Call Me Bathsheba

There’s a hole in the roof of Carmen’s house. It isn’t one of those oh-crap-the-rain-is-coming-in-and-chunks-of-plaster-are-falling-on-the-bed holes like Ruyman and I have in our ceiling. It’s more like a drain. It was installed in the hopes that someday a bathroom would manifest itself up here. So far, there have been no sudden incarnations of potty facilities, but that doesn’t mean the hole isn’t getting used for its intended purpose. 

When Ruyman plays his daily game of Shovel the Sh*t, the dog turds get dumped down the hole. When Ruyman has to pee in the dark of night, well, let’s just say he doesn’t  have as far to walk as I do. For the most part, I leave the hole alone. In fact, I skirt it as much as possible because it’s rather dangerous to step in, it smells like hell, and it’s the place where a four-inch cockroach decided to scale Ruyman’s leg and have a good look at his man parts, resulting in a series of very macho soprano shrieks. (From my husband, not the cockroach.)

With so many incentives for avoiding it, there’s only one reason I go near the hole: to puke. During my first trimester of pregnancy, the hole and I spent a lot of quality time together. You could say we got to know each other inside and out. Right around month six I started to neglect the relationship in favor of actual digestion. However, a recent spike in hormones has caused me to once again seek out my old friend. In fact, the other night the hole and I took our relationship to a whole new level. 

It had been a rough day from the beginning. My ribs have been spreading recently, a process which feels like I’m being gradually dismembered by giant tortoises. Sitting for any position for long is an adventure in agony. On that particular day I’d been in a chair for 8 hours and the rib pain was excruciating. Coupled with a case of heartburn so bad it was giving me an inside-out tracheotomy, you could definitely say I wasn’t feeling well. I tossed and turned until about four in the morning when my stomach acid decided that burning its way to the surface was too tedious and took the direct route instead. I hustled out to the hole.

I’m not a polite puker. Instead, I barf like Elaine from Seinfeld dances; it’s a full-body dry heave. Other than scaring off business in several restaurants and waking the occasional neighbor, my loud aerobic puking hasn’t had too many serious repercussions. That is, until that night.

When you’re almost eight months pregnant, every muscle of your body becomes mysteriously entangled with your bladder. Sneezes, coughs, laughs, even the occasional eye roll all become grounds for mild urinary incontinence. So when I started puking hard enough to bring up bile, it was both ends against the middle. I found myself standing in the middle of a warm yellow puddle.

The Spanish, as a rule, are not early risers. This is a mercy, because if they were, I’m sure someone would have noticed a very pregnant woman standing naked on a rooftop under a full moon and using a garden hose to take a cold shower.

So it’s our little secret: just me and the hole. 

And the cockroach.