Wrecked - Charlotte Roche

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up afterward and starting to clean up or whatever. In the article it said that the clichés that form the basis of the jokes everyone makes—about the hyperactivity of women after sex and the “little death” of men—are the result of different hormones. I love science because it absolves you of your bad conscience about things like that. Now that we know, I can get out of bed immediately and do something without being given the evil eye. He’s already deep asleep, and I switch off the electric blankets so he doesn’t get broiled in his sleep. I grab one of my daughter’s stuffed animals that’s lying on the floor of our room. It’s an orangutan. I hold it against my vagina so none of the sperm drips out on my way to the bathroom. You never see that in the movies after a sex scene—the soupy fluid running back out of the woman at some point. Probably wouldn’t go over so well. I smile. My head is never clouded with problems after sex. It always seems to me that I can’t possibly get more relaxed or free. And then I feel even more relaxed and free the next time. He outdoes himself. We outdo ourselves.

      Right in front of the bathroom is our rattan laundry basket. We like old, dark brown things—prepares us for our eventual death. I toss the orangutan into the basket and head into the bathroom. If my daughter finds the stuffed animal in there, the sperm will have dried. And anyway, a child would probably just think it was snot. Definitely. I sit backward on the bidet and wash myself—the way I saw it done in The Tin Drum as a kid. My mother often showed us movies with adult-only ratings. She was of the opinion that art films couldn’t be rated that way. But ever since, that image has stuck in my head: the working girl from The Tin Drum, played by Katharina Thalbach, trying to perform retroactive contraception by washing out the sperm of her client. I don’t think that image will ever leave my head. After washing myself first with soap, I rinse again with clear water.

      I grab a towel—which, for the sake of the environment, is air dried, and as a result is brittle and scratchy—and dry myself off a little too roughly. I want to finish quickly. My daughter will be home from school any minute, and then we’ll want to have dinner. I haven’t prepared anything.

      I look at myself in the mirror, nude. I always look best after sex because my facial features are so relaxed. My breasts are slightly larger because they’re engrossed with blood, the nipples are hard, the pupils of my eyes are dilated as if I’m high, my clitoris and the inner lips of my vagina are thick and swollen from the stimulation and friction and hang out of my outer lips. On my throat and chest I have the telltale red flecks I always get when I come. You can’t fake those. My husband is always happy when he sees those red flecks on my white skin. He’s always worried that I might be faking it. But I don’t—and I don’t have to. I brush my hair so I don’t look too deranged when Liza gets home. With makeup remover and Q-tips I clean up the smearing beneath my eyes that could be a giveaway. And I fold two squares of toilet paper into my underwear before I pull them on. But no more than two. I teach my daughter not to waste paper when she goes to the bathroom, too—for the sake of the environment.

      As quietly as possible, I slip into the walk-in closet off our bedroom and rummage around for some comfortable clothes to wear for the rest of the evening. Before dinner, I have to briefly stop by to see my therapist, Frau Drescher. I can wear anything to her office. That’s the beauty of it. I can go there regardless of how I look, how I smell. I can go there in any state. Isn’t that what religious nuts say about their gods? Maybe so, but they aren’t so confident that they don’t wash up for him—just in case he’s not quite as magnanimous as they pretend.

      Frau Drescher even wants me to go to the bathroom at her place—number two, no less. But so far I haven’t been able to get up the nerve. We’re working on it.

      Once I’m dressed, I go upstairs to the kitchen. I close all the doors along the way so I can make as much noise as I want with my daughter without waking up Georg. I know he’ll sleep for at least an hour. I like to tell myself that I’ve worn him out. That makes it easier for me to let him sleep—because I’m proud of myself. During the hour I have while he’s asleep, I’ll cook something healthy and, by breathing deeply, get rid of the red flecks on my throat. Don’t want my daughter to see those. Kids don’t want to know that adults have sex. From our stack of cutting boards I pull out the one with the words garlic and onions branded onto it. And from the magnetic strip that holds our knives I grab the knife I’ve written garlic on with a Sharpie. Ever since I quit smoking, my senses of taste and smell are so sensitive that when I eat a piece of fruit I can taste whatever was cut with the same knife beforehand—and if it’s onions or garlic it nearly makes me puke. When things that are supposed to be sweet taste somehow savory, it drives me crazy. It’s something that has started to bother me only as I’ve gotten older. When I was younger, I was more easygoing. A lot more easygoing!

      Onions live in a wooden box under the sink. That’s what my grandmother used to always say: “Now, where do the onions live?” The mother of my ex-husband taught me a good trick for chopping onions. When I sauté them in a pan, as the beginning of almost every dish I make, I like them so finely chopped that they nearly disintegrate. I skin them, cut off the ends, and then stick out my tongue—just the tip. The acidity that emanates from the onion seeks out the closest moisture. If your mouth is closed, that ends up being your eyes, and the onions make you cry. I hate crying. For me it’s best not to start, because I can never stop. But with this trick, your tongue attracts all the acidity before it gets to your eyes. Your eyes don’t burn, and you never cry. I turn the onion so the top is facing me, and cut it horizontally and then vertically, and then cut it into tiny pieces. I throw the onion slices into a pan with organic olive oil and sauté them until they turn transparent. I get a head of savoy cabbage out of the fridge—it’s just the most beautiful vegetable. With a big sharp knife I cut it in half and pause to look at the coloration inside. It goes from dark green to light green, with each layer toward the middle slightly lighter. I make two cuts and remove the hard part around the stem and throw it into the compost container under the sink. Then I cut the head of cabbage into small strips. I always think it’s going to be way too much, but as soon as it’s in the pan it cooks down dramatically. Next I throw in a handful of my special ingredient: organic vegetable broth with no yeast extract. It’s very hard to find. Even in most organic markets they have only vegetable broth with yeast extract—which is just a new “green” euphemism for monosodium glutamate. As a good mother, I can’t allow that in our kitchen.

      When we still had meat at our place—that is, before the Jonathan Safran Foer era began—I conducted an experiment several times: I made chicken broth from scratch, using an entire chicken carcass. It went over okay. The next day I would serve chicken soup made with a prepared broth I bought at the organic market. Everybody loved it. The only difference was the flavor enhancer, either glutamate or yeast extract—which sounds so harmless. But if my family were to get used to that stuff, they’d only like the enhanced flavors and they’d lose their taste for the real thing. So I avoid the stuff.

      To the organic vegetable broth powder with no MSG I add some water to steam the cabbage a bit. Then I add an entire container of cream, some butter, and plenty of salt and pepper. Dinner is ready.

      The doorbell rings and I let Liza in. On the way to the door I think to myself, Cooking helps you stay sane, and vegetables help keep you from going crazy.

      “How was school?”

      “Good.”

      When she comes in wearing her teenager-style jacket, skinny jeans, and heels, I can hardly believe how big she’s gotten. This is my child? Great. I guess I’ve succeeded—she’s out of the woods, as they say. She’s still alive. That’s not something we can take for granted in our family. One of my brothers died at six, another at nine, and the third at twenty-four—though there’s still a while before my daughter reaches that age. But I’ve already achieved more than my mother. My child is still alive. One hundred percent of my children have lived beyond age six. My mother had five, and three are dead. One of them was younger than my daughter is now—that is, my mother lost 20 percent of her offspring before they were eight, which is how old Liza is.

      I quickly wash up the things I dirtied making dinner. I don’t have to wash away the onion smell completely because this cutting board is used exclusively for onions and garlic. What bourgeois trick will we dream up next?

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