself up. It’s brown water that smells like crap. In the photo yesterday my butthole was wide open and I think everything must just be running out because the hole is still not tightly closed the way it normally would be. The seal isn’t watertight. I christen the stuff coming out “ass piss” and I’m already used to it. I figure out a folding technique for the bandages: I hold my ass cheeks apart and shove
my folded masterpiece up as close to the wound as possible so it stems the flow of ass piss. When I touch the wound itself with the bandages or my fingertips, it hurts bad. I gingerly let go of my ass cheeks. They hold the bandages in place. All set. Problem solved.

It really doesn’t smell too good in this room. I’m afraid my ass is definitely air-incontinent. A constant flow of warm air is coming without warning out of my intestines. You can’t even call them farts. My ass is just wide open. Farts have a beginning and an end. They noisily find their way out, sometimes with a lot of pressure. That’s not the case here. It just billows out. And fills the room with all the smells that should stay inside me until I decide to let them out. It smells like warm pus mixed with diarrhea and something acidic that I can’t seem to identify. Maybe it’s from the medication.

Now when somebody enters the room they know as much about me as if under normal circumstances they had shoved their head up my ass and taken a big whiff.

I’m in a good mood because I slept so well, I think. The next problem: going to the bathroom. I lie on my stomach and drop my legs slowly toward the floor. It’s a long way down. These tall beds. Bad. My feet touch the ground. I brace myself with my forearms and lift my upper body upright. I stand up. Ha! Turn around and slowly shuffle with tiny steps—otherwise it hurts my butt too much—what seems like a long way to the bathroom. Three yards. Plenty
of time to think of something nice. The smell of this watery ass piss seems familiar to me.

When I know I’m going to have sex with someone who likes anal, I ask: with or without a chocolate dip? Which means: some guys like it when the tip of their cock has a little crap on it when they pull it out after butt fucking—the smell of the crap their cock’s pulled out turns them on. Others want the tightness of the asshole without the filth. To each his own. For those who would rather have it clean, I ordered something from an online gay sex shop. It looks like a dildo with holes in the tip. It’s made out of surgical steel. I don’t know what that is, but it sounds good—and looks good.

First I unscrew my friendly showerhead so I can attach the threaded base of this device. It’s handy that everything is standardized. Then it’s time to clean the rectum. I smear the tip of the steel thing with Pjur lube. Then I work the thing past my cauliflower and shove it in as far as I can. At least that’s the way I used to do it—the cauliflower’s gone now. Should make it easier. Pushing it in turns me on—sually when something goes up my ass like that it’s a cock. Is that Pavlovian conditioning?

The device is colder and harder than a cock. I turn on the shower full blast, but not too hot because I don’t want to boil my innards. This is the best part of my internal cleansing. It feels like you’re being pumped up like a balloon.
We’re more used to the feeling of being filled up from flatulence than from having water in our intestines. So you tend to picture gas, not water. Soon you feel like you’re going to burst, like there are liters of water inside you. I get a strong urge to crap.

I turn the water off and crouch down as if I’m going to piss in the shower. I push all the water out of my intestines. It’s like pissing out of your ass. Like having severe diarrhea. You need to take out the hair strainer and the tub stopper because a lot of crap comes out, in big and small chunks. I repeat this process three times until there are no more mini-chunks of crap visible. No cock, no matter how big or long, is going to unearth anything in my rectum now. I’m perfectly prepared for clean butt sex, like a blow-up doll.

If somebody does like a chocolate dip, I’ll only do it if I’ve already had good sex with him a few times. It’s a real sign of affection. Anal sex without cleaning my ass out in advance. It takes a lot of trust to let someone decorate his cock with my crap. If I haven’t emptied my insides right before sex—either with the anal flushing device or on the toilet—there’s crap ready to be found just a few centimeters inside the entrance. It doesn’t get any more intimate than that as far as I’m concerned. Everything smells like my innards during sex like that, too. I have to smell my own innards the whole time. He only has to have stuck it in for a second and come in contact with the crap. Then when
he pulls it back out and we try out another position, his cock functions like a fluttering crap-scented air freshener.

Right now, though, I can’t imagine ever doing it again. Either thing. Ass cleansing or ass fucking. Which would be a shame.

I’ve made it. I’ve arrived in the bathroom. I don’t need to pull my underwear down because I don’t have any on. I just gather my tree-top angel outfit together on my stomach and tie it in a knot so it doesn’t dangle into the toilet. I carefully try to sit down, but as I start to squat I realize it won’t work. I can feel the wound straining. I’ll have to stand upright and straddle the toilet bowl. That works. This is how French women piss, right? On the wall to my left is a grandma grab-bar to hold onto. Probably designed more to help lift yourself up if you’ve sat down and can’t get back up. I’m misusing it to keep my balance while pissing standing up. I brace myself on the right against the plastic wall of the shower stall. I get most of the piss in the toilet. Am I supposed to take a crap like this? Can’t possibly imagine that. Though I can’t imagine taking a crap in any position. I’m not ready to try. Naturally, I don’t wash my hands after pissing.

If I were able to sit down on the toilet seat I’d do what I usually do at home: read the labels of the various soaps and shampoos on the rim of the tub. Apparently mom has put a few things around the sink here for me. But I can’t
reach them right now. At home I know a lot of the label information by heart. My favorite is a bubble bath: “Toning and Invigorating.” No idea what that’s supposed to mean. Invigorating I understand, I guess. But toning? I’ve tried to picture mom toned. It’s not a pretty picture. And ever since this word entered my vocabulary, I’ve been calling my brother Toning instead of Tony. He doesn’t find it amusing. But I do.

Quickly—but slowly—back to bed.

It’s going to take an extremely long time to get there. I never would have thought the butthole was so integral to the process of walking. During this turtle-speed walk I have plenty of time to think about all the things I want to do today. I’m sure my father and mother will visit. I’ll get them back together. I also need to set up my avocado pits and fill the glasses with water. I’ll have to find a hiding place for them or they’ll be taken away. I’ve made it as far as the Jesus poster. I take it off the wall and carry it with me toward the bed. It’ll fit perfectly between the metal nightstand and the wall, where no one can see it. Beautiful. An atheist hospital room. I crawl up onto my bed like a cripple and I’ve made it. What’s this? There are drops of liquid on the floor. A long trail. From the bathroom to the bed, with a detour to the wall. It’s drops of pee. I didn’t wipe. Never do. But usually it goes into my underwear or whatever I’m wearing. Here I’m not wearing anything down below so it all drips onto
the floor. Funny. There’s no way I can go back and wipe it up—I can’t walk that far again much less squat down to wipe something at floor level. It’ll have to stay there. I count the drops I can see, as far as the bathroom door. Twelve. The sun streaming in the window reflects off drops nine and ten so they look like little circles cut out of aluminum foil or something else shiny. My father is a scientist and he taught me that some beams of light are broken and diffuse in a drop of liquid. That’s why it looks as if light has been trapped inside a droplet. The rest of the light is reflected by the surface of the liquid. That’s why it shines.

There’s a knock at the door and someone in white medical clogs walks along the pee path. The socks are gleaming white. Nothing in our house ever stays white. Anything white takes on a different shade after the first washing. A dirty pink or grayish brown. More people walk in. The drops get all trampled. All these people have my pee on the bottoms of their shoes. That’s my kind of humor. I imagine how all day long they’ll be walking around their various stations and marking my territory for me. What are they doing here other than ruining my pee path?

Aha. It must be doctors and residents, or whatever you call them. They’re doing rounds. Why is it called that anyway? They’ve already introduced themselves. Asked me questions. And I’ve been thinking about other things. I can continue now. The best spot for the avocados would be the
windowsill. Because of the light. I’ll just have to screen it off so that nobody standing in the room can see them.

I hear the sentence, “She’ll be discharged once she has a successful bowel movement.”

Of course. They’re talking about me. The bowel movement lady. It’s Notz. I hadn’t noticed him among all the other doctors. Can I ask someone to fill the avocado glasses with water? I can’t possibly go back and forth filling them all. Given the speed I’m walking right now, it could take days. I have glasses for the pits and another one for mineral water. Someone will have to use that one to fill the others, going back and forth between the windowsill and sink. Wait, I’ve got it. I can use the mineral water for the pits. The nurses always refill my glass. So I don’t need to ask anyone to do it for me. I can take care of it myself. Beautiful. Nothing but the finest mineral water for my avocado-pit babies. Rich in calcium and magnesium and iron and who knows what else. They’ll grow well in that.

They all walk out again, my pee emissaries. Finally I can start working on my project.

I grab the little box my mom used to transport the pits. First I need to unwrap the newspaper from around the glasses. Packed way too safely. Same way mom drives. Crawling along, coming to a full stop at every speed bump.

To avoid damage to the axles, she says. Maybe in the old days. Modern cars can take such a beating that you could
drive over a speed bump at highway speed without anything happening. Says my father.

I put the eight glasses at the farthest end of the sill. Each of the eight pits I stick with three toothpicks and suspend in a glass. I start to pour in mineral water so two-thirds of each pit is submerged. But I need more liguid.

We’ll see how they fare after being moved and left out of water for a day and a night. It’s the first time I’ve taken pits on a journey. Now I need something to screen them from the view of all the people who come in and out of the room. Wasn’t there a book in the drawer of the nightstand? I open the drawer. A Bible. Of course. These Christians. Always trying to get you. Not going to get me. But as a screen it’ll do. I prop it up in front of the pits, open, but upside down so the cross is on its head. That’ll piss them off, right? It’s a sign of something bad to them. But what? Who cares.

On top of my little greenhouse I put the menu of the week’s food choices. That way nobody can see my little secret from above. I’ll only be getting whole-grain bread and granola anyway.

My family’s all set up. The pit collection makes it feel a bit more like home. As long as I can take care of my avocados I’ll have something to do. Filling them up with water or replacing the water. Documenting their progress with the camera. Once in a while scraping off the slime. Pinching
off dead or blighted leaves so healthy ones can grow. That kind of thing.

The phone rings. Who had it connected? Is that something the candy stripers do? With what money? Do you have to pay for it? I’ll have to look into that. I pick it up.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.” Mom.

Mom and dad want to visit today. They both want to avoid being there at the same time as the other.

I want so bad for my parents to be in a room together. I want them to visit me here in the hospital at the same time. I have a plan.

Mom asks, “When is your father coming?”

“You mean your ex-husband? The one you used to love so much? At four.”

“Then I’ll come at five. Will you make sure he’s gone by then?”

I say yes but think no. As soon as I’ve hung up with mom, I call dad and tell him it would be good for me if he came at five.

Dad shows up at five and brings me a book about slugs.

I think maybe it’s a reference to my butthole and ask about it. He says he thought I was interested in them because I asked him about them once. I’m sure I did—that’s the only sort of topic I can talk about with dad.

Not about real feelings or problems. He’s never figured that out. That’s why I talk to him a lot about plants, animals, and environmental pollution. He would never ask how my openly gaping wound is doing. I can’t think of much to talk about with him. The whole time he’s sitting there in the chair at the end of my bed, I keep expecting a knock at the door followed by mom entering the room. I hate awkward pauses. Though as a personal challenge, I try to keep them going. For that, dad is the perfect partner. He doesn’t talk. Unless I ask him something. He just doesn’t need to talk, I guess. I look at him and he at me. It’s horribly quiet. But he doesn’t look unfriendly or anything. Actually quite friendly and relaxed. I have no idea why. I guess I could ask. Perhaps I’m afraid of the answer. But that’s definitely not a reason to leave someone, just because he sits there, looks at you, and doesn’t say anything. There must be a better reason than that. Maybe their love faded. If you really want to promise something worthwhile, try this: I will stand by you even if I no longer love you. Now that’s a promise. That really means forever.