COCKROACH
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I went to an insect dealer in Neukölln. It said it was actually a reptile feed store online but I
thought they might have what I was looking for.
I walked in the door marked 'Insekten Laden' with a paper sign and ran into a large man standing
in the narrow hallway. It felt a bit like being in my dad's shed. I tried to explain to the man what I
wanted but he only pointed to a square hole in the floor. A wooden ladder was nailed to the wall
and disappeared into the yellow hole.
He's down there, the man said in German.
After a minute another man stuck his head out of the hole. I explained what I needed.
I'm looking for cockroaches.
I've got Dubia.
That's perfect.
What size?
The biggest you have.
The man's head went back down the hole. A few breeding isopod colonies were crawling around
in giant glass bulbs at the back of the store. Nearby were stacked boxes of lab mice huddled
and clawing at the glass.
The man came out of the hole with a plastic box of 10 roaches. They were larger than I expected.
Two euros. What animal do you have?
I don't have an animal, I'm just getting the cockroaches for now.
Als Haustiere?
Yeah. It's strange I know; I want to get a tarantula in the future.
It's not that strange, for some reason it's always women who are into spiders.
Yeah. I pay the two euros.
I squish the plastic box into my bag, the blister closure on the top makes a cracking sound
against my laptop and my notebooks. I get on the bus, then the subway, listening for the
exoskeletons and the soft swishing of the sawdust as they climb over each other.
After I run all of my other errands; pharmacy, grocery store, I get the roaches home and open
the package, holding a female the size of my thumb and letting her run through my fingers,
carefully passing her between my hands as the others climb up the open walls of the container,
when they reach the top I place the old roach back in the box and pick up the new one, we play
like this, circling each other, like cat’s cradle, or shuffling cards.
At some point, it's time to kill the roaches. I take the isopropyl alcohol from the pharmacy out of
my bag and dab it on some tissue paper, then lay it down in an airtight Tupperware to create a makeshift killing jar.
I gently pick up each roach one by one, shaking off the sawdust, and when
all 10 are in the box I close the lid and let them crawl over the poison fibers.
That night I dream I'm at her parent’s house. I've brought the box of cockroaches, but they are
still alive, climbing around in my bag. As we lay wrapped in each other on the bed I watch a
roach the size of my fingernail disappear between the mattress and the bed frame. I pull up the
sheet and see more roaches escaping under the mattress. They've bred. I slip out and open my
bag to check the roach box, the plastic closure is shoved thick with tiny roaches, their legs
steadily pushing them under the lid, leaking out like a liquid.
As she sleeps, I move around the bed, pulling the roaches from their hiding places in the dark
corners of the sheets, I pluck them pushing and scrambling to escape, until I have a handful.
Then I go to the kitchen and pour them into a glass of Glühwein, hoping they won't be
discovered. Unfortunately, her mother was up preparing the Christmas ham, and it was her
glass of Glühwein on the counter. Before she can take a drink, I pour now ruby-colored roaches
down the kitchen sink, running the water and nudging them down the drain with my fingers.
What are you doing over there? She asks in German.
The roaches are suddenly getting backed up in the sink, they begin to crawl out instead, now all
colors and sizes, green, blue, purple, and the water is blood red,
I wonder when it will overflow.
Oh, I’m just fine. I say as I watch the sink fill with the squirming bodies of thousands of cockroaches,
and secretly, I am ecstatic.
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