Wrecked (14 page)

I lay claim to the big bathroom and don’t have to worry about him coming in and seeing me doing any of those things. Then I lie down in our musty bed. I take up a third of our double bed because I’m petite. He gets two-thirds because he’s big. Even when I sleep I don’t really relax. I try to stay in control—try to make sure that he has enough room, that I don’t fart in
bed. I think farting in bed is also detrimental to sustaining a relationship forever. He does it a lot in front of me. Before I’ve fallen asleep he lets them fly. But I don’t want that to happen in reverse. Otherwise I might be abandoned.

I lie down in our sweaty, greasy, semen-crusted bed and look up at the ceiling. Yep. There it is, my beloved crack. I stare at it. And I imagine saving my family from being crushed by the inevitable collapse of the building. I’m prepared for everything. I won’t be caught off guard by Death. No. Never again. Death lies on top of me as I fall asleep; he’s there when I wake up. I can’t imagine that it will ever stop. No matter how many thousands of hours I spend on Agnetha’s couch. The accident and all the details surrounding it follow me, especially when I’m alone, as I am now, lying there waiting for the concrete walls to collapse and crush me.

Frau Drescher has taught me that trauma is so painful because it’s like an open wound that won’t close and heal. It still feels as if the accident and everything surrounding it happened just a few days ago. It’s as if no time has passed since then at all. I’m trapped in that time and can’t get past it. It’s like a movie in my head that just keeps repeating over and over. Maybe it will stop one day. But I don’t think so. I’ve become so accustomed to the images during the last eight years that it’s hard for me to imagine a life that doesn’t include this movie playing on a continuous loop. This horror movie.

The English bus driver drops us off at the home of my relatives. They storm out of the house to welcome us. They hug me for a long time and give me looks of sympathy. They’re not good at
it. Because they’re not exactly sure what to do, either. Or what to say. I taste blood: I immediately feel happily aware of the special status you are granted in such a situation. They hold me and look directly into my eyes. They try to figure out what it does to a human being to receive news like that:
Your mother and three of your siblings are dead!
That’s where my addiction to sympathy started. Endless sympathy. More than the people around you. Always granted special status. Like a saint. Everyone who sees you pictures you thinking,
I’ll grit my teeth and get through it. I won’t let myself get down. I won’t give up
. And everyone is amazed. To this day I find it really nice to be pitied, to be treated like some kind of superbeing—so much so that I almost look forward to mourning my child and husband. Just so that doesn’t sound too evil, my therapist would say at this point that I’m only trying to prepare myself for the worst so it won’t be so bad if it actually comes to pass. Yeah, yeah, that could be. I constantly see myself alone in my visions of the future, with a child and a husband who are dead because I failed to protect them from who knows what.

We go inside with my aunt and uncle. And drink a lot of alcohol, in the middle of the day. First cans of beer, the big ones, half-liter cans. Then the hard stuff. What else would you expect from a family of alcoholics? But even with all the booze I remain oddly sober. It must be the shock. We sit silently around the kitchen table. What can they say? The situation just steamrolls everyone.

My phone rings. It’s my father.

“Yes?”

“I have some good news. Rhea is alive.”

“No news about Mother?”

“No. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything. They said that’s their information policy—tell people to assume everyone is dead, and then, if anything changes, it comes as good news. They say everything is chaotic—it was a giant accident and the injured had to be sent to many different hospitals. Some of them are unconscious, some don’t have ID. There are Dutch, Belgians, English; and they have to find out who is who, who’s alive, and who’s dead. I have to keep my phone free.”

He hangs up. Good that he has something to do. He’s a man. He has yet to hear anything about his only son. My oldest sibling. But younger than me. My father at the command center of the accident. What is an “information policy”? Lie to everyone first? Say everyone is dead, even though they don’t know that? Promulgate the worst-case scenario? Everyone is dead. But only maybe. What? Hope? First destroy all hope. Then a little creeps back in. They first say everyone’s dead and then they inform the living step-by-step. So in the end there’s a little happiness. Instead of just despair. Nice trick. The Belgian police are sly as foxes when it comes to psychology.

Rhea, Rhea, Rhea. So what? My brother’s girlfriend. I have no relationship with her at all. Or barely any. Great—for her family. Definitely great for them. But not for us. Blood is thicker than alcohol. But alcohol thins your blood. Is it possible that Mother is also still alive? It’s been three hours since my father’s first call. It’s possible that he’ll call any minute and say, “They found your mother.” She’s alive. Or she’s dead. He’ll either confirm the initial news or repudiate it. Everything is still possible. Excruciating wait. Hanging on the news. Call. Papa. Call. Call.

I talk drunkenly with my relatives and boyfriend, staring the whole time at my phone. I keep checking to make sure I
have a good signal. Don’t want anything else to go wrong. Slowly it becomes evening. I’m not hungry but I eat something anyway. My aunt makes something warm for us.

Late in the evening, I realize that my two cousins are missing. I ask where they are. And I’m happy that something normal has occurred to me, something we can talk about. That’s when you know how poorly your brain is functioning while in shock—it takes hours before I realize that two of my relatives are missing. My aunt and uncle sent the kids away when they received the call from my boyfriend. They didn’t tell the kids why they had to go, but they sent them to a friend’s place so they wouldn’t have to deal with something so horrific at their age. They’ll tell them the next day.

The phone rings. I answer immediately. I saw the word
Papa
pop up on the display even before the ringtone registered.

“I have good news. Mother is alive.”

“Thank you, Papa, thank you. Where is she?” From the look on my face and the word
she
, my relatives and boyfriend can figure out that my mother has survived. Yes. That’s what you say. She survived. The most important person to me on earth survived the mass accident.

“Do you have something to write with? I’ll give you the number of the hospital in Antwerp. She’s badly burned, but she’s conscious.”

She’s alive, but she’s badly burned? All the things you have to wrestle with in life.

“What? Badly burned? What does that mean?”

Please don’t let it be Mama’s face!

“I haven’t talked to her directly. The doctor said her feet were burned down to the bone on both legs. And her back is
broken. But she can talk, do you understand? She is conscious, Elizabeth. Call her.”

“Okay, I will. Talk to you later. Thanks again.”

But I’m not going to. I’m not going to call her! I can’t do that. What would I say? I start to feel creeped out by my own mother. I’m unbelievably happy that she’s alive, but what is there to talk about? This is when the speechlessness in our family began. Out of cowardice. My mother survived a mass wreck, her back is broken, and her feet are burned. What else is there to say? I stare at the long number beginning with the country code for Belgium. Does it go directly to her room? Do you get your own room after a multivehicle crash? We all have just basic insurance. We wouldn’t normally get a single room. Everyone in my family says it would be too boring to be alone in a hospital room. Or perhaps a nurse answers the phone? Or whoever she is sharing a room with? Which parts of her body are burned again? Broken back? Where exactly? Is she in traction? Neck? Pelvis? Did they just dip her in plaster to create a full-body cast? Is her vagina full of plaster, too, as a result? I’m not calling. I can’t. She’s alive. Wonderful. But I don’t need to call and hear exactly what is burned and how badly.

I explain to my relatives that I have her number at the hospital. But also that I’m not going to call. I don’t want to. I don’t want it to happen to us. A minute ago I thought the best thing that could happen would be if my mother survived the accident, but now I’m already back to complaining. I wanted her to survive uninjured. It hadn’t even occurred to me until this moment that you could also survive despite getting hurt. In fact, that’s the most likely thing to happen. And how ugly her injuries sound! Severely burned, a broken back. The phone rings. My father.

“Bad news, Elizabeth.”

I can barely understand what he’s saying. There’s loud noise in the background. As if he’s at a racetrack.

“I’m afraid it’s bad news. The children have not turned up in any of the surrounding hospitals. They’ve identified all the survivors. Your brother is not among them.”

Your brother? Your son, too, Papa. Not just me. You, too.

“They’ve cleared the site of the accident. The autobahn has been reopened. I’m here with Lukas’s father. The whole area is a charred wasteland.”

What? They’re at the accident site? Are they crazy? They should get away from there. How can they possibly go there? What? They stopped on the autobahn and are walking around? It sounds like a racetrack. It is now. An autobahn. They should make sure nothing happens to them.

“Be careful, yeah? Be careful, Papa.”

“Yes, we’re being careful. Don’t worry. We just wanted to see the site of the accident. We drove here together.”

I know that both of them drive very fast. I don’t want them to anymore. I must tell them not to. There will be no more speeding in our family.

Right, so they are not among the survivors.

“Are the bodies somewhere?”

I can’t believe what I’m asking. But he doesn’t seem to mind answering.

“There are no bodies. That’s the odd part. The car exploded and burned beyond all recognition. We had to tell the police that the children had been in the backseat. Nothing was found—no bones, no teeth, nothing. At first they didn’t believe us. They insisted that there must have only been two
people in the car—the two in the front, who survived. Your mother and Rhea.”

That’s my father, my scientific, emotionless father. Bones, teeth. Nice! Now you can picture it all. Finally he’s explaining things clearly.

“So, they’re dead?”

“Yes, they are dead, but there are no bodies.”

This is incredible. I want to hang up immediately so I can tell my relatives. I’m including my boyfriend now among the relatives. Because we had almost been married. It counts as having been married. If you were going to say yes. Coulda, shoulda, woulda. Even in the middle of a catastrophe, you never lose a sense of appreciation for something sensational like this—and you are aware of its interest to others.

We hang up. I repeat everything my father has just told me, word for word. It’s the beginning of something that will follow me for the rest of my life: I talk about the accident in all its gory details, but I can hardly believe what I’m saying is true. It’s just words. I can’t get rid of the feeling that I’m lying to people about the story. Like when I used to lie about how rich my father was when I was young so that other kids would think more highly of me. I’m a con artist. A poseur. I just try to make myself the center of attention with made-up stories.

For a few hours, my relatives allow me to continue to think I’m not going to call my mother. Then they tell me it’s just not an option. They convince me to call. They say I have to get through it. I have to talk to her about her burns and broken back. She’s probably waiting for me to call. You can’t avoid it, they tell me. What then? We’ll definitely want to visit her tomorrow. What? Visit? Tomorrow? Oh, God, right, that’s
what you do. But we’re in England and she’s in Belgium. We don’t have to go visit her there, do we? I hadn’t even thought about that. I haven’t really been able to think at all since the news of the accident. It’s like my brain is sick. Like someone with Alzheimer’s. Shock-dementia.

There’s only one technique that allows me to get away from these thoughts and fall asleep. I have to breathe them away. In order to relax, in order to be able to get to sleep. Before I start my breathing technique, I stick one of the greatest inventions in the world into my ears: Oropax ear plugs. Oropax means “peace of the ears” in Latin. I think so, anyway. I was terrible in Latin. Georg has now come in and lain down next to me. He snores. It’s because he’s full of testosterone. I’m sure of it. And because he’s old. With the Oropax in my ears, I am totally removed from the world around me. There is nothing but the whir of my own rushing blood. I am self-contained. The trick I use to fall asleep goes like this: I tense all the muscles in my feet, breathe out, then in, three times, very deeply, then I loosen all the muscles in my feet. Then I do the same thing with my leg muscles, my buttocks, my back, my hands, my arms. Theoretically I should carry on until I reach my face and tongue, but I never get that far. I always fall asleep by the time I get to my arms at the latest. Before I start with the breathing, I quickly cross my arms on my chest as if I’m praying. I’m practicing being dead. I look forward to my own death. Peace at last. In my head. In my body. Not that I do anything particularly stressful. But for me, just being is enough to wear me out. Once my hands are folded for my mortal slumber, I’m ready.

T
he alarm goes off at 6:20
AM,
like every morning since I had a child. Horrible. And today it’s even worse than usual because of the worms. Gravity is particularly strong and pulls me back into bed, and it takes all my power to fight it. I have to use every ounce of superego I have available. I went to bed too late last night and fell asleep even later. I wake up every morning in the exact same corpse pose that I fall asleep in. I don’t move at all in my sleep. Georg can’t tell whether I’m alive or dead. Sometimes he puts a finger beneath my nose to feel for warm breath. He’s told me. He’s rehearsing for my death, too.

Waking up has always been difficult for me. Even as a child I dreamed up theories about how something was wrong with the fact that everything—school, work, hospitals—started so early. It screws up your whole life. In school we learned that every person has his or her own biorhythm, but that’s not reflected in reality. You learn in school that the system is wrong. And it continues regardless. Now I have a child and have to get up early again. I didn’t realize during my pregnancy how long all the responsibilities would last. My God, eighteen years will drag on forever.

The morning—actually the entire day—always unfolds the same way. I get up alone and make breakfast for Liza. Either organic granola with an entire organic apple cut up in it, or cottage cheese on top of a whole-grain roll baked by my husband.
That way no additives can get inside our bodies. For myself I make a latte, which for Georg’s sake I have learned to do very well. Obviously I benefit, too. Then I go downstairs and wake up the child. She never wants to get up, never. Just like me at that age. But I act as if it’s important to get up in the morning and go to school, even if I don’t really believe it myself. She needs to be prepared for life so she doesn’t turn into a bum or a slob or a junkie.

I talk so much nonsense that eventually she gets up, laughing. I jiggle her with both of my hands and tell her in the middle of summer that it has snowed. Or I tell her it’s her birthday and congratulate her while she’s half-asleep. Or I tell her a large animal is waiting for her in the living room, so that she has a moment of fear before she laughs and says, “Oh, Mama, cut it out, you’re so embarrassing.”

It’s the sentence most frequently exchanged between mother and daughter since she could speak: you’re so embarrassing.

That’s how I get her out of bed. Then I have to coax her upstairs like an animal just waking up from hibernation. With each step she lets her feet hit the floor with a
thwack
to show how out of it she still is. Every morning I have to fight the impulse to say, “You know what, my dear little child? Go ahead and lie back down. Forget school today. I’ll lie back down, too. It’s all complete nonsense. You’ll make something of yourself even without going to school, and you’ll probably be happier.”

But I don’t say that. I would love to, though. It’s all pointless. I know. But I act as if the opposite were true. I have to be a good mother. Better than mine. Much better, hopefully. Though that shouldn’t be hard.

She sits down at the kitchen table, eats her breakfast, and drinks a glass of lukewarm water. Lukewarm water is best for the body.

I let her eat quietly before confronting her with the worm problem. I try, as always, not to telegraph my own panic.

“Can I have a quick look at your butt hole, please?”

“Why?”

“You said it itched yesterday. And I have worms. I want to see whether you have them, too.”

“Okay.”

We go together into the guest bathroom. It seems odd to me to conduct the examination at the kitchen table.

I don’t let on, but I’m appalled. They’re everywhere.

So yes, she has them. Just as I suspected. She and I are infested. She won’t be going to school today. We will go to the pediatrician this morning. It’s a bit embarrassing, but I hope her doctor will be able to give me medicine, too, so I don’t have to go to my own doctor’s office as well. My husband, who is just coming upstairs as we are leaving the apartment, asks me to get him a prescription, too, as a precaution. Sure. As a precaution.

“You don’t have to go to school today. We’re going to the pediatrician.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Because we all have worms. You and me for sure, and I hope to get medicine for Papa and Georg as well.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, having worms is no big deal. Everyone gets them. Maybe after the doctor’s office you’ll go to Papa’s place if he’s not working today.”

“Okay.”

Brave kid. She doesn’t protest. Either she likes it equally well at both our places, or it just never occurs to her to play one of us against the other. Maybe because we try to shield her from everything. We never fight in front of her, we never put pressure on her. We separated parents never raise our voices at each other, at least not in front of her. Despite the fact that there are definitely grounds to do so on both sides. Again, we are doing much better than my parents did.

In therapy I’ve learned that the most important thing is to make clear to the child that he or she cannot do anything about the split. I missed my own father so much when my parents split that I convinced myself the whole thing was my fault. My parents had no experience with therapy and never saw any need to read a book about dealing with a child of a breakup. They just stomped around in our heads, egotistical as they were, without a thought about protecting our little souls (regardless of the fact that there is no such thing as a soul!).

“Mama, do I really not have to go to school today?”

“You’re not allowed to go to school with worms.”

“Yay. Cool.”

We are already in the car on the way to her pediatrician’s office.

We go there without an appointment. It’s the best way. Just sit in the waiting room until we get a chance. If someone is late arriving for an appointment, we’re there.

Fortunately the pediatrician doesn’t need to examine us. He believes the good mother and the super tape test. We get a children’s prescription and three adult prescriptions, enough for the whole damn patchwork family. The doctor explains that the itching should stop after the first pill, and that the pill on
the second evening is just insurance to make sure any remaining worms are knocked out. He says Liza only needs to be held out of school today. By tomorrow, she won’t be contagious any more. I call my ex-husband from the doctor’s office and let him know I have medicine for him, to take care of the itching. I also pressure him to take Liza now so I have the rest of the morning alone with my husband. He agrees, and I’m immediately in a better mood. Worms will soon be gone, child will soon be gone, things are looking up.

As we walk out of the office with a bag containing the four batches of medicine to combat our nasty parasites, I tell him over the phone everything the doctor told us about how the stuff works. The beastly itching will stop as soon as you take the first pill. You have to talk about that kind of thing with your ex-husband just because you have a child together. Man, the images that go through your head as a result. I know what his butt hole looks like, even if I’d rather not anymore. Unfortunately, I now know what it looks like when white worms are hanging out of a butt hole. And unfortunately I also have sufficient powers of imagination to combine these two images and create a coherent vision. It makes me feel angry at my ex-boyfriend. Angry that I know what he looks like naked. That he knows what I look like naked. That he knows how I moan when I come. I’d love to erase his memory. I’d be able to get along with him better then.

It’s also hard to shake the feelings of guilt for leaving him. I destroyed his family. He wanted to have a family with me and our daughter. But I said, “No, I don’t want that anymore.” He just had to live with my decision. And that results in regular outbreaks of hostility, which we hide from our child. He’s in
therapy, I’m in therapy, and an important reason both us do that is so we can help our child deal with our breakup.

Therapists say that you’re allowed to leave if you fall in love with someone else or out of love with your partner. But morally speaking, and from the point of view of the child and the abandoned partner, it’s never cool. I used to feel so bad about it that I wanted to wire him money as some sort of replacement for me—I thought he should at least be well situated financially. It took my therapist many years of hard work to cast such crazy thoughts out of my head.
Of course
, my ex-boyfriend thinks,
if she wants to leave I have to let her leave
. But he’s having a decision about his life made by someone else, and he has to deal with the fact that I’m throwing our daughter’s life into chaos as a result, too. Everyone has the romantic image of Mama and Papa staying together forever. Kids especially, but also abandoned partners. I thought that way as a child, too. The governing principle once you have a child with someone is: just stay together forever. And even I, a product of a broken relationship, broke this cardinal rule—at the very moment Liza was born, I was already pretty much separated from her father.

I convince myself that this is the one thing that makes it a little better for the child: she has no conscious memories of what it was like when her parents were together. I was permitted to experience what it was like to have a normal family for five years as a child. Well, I guess you couldn’t say it was sound, not in any adult sense. But as children we didn’t see what was happening behind the scenes. No fights or suffering for us. The only suffering came from the breakup. That’s when everything started to go downhill. That’s when the sadness in my life began. The ever-expanding cracks that never healed. I
cling to the idea that my daughter, on the other hand, suffered only a virtual sort of loss. She knows intact family life only from other children whose parents are still together or from books and movies. When we talk about the fact that her mother and father used to be together, she just laughs. Since her birth, she has only ever known me together with my current husband. I think in her child’s imagination she figures I just decided to get pregnant by a neighbor, for the sake of good genes or whatever. Her father lives in the immediate vicinity to make it easier to shuttle her back and forth. Everything is set up to spare her as much pain as possible.

My parents didn’t do that for me. I had to move constantly, switch schools, lose friends, deal with new situations, and block out the past anytime my mother pronounced another man dead. It was always the same pattern: Mother moved with us children into some man’s home, a substitute father. Be nice to him, he’s your new dad. For two years we’d put on a family show, then the sex would disappear, the love would disappear, we’d move out, and he was pronounced dead.

And the man was always at fault in the breakups. Then all the kids, including the ones added along the way, were out of there; next would come a subsidized apartment in public housing and an impoverished mother. Then a new man, everyone into his house, family show, and so on and so forth. As the oldest child, I lived through that cycle four times. In retrospect I’m bitter about the fact that my mother followed her libido, without ever looking back or thinking about what was being lost. I try to control that in myself. Mostly for the sake of the child. But also for the sake of our relationship. It’s damn tough. But when you have kids you have to keep yourself together—so the children can put down
roots. I have no roots. I don’t have a family home where my parents live, no hometown I can visit. My daughter does. She’s been in one place for her entire life. And we’ll stay in one place for her. I can’t imagine what that’s like for a child because I never knew any stability. I find it difficult to stay in one place, to stay with one man. I knew only the opposite: run away.

Whenever I have such evil thoughts about my mother, I also have to admit that it wasn’t always like that. Then I’m sitting in my aunt’s kitchen again, afraid to call my severely burned mother.

Okay, got it. Not calling is not an option? Grit your teeth and get through it. I go into the living room and sit on the couch next to the phone. I look around and see out of the corner of my eye that my boyfriend, aunt, and uncle are trudging after me. Family! How horrid. The living room is decorated the way the English decorate. A bit lacking in taste. The denial of death and everything bad is evident in the wallpaper, the carpets, the upholstery. Everything covered in little green tendrils and pink flowers, here and there a bluebird or a squirrel.

Motorized drape pulls in the recesses of the windows. Glass figurines on the fake mantelpiece. And in every household of my entire family—both my mother’s side and my father’s—there’s one of those clocks that sounds the top of the hour with bird noises instead of a jingle. Whoever invented that type of clock must be very rich.

They all come in, sit down, and watch me. I like this special role—the lone sufferer. What must be wrong with me for me to like being in this position?

We’ve lost three children, like in a war. Three in one family. Unless my father calls again with a different report. Otherwise we have to go on the assumption that it’s three. Before, there were five children of my mother. Now only two. If the information doesn’t change. Is that why she had so many children? I always thought it was low-class. Five kids. Like cats. Out of proportion by today’s standards. But maybe my mother suspected there would be an incident like this. Have a bunch of kids so a few are left even if three die. Maybe there was a master plan. Perhaps she’s not as low-class as I thought. Maybe she’s just better at math than I am.

I dial the number without considering in advance what exactly I will say.

“Hullo?”

She’s English and always answers the phone with a friendly English hullo.

“Hi, it’s me.”

We recognize each other’s voice. We have the same voice. When I speak to her on the phone, it feels as if I am talking to myself. Our voices are mirror images. She always used to say this when I was little: “You are just like me. Everyone says so.”

How can anyone become someone else? Only by killing that person.