Wetlands

As soon as mom’s gone I ring for Robin.

Waiting, waiting. There are other patients, Helen, hard as that is for you to imagine. Here he comes.

“How can I help you, Ms. Memel?”

“I have a question for you. And please don’t say no right away.”

“Shoot.”

“Can you help me … actually, can you not call me Ms. Memel. It’s too formal for what I want to ask.”

“Sure. Happily.”

“You’re Robin and I’m Helen. Okay. Can you help me take a picture of my ass and the wound on it? I want to see what it looks like.”

“Um, let me think for a second—I don’t know if I’m allowed.”

“Please. Otherwise I’ll go crazy. There’s no other way for me to figure out what they did back there. You know, Dr. Notz can’t even explain it. And it’s my ass after all. Please. I can’t tell from feeling it. I’ve got to see it.”

“I understand. Interesting. Most patients don’t want to know. Okay. What do you want me to do?”

I go to the menu on the camera and set it to close-up. First try will be with no flash. It always looks better. I pull off the outer bandages and the plug of gauze. It takes a while. They’ve stuffed a lot of gauze in there. I carefully turn on to my other side, my face to the window, and hold my cheeks apart with both hands.

“Robin, now take a picture of the wound as close-up as possible. Hold it steady—the flash is off.”

I hear it click once and he shows me the test shot. You can’t make anything out. Robin doesn’t have a steady hand. Other talents, though, I’m sure. We’ll have to use the flash. And repeat the whole thing.

“Take a few pictures from various angles. Up close and from farther away.”

Click, click, click, click. He won’t stop.

“That’ll do it, Robin, thanks.”

He carefully hands me the camera and says, “I’ve worked here in the proctology unit for ages and I’ve never been able to see the actual surgical work. So I thank you.”

“No, thank you. Can I look at these on my own? And would you do this for me again if it’s necessary?”

“Sure.”

“You’re really cool, Robin.”

“You, too, Helen.”

He walks out grinning. I stuff the gauze stopper back in.

I’m alone with the device in which the pictures of my wound are saved. I have no idea what to expect. My pulse quickens and I start to sweat with anticipation.

I turn the little wheel mechanism next to the display to the “view pictures” option and hold the camera right in front of my face. It shows a photo of a bloody hole. The flash has cast light deep inside. My ass is wide open. There’s nothing to suggest the closure of a sphincter.

I can’t make out any crinkled, red-brown skin of a rosette. Actually, I can’t make out anything familiar at all. So this is what Notz meant by “wedge-shaped incision.” Poor description. I’m appalled at my own asshole—or rather, what’s left of it. More hole than ass.

So: I’ll never be an ass model. It’s just for private use now. Or am I holding the camera wrong? No, that can’t be possible—Robin would have held the camera the same way to take the picture.

Yikes. You can look right in. I feel much worse now that I’ve seen it. The pain comes back suddenly, too. Now that I know what I look like down there, I can’t believe the pain will ever go away. There’s no skin at all around the entire opening, just red, naked flesh.

I have to let the skin grow back. How long will it take? Weeks? Months? What do you have to eat to help the skin of your ass grow? Mackerel?

Do they want me to push a dump past open flesh? No way. How many days and weeks can I hold it in? And if I do manage to hold it in for a long time, the crap will get really big and harden and hurt even worse when it has to pass. I’ll ask. They’ll have to give me something to cause constipation so the wound can heal. I push my SOS button.

Waiting. While I wait I look through the other shots Robin took. Not one makes the wound look any less gruesome. What is that beside the wound? All sorts of red pimples. What the hell is that? I feel around both ass cheeks with my fingertips. I can feel the bumps. I didn’t notice them before. My sense of touch is stunted compared to my sense of sight. I need to improve my sense of touch, this is no good. Where did these pimples come from? Allergies? Am I allergic to butt operations? I look at the photos again. Ah, now I know. It’s razor burn. They shave you before an operation. Obviously not too daintily. Chop-chop, run the blade across. The only thing that matters is to get the hair off as quickly as possible. Probably without water or shaving cream. Just run the blade over, dry, to rip the hair out.

They’re even more unceremonious about shaving than I am on my own. I used to not shave at all. I thought there were better ways to fritter away the time in the bathroom. And I found better ways. Until I met Kanell. He’s from Africa. Ethiopia to be precise. One Saturday he stopped at the fruit-and-vegetable stand where I work to earn a little spending money. I set the stand up at four in the morning and sell produce until afternoon. My boss, the farmer who owns the stand, is a racist. Which is hilarious. Because he thinks he needs to stock exotic fruits and vegetables. A gap in the market. But who besides people from Africa, India, South America, or China knows how to prepare dishes with pomelos, sunchokes, and taro root?

So my boss rants all day long about foreigners, about what an insult it is that they want to shop at his stand, and about their accents. This despite the fact that he’s attracting them because of what he’s selling. Kanell didn’t understand the farmer’s question: “That it?”

He had to ask the farmer what he meant. The farmer was so patronizing in his explanation that I slipped away from the stand afterward to apologize.

I ran along the rows of stalls looking for him. Finally, I was standing behind him. I tapped him on the shoulder and he turned around. All out of breath, I said: “Hi. I’m sorry. I just wanted to say I was ashamed of the way my boss acted.”

“I could tell.”

“Good.”

We laughed together.

Then I got nervous and couldn’t think of anything better to say than: “I’m going back to the stand.”

“Are you shaved?”

“What?”

“I asked whether you were shaved.”

“No, why do you ask?”

“Because I’d love to shave you sometime. At my place.”

“When?”

“Right after work. Whenever the market closes.”

He writes his address down for me, folds the piece of paper up small, and pushes it into my dirty palm like a little present. This definitely qualifies as one of my most impulsive dates ever. I shove the note into the chest pocket of my green apron and walk proudly back to the racist’s stand.

I don’t want to think too much over the next few hours about what to expect at his apartment. Otherwise I’ll get too anxious and might not even go. That would be a shame.

When I’m done for the day I shove my under-the-table wages in my pocket and head for the jotted-down address. I ring the bell labeled Kanell. Apparently it’s his last name. Or perhaps he’s got such a complicated name that, like some soccer players, he’s just picked out a pseudonym that stupid Europeans can pronounce. He buzzes the door open and calls down the staircase: “Second floor.”

I step inside the entryway and the door closes hard behind me. It practically hits me and a cold breeze rustles my hair. The mechanical arm that closes the door is set too tight. There’s a screw someplace in it that you can loosen so the door closes more elegantly. My father taught me that. If I start coming here often, I’ll bring a screwdriver sometime and fix it.